Organizations responsible for irrigation sector development in Ethiopia

At federal level, the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity (MoWIE) and its affiliated organisations (such as Water Works Design and Supervision Enterprise (WWDSE), Water Works Construction Enterprise (WWCE) and the Water Resources Development Fund (WRDF)), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC), and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) are responsible organizations for irrigation sector infrastructure development in Ethiopia.

MoWIE oversees the management of water resources, water supply and sanitation, large and medium scale irrigation, and electricity. It is established for planning, developing, and managing of water resources, preparing, and implementing of guidelines, strategies, policies, programs, and sectoral laws and regulations in the water sector. It undertakes research activities and provides technical support to regional water bureaus. The Ministry is responsible of regional and interregional water resource development and management, as well as functions that involve international procurement.

The WWDSE is a public consultant that conducts studies related to irrigation, basin development master plans and other water projects. The WWCE is responsible for the construction of dams for irrigation and other related development purposes. It is also in charge of collecting investment cost from beneficiaries of such dams and invest the money on other similar developments. The WRDF is a representative of MoWIE established for financing projects in the water and sanitation sector and for irrigation development through the provision of a long-term loan based on principles of cost recovery. The MoA is responsible for developing community-managed SSI schemes, i.e., up to 250 ha, from scheme formulation to development and extension services including marketing. The EFCCC is responsible to investigate the environmental impact of irrigation projects. The MoF is in charge of allocating capital budget for construction of irrigation

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projects. In addition, River Basin Authorities are responsible organizations for management and implementation of water related activities in their respective basin which have been developed most recently. To date the Awash, Abbay and Rift Valley Basin Authorities have been established.

Regional and local level organizations

In Ethiopia, the placement of the irrigation sector in terms of organizational structure differs across regions. Some regions such as Oromia have reorganized a separate irrigation authority, while in other regions like SNNPR and Beneshangul Gumuz, irrigation falls under the Bureau of Agriculture. In Amhara and Tigray regions the irrigation sector is split between the Bureau of Agriculture (for extension services) and the Bureau of Water Resources (for administration of irrigation infrastructure). In Dire Dawa city council, the irrigation sector is placed under the Bureau of Natural Resources. At lower administration levels, district and sub-district bureaus have been established with similar designations and responsibilities as the regional bureaus as described above.

Irrigation Water Users’ Associations (IWUAs) are the most common local level institutions that are engaged in irrigation water management. The role of IWUA is mainly focused on the distribution of water among members, rehabilitation and maintenance of canals and addressing water related conflicts. In some places, government-supported irrigation cooperatives have been established in some irrigation schemes; these generally have broader operational scopes, including the provision of marketing, credit, and extension services.

The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) is a further important organization in Ethiopia’s irrigation scene. ATA supports the implementation of the Small-Scale Irrigation Capacity Building Strategy¹⁸, focusing on water managment, and the promotion of micro-irrgation through affordable and availabe household irrigation technologies. The Household Irrigation Program is supported by other development partners through the Agricultural Growth Program (AGP). Many donors, local and international NGO’s, research organizations, farmers’ cooperatives, and private sector equipment suppliers are also involved in the irrigation sector.

Based on a study recommendation by ATA, as of April 2019, the Minstry of Finance (MoF) approved the imports of agricultural mechnization and irrigation equipment, including irrigation pumps, tools and spare parts, to be imported duty free into the country, with

18 The Small-Scale Irrigation Capacity Building Strategy was developed by Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with development partners from the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Israel for enhancing irrigated agriculture capacity in Ethiopia.

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the aim of providing incentives to invest in the importatiaon and local production of these technologies.

Overall, our findings reveal that there is a well-established institutional set-up in the irrigation sector of Ethiopia. The objectives are clearly defined. The exisiitng orgnizations have been established and the related policies and the legal instruments in place have also clear objectives, and some have developed strategies to meet the objectives. Despite all these efforts, there are significant problems observed in the organizational setting that affect activites, actors, and end results on the ground.

A careful examination of the profile of ministries depicts that there are overlaps in mandates between different ministries which oversee the sector. For example, MoWIE and MoA have responsibilities related to irrigation development; MoWIE is in charge of medium and large-scale irrigation works while MoA focuses on SSI and micro-water management. When civil works of large and medium scale irrigaiton schemes is completed, the provision of extension services and related inputs provisions are expected to be undertaken by MoA, though this may not be clear anywhere. Similary, overlap in mandates and duplication of efforst have been observed in the broad areas of integrated natural resource managemnt among MoWIE and EFCCC. For instance, both MoWIE and EFCCC are responsible for environemntal impact assessemnt and water pollution control.

Our result is consisitent with previous studies studies by Haileselassie et al., (2009);

Hussein et al., (2009); Hagos et al., (2011) which explore the institutional set-up of irrigation sector in the Blue Nile Basin and found there is no clear demarcation of mandates and responsibilities among ministries and organizations. The institutional challenges are even larger at region and local levels.

In this study, irrigation experts at regional, woreda and kebele level were asked whether the current structure of the irrigation sector is functioning well in their locality. The result shows that 45% of the experts think it is not functioning well; among these 88% believe that the root cause of the malfunctioning arises from the organizational structure and set up of the irrigation entity that leads to lack of coordination, duplication of efforts, and wastage of resources. Moreover, the existing information and resource sharing mechanisms do not ensure institutional harmony and efficient information and resource flows. Horizontal and vertical communication between ministries, bureaus and departments belonging to different sectors are rare. In most cases, these communications are informal. Especially, the communication of local organizations with the regional and federal-level institutions is very weak and integrated information management systems are lacking. Thus, ministries, bureaus, and departments attempt to fulfil their responsibilities without an interdisciplinary and integrated approach which is fundamental in the field of water resource management at each level. As Mollinga (2010) argued, there

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is a need of natural-social science interdisciplinary in water resources management which arises from its complexity and multidimensionality nature of water resources management problems.

Even if the policies, strategies, and the legal instruments are well specified, and the relevant organizations have been established, there has been weak enforcement capacity among organizations. According to discussions with key informants, the main reason for the weak enforcement capacity is inadequate staff and resources to do proper enforcement of rules and regulations. Similar results are observed in a study done by Haileselassie et al., (2012). They reported that regulations on water resources management, pollution control, land use rights, watershed development, and other related issues are not effective because of weak enforcement capacity in both upstream and downstream parts of the Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The weak enforcement capacity of institutions can be connected to the lack of an integrated system of information and resource flow at the federal, regional and local levels. Other problems such as absence of monitoring and evaluation systems in the irrigation sector, significant reliance top-down approaches, continuous reorganizations of the sector, specifically at regional level (numerous reforms and destabilization of irrigation agency over the last 20 years in Amhara, Tigray, and Oromia) were mentioned as the major problems in the irrigation sector of Ethiopia.