ABSTRACT
Global efforts aimed at ensuring food sufficiency by increasing staple food production have adopted irrigated farming as one of the main strategies. Approximately 70% of the world’s irrigated land lies in Asia, where it accounts for almost 35% of cultivated land. In sub-Saharan Africa less than 5% of the cultivated area is irrigated (Molden et al., 2007). Regions such as South-East Asia have almost exhausted their irrigation development potential, making the potential irrigable land in Sub-Saharan Africa a major hope for the world in terms of feeding the future population (FAO, 2006b). Meanwhile, irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa has been slow, resulting from several unresolved factors. However, there are encouraging signs of isolated cases of successful irrigation development across sub-Saharan Africa which serve as examples for upscaling irrigation.
