Why tinker with irrigation docket now?

By Dominic Odipo

Should the National Irrigation Board (NIB), the organ which runs the country’s principal irrigation schemes, continue to operate under the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, as at present, or be relocated to the Ministry of Agriculture?

To the casual reader or the ordinary Kenyan, this may sound like a question of little consequence, but to those familiar with the no-nonsense politics and intrigues that flow underneath the agriculture and irrigation sectors, it is a critical question.

The answer could very well determine whether Kenya achieves its food security targets within the next two or three years, or falls short once again, exposing millions of our people to perennial hunger and famine. It could also make or break all our Vision 2030 food security and production projections.

Before answering this question, a few foreign examples might help enlighten us. In most African and Asian countries, the irrigation mandate is usually allocated to the Ministry of Water and Irrigation.

In both Uganda and Tanzania, irrigation is under the Ministry of Water and Irrigation while in Burundi it is under the Ministry of Water, Environment, Land and Urban Affairs.

In Egypt, the African country with the largest acreage under irrigation, the mandate is under the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation while in Sudan, the African country with the second largest land area under irrigation, the docket falls under the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources.

For both Egypt and Sudan, the question of whether the irrigation docket delivers is literally a matter of life and death, given their mostly desert or semi-desert climatic conditions. After years of focussed study and experimentation, these countries concluded that if the irrigation function is to produce optimum returns, it should be under the umbrella of the ministry in charge of water resources.

In both countries, it has been accepted, almost as a first principle, that the irrigation mandate should not be placed under the Ministry of Agriculture, whose core mandate is essentially different.

Same road

This sharp distinction between irrigation and agriculture has been recognised elsewhere around the world. In India and Indonesia, irrigation is handled by the Water and Public Works ministries.

None of these countries, which have large tracts of land under irrigated agriculture, have placed the irrigation mandate under the Ministry of Agriculture.

Why have all these countries taken the same road with respect to irrigation? The answer is very simple. Large scale irrigation development, the kind clearly envisaged in our Vision 2030 blueprint, requires two things: constant and unfettered access to water resources and the design and construction of big and complex water reticulation infrastructure, including large dams and specialised canal and pipeline networks.

These are basically civil engineering tasks for which the crop specialists, agricultural engineers, extension officers and soil scientists traditionally employed by Ministry of Agriculture, are singularly unqualified.

The core idea is that the irrigation function should provide the water and infrastructure to distribute it constantly to the largest irrigable acreage possible.

Then, from that point on, any other government ministry, including that of agriculture, can take advantage of that water infrastructure to do whatever it wants with it.

From this conceptual view point, it can easily be seen that placing the irrigation docket under the Ministry of Agriculture would be strategically disastrous, and placing it under our own Ministry of Agriculture even more so, given our recent history.

For a period of 20 years, yes 20, from 1989 to 2009, the Hola Irrigation Scheme in Coast Province lay dead. After the Tana River changed its course in 1989, leaving the floating pontoon pump downstream, the scheme, then managed by the NIB under the Ministry of Agriculture collapsed.

It was not until 2009 that the Board, now under the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, revived the scheme. Over the period, more than Sh100 billion was lost from the Hola scheme alone, because of the negligence or neglect of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Spirited move

Since the NIB was moved to Ministry of Water and Irrigation in 2005, all of the country’s large irrigation settlement schemes have been revived.

At current projections, if NIB continues to operate as at present, the maize produced from the Hola and Bura irrigation schemes alone, could, within the next five years, be enough to feed the whole of Coast Province.

Word from parliamentary circles now is that there is a spirited move to return the NIB to the Ministry of Agriculture.

To those familiar with both the conceptual framework sketched above, and our own peculiar history in this sector, such a move could be at once myopic, ignorant and reckless.

We need to learn from the Egyptian and Sudanese experience and leave what is working so well alone!

—The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

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