Trends in Irrigated Crop Production in Ethiopia During the Period of Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Ethiopia has 51.3 million hectares of arable land and an irrigation potential of 3,088,395 hectares. Despite the country's vast irrigation potential, it hasn’t benefited much. Studies have confirmed the role of irrigation in increasing crop production, alleviating poverty, and promoting food security. Given such importance of irrigation in poverty and hunger alleviation, it’s believed that the development of the sector contributes to the realization of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, this review looked into the progress of the irrigation sector over the past seven years, between 2015 (the launch of the SDGs) and 2021 (the midterm of the SDGs period). During this period the number of smallholder irrigators increased by 15.21% and the total increase in irrigated land was only 1.4%. Vegetables, root crops, fruits and stimulant crops showed an increase of 153.8%, 66 %,16.6% and 1% in the irrigated production area, respectively. On the other hand, irrigated production areas of cereal, pulse and oil crops declined by 8.0%, 44.6% and 90.5%, respectively. Among cereals, only Teff showed a slight 4.3% overall increase in the irrigated production area, whereas Barley, Wheat, Maize and Sorghum decreased by 12.5% and 3.3%. 11.3%, 12.9%, respectively. This shows that the irrigation sector is characterized by a decline or underachievement during this period. Hence, there is a need for studies into why the sector experienced such a disappointing performance, in order to come up with strategies to improve the sector in the remaining periods of the SDGs.