Sefficiency of a water use system: the case of Kano River irrigation project, Nigeria

Northern Nigeria is part of the semi-arid region of Africa experiencing water scarcity. The ever increasing population and climate change have placed a considerable pressure on Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP), a major water user on Kano River, the most upstream tributary of Yobe River flowing directly to Lake Chad which is an important transboundary basin in West Africa. Performance of KRIP was evaluated using meso-level of the new and innovative Sefficiency (sustainable efficiency) framework, which incorporates quantity, quality, and beneficial aspects of water use in a comprehensive and systemic manner. Two major stakeholders were contacted, namely, farmers and water managers, and their views on the value of water flows were registered through interviews. The results indicated that useful consumption relative to effective consumption of farmers is significantly lower than management, showing a higher relative consumptive impact on both KRIP and Kano River. In addition, the useful outflow per unit of useful inflow is lower according to the farmers relative to the managers. Water managers underscore the importance of pollution impacts, give relevance in allocating water to downstream users including environmental flows, and contributing to groundwater recharge, whereas farmers do not. Flawed classical efficiency in use globally gives much lower values than mesoefficiency. For proper policy analysis in KRIP, the paper recommends using meso-efficiency with technologies to derive better data and to educate farmers on the importance of pollution and return flow.This work is partially financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the contract UID/ECI/04047/2013 for the Centre of Territory, Environment and Construction (CTAC). The support provided by the management of Hadejia-Jama’are River Basin Development Authority (H-JRBDA) and farmers in Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP) especially Abdulkadir Abdulmalik and those that participated in the survey are duly acknowledged. Moreover, the authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.