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The Department of Irrigation (DoI) is one of several technical departments within the Ministry of Agriculture aimed at contributing to sustainable national economic growth and development through irrigated agriculture production and productivity. The Department promotes irrigated agriculture production and productivity for local and export use using irrigation technologies that take into account climate change; catchment management; enhanced land and water management techniques and irrigation service delivery to facilitate the increase in national and household incomes, food and nutritional security; employment opportunities; and enhanced land and water productivity.
The Department of Irrigation commits to providing the highest standards of services. In pursuit of excellent service delivery, we commit ourselves to seek new knowledge and best practices through wide consultation and partnership with all our stakeholders.
Prosperity through Irrigation
To manage and develop water and land resources for diversified, economically sound and sustainable irrigation and drainage systems under organized smallholder and estate management institutions and to maintain an effective advisory service.
To facilitate increase and stabilization of agricultural production, through mobilization of small scale, medium scale and large scale irrigation projects. This is to be achieved with human and financial resources provision from beneficiaries, the private sector, NGOs and the public sector. Ample observance of environmental aspects to ensure sustained productivity and equitable involvement across all gender lines, for food security, effective poverty alleviation, and national economic development is incorporated.
To foster sustainable irrigation development, the department is facilitating the construction and utilization of new irrigation schemes with the aim of increasing the area under sustainable irrigation. The Irrigation Masterplan and Investment Framework (IMPIF, 2015) identified the national irrigation potential of 489,000 hectares of land with 147,000 hectares developed so far. Another priority area is the rehabilitation of existing irrigation schemes in order to sustain desired crop production levels. Different irrigation technologies such as gravity and pumps are used depending on different area characteristics. To ensure availability of irrigated farming even in areas without surface water resources, solar-powered irrigation systems are currently being pioneered in areas with enough ground water.
DoI achievements will be attained through:
