Lowland water resources management represents a challenge of the future that calls any community. Irrigated crops are grown in some areas of Burkina Faso, others are limited by a lack of irrigation infrastructure. Due to limited crop irrigation, crops and the associated populations dependent on them, depend on rain and on climatic factors. Thus, there is a need to understand and implement traditional mechanisms for managing lowland water in Dano, where climatic and geological conditions provide a sustained source of water. Here, I use a literature review combined with field work and interviews/questionnaires to estimate the potential exploitable plains to 16,056 ha or 24% of the communal area. Management mechanisms and traditional operating systems of lowland waters were clear, which helped to set the technological level of farmers, in partial control of water management.
Due to the semi-arid nature of the Sahelian countries in Africa, irrigation infrastructures are essential in supporting the improvement of agricultural production. Their proper operation is, therefore, a key indicator for the sustainable development of agriculture in this region. However, there is a lack of critical assessment on the operating state of these hydro-agricultural facilities in Burkina Faso. In this study, we applied a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to 4070 hydro-agricultural facilities from 1950 to 2020 and classified them according to the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel’s (CILSS) typology classification system (Type 1 to Type 5). The MCA made it possible to see the relationships between a development typology and variables such as “functionality”, “condition of the development”, or “year of construction”. The results indicate that the irrigated lands with surface areas of less than 100 ha, which were funded by the government or organizations (associations, NGOs) and managed by local communities, are the least functional ones and in bad condition. Their dysfunction indeed conceals deep-seated causes that have not yet been resolved as the infrastructures keep on deteriorating. Therefore, establishing a sustainable and efficient management system for these agricultural infrastructures is imperative. The findings of this study can be used as a practical decision-making tool for implementing agricultural policies in the Sahel region.
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