Harnessing Ghana’s Water Resources

A Memorandum of Understanding has formalised the partnership between the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority, GIDA and the International Water Management Institute, IWMI.  This agreement will enable the two institutions to collaborate on how to harness Ghana’s water resources and put them to productive use for irrigation.

At a ceremony in Accra, the Acting Chief Executive of GIDA, Mr. Richard Oppong Boateng said the five-year agreement between the two institutions will manage the country’s water resources and ensure food security in the wake of the devastating effects of climate change on water bodies and agriculture.

The plan of the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority, GIDA, is to irrigate about 1.9 million hectares of farmlands across the country but due to some constraints twelve percent of the estimated hectares are under irrigation. The latest partnership between GIDA and the International Water Management Institute, IWMI is to increase irrigation to about nine hundred and fifty thousand hectares of farmlands.

Also, under the agreement GIDA and IWMI will collaborate in research on how to predict rainfall with satellite imagery and model the country’s water resources to the benefit especially small holder farmers. The acting Chief Executive of the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority, Mr. Richard Opoku Boateng said the collaboration with IWMI comes at a time when innovations are being adopted by Governments globally to tackle the effects of climate change on water bodies and agriculture.

The Director General of the International Water Management Institute, Dr. Mark Smith said his outfit has a shared objective to support the development of irrigation in Ghana. This five-year partnership between GIDA and IWMI ends in 2029. Years