Activities in Tanzania

Small Scale Irrigation Development Project (SSIDP)

Type	Project	Area	Period	Tanzania Organization	Cost (Mill. Yen)
ODA Loan	Small Scale Irrigation Development Project (SSIDP)	Whole country	May 2013 – Dec. 2021	Ministry of Finance and Planning (Executing Agency- Ministry of Agriculture (through National Irrigation Commission))	3,443

Irrigation development in Tanzania is critically important in ensuring that the nation attains reliable and sustainable crop production and higher productivity as a move towards food security and poverty reduction.

Agriculture in Tanzania has remained unpredictable with low productivity due to the utter dependence on rainfall, which is erratic, unreliable, and not-uniformly distributed. This dependence on rain-fed agriculture has left the country increasingly vulnerable to the vagaries of weather.

It is widely accepted that, the currently increasing global warming and climate change are having negative effects on the optimal availability of water resources for crop production worldwide, including Tanzania. In this regard, Tanzania needs to take advantage of utilizing the identified irrigation potential areas amounting to 29.4 million ha for sustainable irrigation development. The intervention in irrigation development has been confirmed worldwide that it boosts crop production 3-4 times than that of rain-fed agriculture and builds resilience against climate-related challenges.

Agriculture in Tanzania consumes over 90 percent of water with most of it using inefficient gravity, open canal and rudimental intake techniques. These methods lead to up to 45 percent of water losses. On top of that, the overall crop production in Tanzania has been greatly affected by low effectiveness of management, operation and maintenance of irrigation schemes, and unclear ownership of irrigation infrastructure.

This is the background against which the Government of Tanzania through Agriculture Sector Development Program (ASDP) framework collaborated with several stakeholders and Development Partners (DPs) including JICA in an effort of improving irrigation systems and infrastructure.

JICA, being one of the DPs providing support to implementation of ASDP, formulated and has been implementing projects in line with the framework of ASDP with the intention of extending its support to Small Scale Irrigation Development Projects (SSIDP) under the District Irrigation Development Fund (DIDF).

In SSIDP, JICA provides ODA Loan for financing construction and rehabilitation of small scale irrigation schemes and purchase of related equipment, in order to increase the productivity of crops. The project was signed in March 2013 and is expected to be completed at the end of 2021. The project caters for about 109 sub-projects (irrigation schemes) scattered in the whole country (Tanzania mainland) with a total fund of ODA Loan 3,443 Million Japanese Yen, and it is, at the end, expected to improve about 20,776 ha of irrigation schemes.