Ethiopia's Ministry of Agriculture has taken a new route to irrigation, one in which farmers make the decisions. In a feature published on 20 January 2026, the World Bank reported that under the Farmer-Led Irrigation Development (FLID) programme, individual farmers or groups choose the type and size of irrigation system they want and make a significant cash contribution towards it. The government facilitates with guidance and resources rather than building the systems itself. The programme is backed by the World Bank through the Ethiopia Food Systems Resilience Program (FSRP).
Rain-fed farming and the limits of earlier schemes
According to the World Bank, Ethiopian agriculture has long depended on unpredictable rainfall and been exposed to devastating droughts. Earlier attempts at small-scale irrigation, often government-driven, struggled with crumbling infrastructure and patchy management.
The scale of the drought problem was clear in 2022. When the World Bank approved a $2.3 billion food systems resilience programme for Eastern and Southern Africa on 21 June that year, it said up to 22.7 million people in Ethiopia were food insecure because of the most severe drought the country had ever faced. The first phase supported Ethiopia and Madagascar, with a total financing package of $788.10 million.
Farmers choose, and the cost is shared
The World Bank defines farmer-led irrigation development as the process through which farmers, individually or collectively, take the lead in establishing, improving or expanding irrigated agriculture. In Ethiopia's programme the cost of equipment is split at fixed rates:
- Solar-powered systems: 70% government, 30% farmer
- Diesel-powered systems: 40% government, 60% farmer
The World Bank said this ownership fosters responsibility and keeps solutions tailored to local needs. The programme draws on successful pilots inside Ethiopia and on lessons from other African countries such as Uganda, and is designed to complement existing government efforts and achieve self-sustaining irrigation. Uganda's Micro-scale Irrigation Program, run by its agriculture ministry, works on a similar basis: farmers buy their own equipment and the government pays between 25% and 75% of its cost, up to 7.2 million Ugandan shillings per acre.
A rollout in three stages
By the time of the World Bank's report, the first stage was complete. It involved consultations with regional agricultural bureaus and other stakeholders, implementation guidelines, training for 158 staff members across nine regions on FLID processes and technical content, and the shortlisting of 16 irrigation equipment suppliers, who were briefed on how the programme works.
The second stage was under way. Awareness campaigns were reaching farming communities, interested farmers were registering on the project's online platform, farms were being assessed for eligibility, and farmers were making a first co-payment of 10% of the estimated equipment cost. The third stage covers quotations and funding for equipment, the final deposits, installation, and training farmers to operate and maintain their systems.
The plan was a pilot phase in the current fiscal year and a full national rollout the following year. The World Bank said the programme expected that, by June 2026, a new wave of farming operations powered by modern, efficient irrigation and led entirely by Ethiopia's smallholder farmers would be under way.
Photo: Niels Van Iperen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sources: World Bank, World Bank press release (21 June 2022), World Bank: Farmer-led Irrigation Development, Uganda Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries
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