Comparative Efficiency Analysis of Irrigation Scheme Categories of Awash River Basin, Ethiopia

Abstract

One of resource management strategies in water scarce areas including Awash River basin of Ethiopia is through increasing water productivity. For the last two decades, with the objective of efficiency improvement, several modern water saving technologies including center pivot have been introduced to Awash basin and are operating along with different surface methods. However, performances of these technologies were not categorically assessed and compared. This review based analytical efficiency comparison has been carried out based on performance data of 24 schemes of the basin collected from published articles and printed reports. The data were filtered and synthesized. The schemes were grouped into categories and compared as sprinkler versus surface schemes; gated pipe surface schemes versus ditch systems; among small, medium and large scales; and traditional versus modern schemes. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric tests were used to verify existence of significances efficiency variations. The results revealed that efficiencies of individual schemes were in the range of 14.03 to 83.33% with overall mean of 37.06% and 14 of the schemes had efficiencies below the mean. More importantly, there were no significant efficiency variation among the scheme categories being compared even between sprinklers and surface methods revealing the incapability of the adopted technologies for bringing the expected advantages. Water abundances and shortages due to improper management and operation practices dictated efficiency performances than managements which led to recommend improving existing poor scheme and water management practices prior to introducing any modern technologies.

Keywords: Center pivot, Dragline, Flexible Gated Pipe, Nonparametric test, Water saving technology

DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/79-03

Publication date:October 31^st 2021