Future of agricultural water management in Africa

Abstract

This paper aims to estimate ratio of area equipped for irrigation to cultivated area (AI) in Africa in 2035 and 2060 using studies of agricultural water management from 1962 to 2011. For this purpose, all necessary information was gathered from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and their values were checked using The World Bank Group (WBG). Among all presented data in the FAO database, 10 indices were selected (due to more importance and more availability for all the regions in Africa). The selected indices were analysed for all seven regions in the study area and the amount of AI was estimated by three different scenarios and using other nine indices. The results show that changes of AI are 0.3% to 49.5% and 16.5% to 83.2% from 2011 to 2035 and 2060, respectively. Indian Ocean Islands has a better potential to increase AI in the future. A considerable note is the change of irrigation status in the future than the current status. In 2011, AI of Sudano-Sahelian is more than AI of Indian Ocean Islands, however, in the future; AI of Sudano-Sahelian would be less than AI of Indian Ocean Islands based on all scenarios.

Keywords:

• Africa
• agricultural water management
• FAO
• irrigation
• sustainable development