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Boosting the productivity of smallholder farming systems continues to be a major need in Africa. Challenges relating to how to improve irrigation are multi‐factor and multisectoral, and they involve a broad range of actors who must interact to reach decisions collectively. We provide a systematic reflection on findings from the research project EAU4Food, which adopted a transdisciplinary approach to irrigation for food security research in five case studies in Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa and Tunisia. The EAU4Food experiences emphasize that actual innovation at irrigated smallholder farm level remains limited without sufficient improvement of the enabling environment and taking note of the wider political economy environment. Most project partners felt at the end of the project that the transdisciplinary approach has indeed enriched the research process by providing different and multiple insights from actors outside the academic field. Local capacity to facilitate transdisciplinary research and engagement with practitioners was developed and could support the continuation and scaling up of the approach. Future projects may benefit from a longer time frame to allow for deeper exchange of lessons learned among different stakeholders and a dedicated effort to analyse possible improvements of the enabling environment from the beginning of the research process. © 2020 The Authors. Irrigation and Drainage published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage

The role of smallholder farmers in multi‐stakeholder innovation platforms and thus in the innovation process that these platforms facilitate is typically limited. The EAU4Food project, aimed at increasing food production in irrigation schemes in Africa through improved farming strategies, used a platform design inspired by the community of practice (CoP) concept, which opened up space for farmers' interactive learning and enabled their active participation in the innovation process. In this article we present examples of how this approach has been implemented in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tunisia. We analyse the level of farmers' participation that was achieved at different stages of the implementation process, namely: deciding how to set up the CoP, identifying innovation needs and conducting the experiment. Among different strategies deployed by EAU4Food researchers, working with dialogue groups, engaging farmers in data interpretation and passing the responsibility over elements of the research process to farmers, proved to be the most effective in strengthening farmers' involvement. The use of a simulation game to test innovations also showed promising results and should be explored further. The attitude of researchers proved to be an important factor in achieving a high level of farmers' engagement in the project. Copyright © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rain-fed agriculture shares the largest crop production system in Tigray region. However, due to erratic nature of rainfall, crop production is always at a risk. For this reason crop production in the arid and semi arid regions of northern Ethiopia usually requires supplemental irrigation. In an effort to assist agricultural production under smallholder farmers, the Regional Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources has been looking for efficient and less costly irrigation methods. Although drip irrigation technology has been well known for its higher efficiency, its adoption was too slow due to its high initial cost and inadequate technical knowhow.  At the moment, in some areas of Tigray farmers have started practicing locally made low cost clay pot irrigation technology. However, the water use efficiency and its economic viability under smallholder farmers were not adequately understood. The objectives of this study were thus to examine the economical viability and estimate the water use efficiency of clay pot irrigation technology and to evaluate the performance of different clay pot design for irrigating Swiss chard (the most common leafy vegetable crop in this region). In this research traditional pot maker was instructed to manufacture four different clay pot designs (imperforated bar type, imperforated round shape type, perforated bar type and perforated round types) which were used for assessing performance of clay pot for irrigating swiss chard. Performance tests were carried out based on economic and biomass water use efficiencies and cost benefit ratios under two groups of farmers (with and without land). The result showed that the imperforated bar shaped clay pots were found to be suited to grow Swiss chard. The water seeps out through the micro pores of the clay pots with relatively slow leaks and long surface wetting time and large area converge around the roots of plants. Contrarly, perforated clay pots leak the water fast through the macro and micro pores and have relatively short wetting time and small area coverage. On the other hand, the difference between imperforated bar and round types were simply the shapes of the pots which is to do with the area coverage along with the rows of the Swiss chard plant. Round types were not as suitable as bar type of the same capacity for row Swiss chard crops due to their small wetting area coverage compared to a similar volume with imperforated bar shaped clay pots type. The economic and biomass water use efficiency for the imperforated bar clay pot design was higher than that of the bucket irrigation system as well as other tested clay pots. The other advantages with imperforated bar clay pots over the bucket type is that the water source is inside the soil thus evaporation is almost nil and there is also less probability of occurrence of leaf disease due to watering and ultimately improving the biomass and economical water use efficiency. However, the technology was not as profitable as the bucket irrigation technique when considering the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) due to costs incurred for purchase of clay pots.