Hua Xie,Liangzhi You,Ben Wielgosz,Tingju Zhu,Claudia Ringler, International Food Policy Research Institute, , c.ringler@cgiar.org
ABSTRACT
Irrigation has been proposed as a key solution to address adverse impacts of rainfall shortfalls and variability on Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the potential for irrigation investments in Sub-Saharan Africa is highly dependent upon geographic, hydrologic, agronomic, and economic factors that need to be taken into account when assessing the long-term viability and sustainability of planned projects. This paper analyzes the application potential for motor pumps, one of the most promising smallholder irrigation technologies, in Sub-Saharan Africa based on various biophysical and socioeconomic factors under climate change. The analysis involved the integrative use of a suite of state-of-the-art data analysis and modeling tools and allowed for integrating a wide variety of data sets on both the biophysical and the socioeconomic side to identify the geographic domains with smallholder irrigation application potential, perform cost-benefit analysis, and assess the long-term environmental impacts of the adoption of the technology. This type of analysis can guide country- and local-level assessment of irrigation potential under climate change, which will be important to agricultural and economic development in Africa.
KEY WORDS Smallholder irrigation, climate change, Sub-Saharan Africa