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The Policy Mobilities of Farmer-led Irrigation Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract
Farmer-led irrigation development (FLID) is a process where farmers play a driving role in configuring agricultural technology practices, crop-specific market linkages, land and water governance arrangements. Yet, this development strategy is operationalized differently by donors across implemented irrigation projects across Sub-Saharan Africa, where a majority of these initiatives are implemented. While previous research has assessed the livelihood impacts and biophysical and socioeconomic enablers and constraints to farmer-led and small-scale practices, their performance is largely case-specific and anecdotal. This research compiled systematic data on 130 projects implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa to examine the emergence, application, and advancement of FLID across the region between 1991 and 2021. Drawing on this unique repository, the thesis identifies three distinct FLID assemblages, defined as cohesive yet heterogeneous arrays of institutions, actors, policy models, and other material (policy documents and policy brochures) and natural objects (crop commodities), based on six critical domains: 1) scale (area and institutional arrangement of irrigation, 2) technologies, 3) ownership, 4) governance, 5) market relationships, and 6) donor roles. The three distinct FLID assemblages that developed over time within Sub-Saharan Africa include, 1) household hybrid FLID, 2) smallholder private FLID, and 3) medium to large-scale commercial FLID. The top five countries with FLID are Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Niger, and Rwanda; and smallholder private FLID, or in other words, micro-irrigation technology promotion, is an ascendant trend with 66 percent of all 130 projects falling into the smallholder private FLID category. This analysis shows that hegemonic actors are unchanged since 1991, but 2016-2021 experienced both the fastest growth in smallholder private FLID projects and an increasing range of partnering actors and investment target countries.
Citation
Harmon, Grace Margaret (2022). The Policy Mobilities of Farmer-led Irrigation Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /197830.