Session Two

Irrigation, particularly small-scale irrigation (SSI), has positive impacts on agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. SSI can be considered as a climate-proof, pro-poor technology and can create employment and help smooth seasonal shortfalls in food supply and encourage the production of crops that support diverse and nutritious diets. The growing intensity of climate change (increasing temperatures, increased variability of precipitation, extreme events) results in significant adverse impacts on agricultural production and livelihoods, making the Nigeria’s poor and disadvantaged people including women farmers even more vulnerable. Nigeria has the largest potential for the expansion of individual/small scale irrigation in SSA, but adoption of SSI has remained limited. studies identified the high cost of irrigation equipment, uncovered risks, lack of policy incentives, and lack of access to finance among the key factors limiting the adoption of irrigation technologies (such as solar-powered irrigation). Thus, a system-based approach and the design of context-specific solutions were suggested to address risks, incentives and capacity challenges. The government, irrigation equipment distributors, and financial institutions are critical intermediary groups for the scaling of SSI, but each of these groups lacks critical information to scale context-specific irrigation solutions. This calls for a structured process to understand and address the constraints of these intermediary actors in the scaling of SSI process. Moreover, there is a lack of data availability on gendered constraints to accessing SSI. Thus, the proposed side session will focus on identifying the challenges and proposing innovative solutions to address the constraints that the three key intermediary actors along the irrigation supply chains, i.e., government, privet irrigation equipment distributors and financial instructions, encounter in their policy, business, and financial decisions to promote SSI scaling in Nigeria
Objectives

1. Improved understanding of key challenges and opportunities for the three intermediary groups in scaling SSI in Nigeria.
2. Increased recognition of gender-responsive irrigation development policy in Nigeria.
3. Obtain a set of innovative ideas and solutions on tackling the constraints to irrigation scaling, the key interventions and investments needed to enhance cost-effective SSI in Nigeria.