admin | May 7, 2026
News Brief
Fifty years ago, Kavuru village in Kenya’s Embu County was mostly dry grassland. Farmer Kinaro Waithaka struggled with unreliable rainfed crops until attending a 2017 training on water harvesting. He then invested in a pond, wells, and a solar-powered irrigation system. Today, he grows high-demand vegetables like tomatoes and earns steady profits. His experience shows how small-scale irrigation can reduce climate risks, boost yields, and improve food security for farmers across Africa.
Fifty years ago, Kavuru village, in Kenya’s Embu County, was mostly dry grassland. Kinaro Waithaka purchased a 10-acre plot here in 1978 to set up a farm. Land in this area was more affordable than in other areas of the country, at the time. But in relying on rainfed farming to grow maize, bean, and mangoes, it was difficult for Mr. Waithaka to recoup his investments in farming. He faced poverty, but was focused on improving the quality of his life, and his sons were ready to help.
Thanks to investments in training and irrigation technology over the past 10 years, Mr. Waithaka has changed his fortunes with investments in training and irrigation technology. He now grows vegetables that are in high demand, bringing in additional income.
In 2017, Mr. Waithaka attended an agricultural seminar alongside other local farmers at a nearby church. Participants learned about water harvesting and irrigated agriculture. Mr. Waithaka had seen a hand-dug pond at a neighbour’s farm. Encouraged, he decided to invest in digging a farm pond and two shallow wells, but this was more expensive than he expected. He added his own labour to that of the well diggers, and he spent 30,000 shillings ($300 US) to dig a pond, but he had to feed the diggers every day, a cost he had not taken into consideration.
Despite the cost, the investments meant that Mr. Waithaka was able to provide supplementary irrigation of other crops, such as bananas.
He also set up an irrigation system with a plastic tank measuring 10 cubic metres that he set on a wooden platform and connected to the farm pond and a shallow well. He added a petrol-powered pump to pump water from the well and from a smaller tank collecting rainwater from his roof.
A solar panel on the roof connects to a submersible pump in the pond. The roof also collects rainwater channeled through gutters to an outlet pipe feeding the farm pond. When the sun is shining, even with minor clouds, solar energy pumps water from the pond to the raised tank. Then Mr. Waithaka opened the gate valve of the tank, releasing water into buried pipes that supply drip irrigation in the field.
With this system, Mr Waithaka can irrigate his crops anytime he wants. He prefers to irrigate crops that are in high market demand, such as tomatoes, watermelon, butternut squash, and green leafy vegetables.
Mr. Waithaka earns at least 40,000 Kenyan shillings ($400) in profit from the tomatoes alone and sells other vegetables grown under drop irrigation. He also sells bananas and provides supplemental irrigation to maize when it rains. His crops are no longer failing and he is happy with water harvesting and irrigation to increase crop production.
Just six per cent of cultivated land in Africa is irrigated. Investments in irrigation can make farmers less vulnerable to changing weather patterns, increasing food and nutrition security. Even small irrigation systems can make a big difference, according to Richard Colback, global lead of Water for Food with the World Bank Group.
Africa holds vast groundwater reserves, with enormous areas where water lies within seven metres of the surface, easily accessed by pumps. Solar-powered irrigation systems carry a 95 to 97 per cent smaller emissions footprint than pumps running on diesel or grid electricity.
Precision irrigation technologies can deliver water directly to plant roots, while sensor-based systems allow farmers to measure soil moisture in real time.
Larger projects are also benefiting farmers, such as the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project, led by the Ghanaian government with World Bank Group support. The project has invested $62 million US to modernize public irrigation and drainage infrastructure, including installing concrete linings for canals and adding piped networks to fields. The project has benefited some 14,000 people and helped boost average rice yields from 4.5 metric tonnes per hectare in 2017 to about 5.5 metric tonnes per hectare.
Irrigation projects do come with the need to consider how to minimize runoff and salt accumulation, as well as how to manage shared water sources, like rivers. However, Mr. Colback says there are resources available to support coordination of these efforts.
This story is based on an article published by SciDev.Net titled “Irrigation a must for smallholders in changing climate.” To read the full article, go to: https://www.scidev.net/global/opinions/irrigation-a-must-for-smallholders-in-changing-climate/
Photo: A farmer irrigating his crops near Gonder, Ethiopia. New irrigation technologies can reduce smallholder farmers’ dependency on rainfall in a changing climate. Copyright: Niels Van Iperen