Nile River Basin; water infrastructure; irrigation; food security.

1. Water Infrastructure and Agricultural
Development:
Perspectives on the Nile River Basin
Tingju Zhu
International Food Policy Research Institute
First Nile Basin Economist Forum, Entebbe, May 16-17, 2017

2. 0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
2.0
2.2
2.4
2.6
2.8
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0
Aridityindex
LOG10(hectares per thousand persons)
Climate and land availability in the Nile
Basin – a worldwide comparison
Egypt
Eritrea
Sudan
Uganda
Ethiopia
Source: IFPRI’s IMPACT model

3. Irrigation requirement (mm)
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Ethiopia
P PET
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Sudan
P PET
0
50
100
150
200
250
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Egypt
P PET
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Uganda
P PET

4. Harvested crop area and irrigation
share (2005)
Source: IFPRI’s IMPACT model
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
Egypt Eritrea Ethiopia Sudan Uganda
Total harvested area (000 ha) Irrigated (%)

5. Harvested crop area and irrigation
share (2050)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
Egypt Eritrea Ethiopia Sudan Uganda
Total harvested area (000 ha) Irrigated (%)
Source: IFPRI’s IMPACT model

6. -2
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Reservoirstorage
Population
Population& storage of the world's river basins (Log scale)
Population and surface reservoir
storage
Source: IFPRI’s IMPACT model
Nile River Basin
Alaska

7. Surface reservoir storage by country
Source: IFPRI’s IMPACT model, aggregated from the GRanD database.

8. Crop productivity – effects of water &
other inputs (maize, 2005)
0 2 4 6 8 10
Egypt
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Sudan
Uganda
Maize Yield (t/ha)
Rain-fed Irrigated
Source: IFPRI’s IMPACT model

9. • Challenges in financing water infrastructure
• Build, maintenance, and expansion of irrigation infrastructure
• Adoption of advanced technologies – drip and sprinkler (for
small farmers)
• Associated rural infrastructure – road, rural electrification
• Lack of Incentives: Farmers concern economic return
and production risks, not necessarily irrigation water-
saving
• Undervalued irrigation water
• Inflexible water allocation
• Ineffective water governance (solar- groundwater)
• Lack of information (e.g. technologies, scheduling)
• Farmers’ risk perception
Coping with water scarcity - challenges
to irrigation technology adoption
Source: Rosegrant et al. (2009)

10. Agricultural water supply portfolio –
optimizing value and reliability
Source: Zhu, Marques, Lund (2015)

11. A systems perspective on agricultural
water management (AWM)
Source: Zhu, Ringler, Rosegrant (2017), under review