By the 1990s, the importance of participation began to be recognised, as a response to the failures of the more technocratic approaches to design. However, this coincided with reduced investment in irrigation development programs, so opportunities to test it were limited. When participatory approaches were adopted, it was largely a rhetorical claim, rather than a decisive shift in design approach.
Over time, engineers have become more aware that the design of an irrigation system imposes a hierarchy that distributes water in a particular way. How an engineer perceives fairness is reflected in the structures they put in place and farmers shouldn’t be expected to ‘naturally’ understand and agree with the assumptions underpinning this design. As a result, farmers often modify a structure that engineers have put in place, for example by adapting an overflow system.
Below are two images taken from the Mawala irrigation scheme in Tanzania. They show two ways in which farmers have modified existing structures, such as blocking a gate to influence water division and adding pipes to increase water flow into their canal.
Practitioners should observe these adaptations, learn from them and understand what kind of structure has been imposed on farmers and what kind of structure farmers propose as an alternative, and why.
Genuine participation remains a complex, demanding process. Particular assumptions that are made in the project formulation can make it difficult later on to change the outcomes in spite of participatory processes. Examples include:
- Assumptions about what a (smallholder) farmer is and can do. The dominant perception is that an African smallholder farmer can work on a 0.5ha piece of land (no more or less). Rather than recognising that there is a multitude of types of farmers, this results in rigid target sets on beneficiaries (for example, a 100ha irrigation system must benefit 200 farmers).
- Democracies have been imposed on local communities, but they are not always fair or representative. There are many examples of traditional African management structures that cannot be translated into voting democracies. Project imposed democratic structures can be a means for power capture by new elite farmers.
- The idea that new ‘modern’ production methods can simply be transferred through training farmers remains dominant – as is the expectation of a workforce of trained extension workers to translate these concepts into African practices. Consequently, projects are still framed as ‘introducing new technologies’ instead of identifying the local dynamics through which farmers have developed improved (farmer-led) production practices and disseminating that experience among neighbouring farmers.