World Bank launch Farmer-led Irrigation Development Guide

By 2050, the world’s population will reach 10 billion people and global food demand will increase by 60%. This challenge is intensified by agriculture’s extreme vulnerability to climate change.

The African continent is facing an existential food security crisis in light of this climate emergency: population is growing fast, and agricultural production cannot keep up due to the fact that less than 10% of arable land is irrigated, which means little insurance against erratic rains and climate shocks.

Lack of irrigation puts at risk the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers and their families across the continent, who remain hostage to climate variability. To address these threats, governments are setting ambitious targets for irrigation expansion and increased farm productivity.

The World Bank's Farmer-led Irrigation Development Guide – A what, why and how to for intervention design is a new handbook to help governments, development practitioners and other stakeholders design public interventions to catalyze Farmer-led Irrigation Development (FLID).

• Access the Farmer-led Irrigation Development Guide – A what, why and how to for intervention design.