Can Egypt Show The Way?

Last week I hope I illustrated how Ethiopia does have plentiful surface water resources, at least for part of the year, despite what I may have been pointing to in previous posts. However, this raises the question as to why, with plentiful fertile soils and bountiful rainfall, Ethiopia so often treads the line between food insecurity and famine. There are of course complications that prevent agricultural production, such as extreme topography. Yet with over 124 billion cubic metres (BCM) of river water and around 4 million hectares of potentially irrigable land (depending on the information source), it is perhaps surprising that even during years with good rains Ethiopia cannot produce enough food for its growing population. Through a comparison with Egypt, a nation which, despite having three times less arable land than Ethiopia, achieves near-continuos food security, some of the possible solutions to Ethiopia’s water and food problems become apparent. 

Egypt receives less than 250mm of rainfall annually and is therefore classed as arid, however, some regions receive no rainfall during the year, giving an average annual rainfall of just 18mm across Egypt. Based on precipitation, the outlook for Egyptian food security seems bleak, especially if looked at through the prism of rain-fed agriculture so heavily depended on in Ethiopia.   Figure 1 highlights the vast differences in potential crop production between the two countries and from these alone it would be sensible to assume Ethiopia experiences far higher levels of food security. The maps are based on crop coefficients as used in the United States Geology Survey’s water requirements satisfaction index (WRSI), which effectively compares the level of water used by a particular crop from the soil to a baseline. Crops with a higher coefficient therefore need more water than those with lower numbers and crops commonly grown in Egypt and Ethiopia have been used for comparison. Alongside this apparent shortage of water for agriculture, Egypt has, like Ethiopia, experienced rapid population growth, with a 3.5 fold increase from 20 million inhabitants in 1950 to 70 million in 2000. However, the key difference between the two nations is Egypt’s utilisation of the River Nile.

Figure 1: Maps showing the spatial variations in maximum crop coefficients across Ethiopia and Egypt

The River Nile, running through Egypt, is virtually the sole source of water for agricultural production and, according to a 1950s agreement with Sudan, Egypt has a right to 55.5 billion cubic metres (BCM) per year. As a result, the Nile provides the economic and social base for the country and Egyptian agriculture is almost totally dependent on Nile-based irrigation. Consequently, and in stark contrast to Ethiopia, Egypt has 3.7 million hectares of irrigated land, with rain-fed agriculture along the Mediterranean coastline contributing just 0.05 million hectares (see Figure 2 for spatial distribution of irrigated land in Egypt). 

Figure 2: Map of irrigated areas in Egypt

Egypt, despite experiencing physical water scarcity, is thus overcoming this challenge to its food production through irrigation, indeed it is the second most irrigated country in the world. Yet it is not just the scale of irrigation in Egypt that establishes food security, but also the high irrigation efficiency, estimated to be 50 to 87%. The most efficient systems currently in place are the drip irrigation systems found in particularly arid regions and the canal irrigation along the river which have an 82% efficiency. This is largely due to effective management, as can be seen in the Bah El-Nor region, where, before improvements to water systems, only 17% of farmers across the 1480 hectares of agricultural land had an adequate water supply. After the implementation of improvements, including 65 improved piped ditches and the establishing of local water users’ associations (WUAs) to control water supplies, 97% of farmers claimed to have adequate water supplies. Improved efficiency and effective water management have become vital in recent decades, as shown in Table 1, with Egypt’s agriculture water demands approaching 100% of their renewable water resources.

Table 1: The contrasting irrigation water requirements and withdrawal in Egypt and Ethiopia

Table 1 also highlights the astonishingly low rates of withdrawal for irrigation within Ethiopia. As so successfully illustrated by Egypt, increasing this withdrawal for irrigation could be vastly beneficial for Ethiopia’s agricultural production and resultantly, their food security. I’ve already pointed out that just 2.46% of Ethiopia’s agricultural production comes from irrigation, despite the huge potential for it to sustain much more (see Table 2). Irrigation is evidently one way in which Ethiopia can harness its water resources to increase its agricultural production in order to achieve food security. Improved irrigation would allow Ethiopian farmers to become less reliant on rain-fed agriculture, thus reducing the vulnerability of Ethiopian food security to climate fluctuations and population growth. Indeed, as things currently stand, Ethiopia’s cereal production needs to increase 100% by 2025 compared to 2005 levels. In this context, it increasingly seems that irrigation is required.

Table 2: Implemented irrigation activities compared to the potentially irrigable land in Ethiopia.

A previous study of over 300 irrigation projects across Sub-Saharan Africa has shown that small-scale irrigation is often cost-effective, with high crop returns. The increasing focus in Ethiopia on small-scale and micro-irrigation is therefore a positive shift. However, the continued poor performance of irrigation in Ethiopia is a significant problem, with efficiency levels extremely low at 30 to 40%. Part of the problem often lies with the flawed designs adopted when establishing irrigation systems and the lack of consultation with local farmers. On top of this, establishing effective irrigation systems often requires investment in wider infrastructure, such as roads and dams, and, due to the financial challenges facing Ethiopia, this is often not possible. 

This is the crux of the problem that emerges when comparing the two situations facing Ethiopia and Egypt. Ethiopia, despite having significantly more water resources than Egypt, has historically lacked the financial ability and strong governance required to implement water storage and irrigation strategies on a nationally meaningful scale. The problem facing Ethiopia is therefore not physical water scarcity, but rather economic water scarcity. The water resources are there, but have not yet been tapped. However, unlike Egypt, which has almost reached its irrigation potential, Ethiopia has massive room for expansion, offering hope for the future.