Irrigation Governance: A Case of Equitable Irrigation Access Across Tanzania

Irrigation is essential for agricultural crop transformation. In line with this, the African Union created the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme to ambitiously ensure greater food self-sufficiency through water management or irrigation governance. Although current literature acknowledges the causal significance of governance for irrigation schemes’ effectiveness, little scholarly work measures effectiveness as equitable irrigation access across East and Southern Africa. Thus, in this study, the influence of irrigation governance in determining the presence of equitable irrigation across Tanzania as a country located in East and Southern Africa is deductively investigated. Drawing from critical commons scholarship on irrigation schemes, irrigation governance modes, and institutions within irrigation governance alongside farmers’ collective participation, this study focuses on irrigation scheme associations’ collective participation and local state irrigation...Show moreIrrigation is essential for agricultural crop transformation. In line with this, the African Union created the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme to ambitiously ensure greater food self-sufficiency through water management or irrigation governance. Although current literature acknowledges the causal significance of governance for irrigation schemes’ effectiveness, little scholarly work measures effectiveness as equitable irrigation access across East and Southern Africa. Thus, in this study, the influence of irrigation governance in determining the presence of equitable irrigation across Tanzania as a country located in East and Southern Africa is deductively investigated. Drawing from critical commons scholarship on irrigation schemes, irrigation governance modes, and institutions within irrigation governance alongside farmers’ collective participation, this study focuses on irrigation scheme associations’ collective participation and local state irrigation authorities' legitimisation. It’s fundamentally hypothesised that irrigation governance is a determinant of equitable irrigation access through irrigation scheme associations’ collective participation and local state irrigation authorities’ legitimisation across Tanzania. Results from this study’s deductive theory-testing process tracing reveal that though irrigation scheme associations and the National Irrigation Commission alongside the Ministry of Water and Irrigation are central within Tanzania’s irrigation schemes, petition advocacy is absent as an avenue of collective participation. Therefore, future, inductive theory-building process tracing is needed to comparatively ascertain the causal mechanism underlying irrigation governance and equitable irrigation within Tanzania and beyond.Show less

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Irrigation Governance: A Case of Equitable Irrigation Access Across Tanzania