Small-scale irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa. Progress in Physical Geography. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/030913338701100101 Awulachew et al

Irrigation is widely perceived as a key element in the promotion of agricultural pro-duction in sub-Saharan Africa (Donald, 1975; des Bouvrie and Rydzewski, 1977; Jackson, 1979). While the technology of irrigation is generally now well established, experience has shown that too firm a faith in the promise of irrigation may not be justified. Formal irrigation development in tropical Africa dates back to the second and third decade of this century, for example at Gezira in the Sudan (Gaitskell, 1959; Barnett, 1977) and in northern Nigeria (Palmer-Jones, 1981; Palmer-Jones, in press; Adams, 1985a). Interest increased in the 1960s with the involvement of UN organizations in planning African water resource development (Godana, 1985), irrigation being endorsed for example in Nigeria by the FAO (FAO, 1966). Through the 1960s and 1970s, irrigation development took place in tropical Africa, pri-marily of large capital intensive projects of over 10 000 ha. In recent years the manifold problems associated with making these schemes effective in either econ-omic or human terms has increasingly been realized (cf. Harrison Church, 1961