ABSTRACT
In the face of increasing global population, water scarcity and the need to tackle poverty in developing countries, various projects and organisations have promoted low-cost irrigation technologies for smallholder farmers. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) International Development Enterprises (iDE) is one well-known organisation that took up the challenge to re-engineer conventional irrigation technologies with the explicit objective to meet the needs of smallholder farmers. iDE perceives low-cost irrigation technologies for individual smallholder farmers as a potential solution to rural hunger and poverty. At the moment of research, iDE Zambia was the main importer and developer of low-cost irrigation technologies in the country and had an office with around 20 staff members in capital city of Lusaka, as well as several field offices throughout the country. iDE presents the introduction of low-cost drip kits into Zambia as a practical response to the labour and productivity needs of smallholder farmers who use laborious bucket irrigation method of irrigation, many of whom are women.
