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Review on Status, Opportunities and Challenges of Irrigation Practices in Awash River Basin, Ethiopia

Kebede Nanesa Tufa

Awash River basin is one of the major 12 river basins in the country and it is the fourth populous basin in Ethiopia and ranks the 3rd of all basins of Ethiopia in terms of population density and stands 4th and 7th in its area and volume of water respectively. The relative surface water resource of the basin is about 4.65 billion m3, it is the most developed and utilized since 77.4% of the irrigable land in the basin has been cultivated. About 60% of the large-scale irrigated agriculture and more than 65% of the national industries are located in the basin. This Current Topic aims to review literatures information related to irrigation potential of Awash River, status, challenges and opportunities irrigation practices in Awash River Basin. Awash River basin has 37 irrigation potential sites are identified out of which 5 are small-scale, 18 are medium-scale, and 14 are large-scale. The estimated irrigation potential is 134,121 hectares. Out of these, a potential, 30,556 hectares are for smallscale, 24,500 hectares for medium-scale and 79,065 hectares for large-scale development. However, the Awash River Basin faces difficulties in sustaining its’ services due to technical gabs like: lack of strategically directed, supervised and integrated with other social, economic and environmental sectors, and ensuring effectiveness of the water policy and the legislative framework and Improve capability of involved organizations to better realize the potential of the water system; Water governance issues such as Management gap, Administrative gap, Policy gap, Information gap, financial gap and Communication gap, and severe environmental challenges such as Population and population density, wet land degradation, Salinity and water logging, water borne diseases, desertification, flooding, change in water quality and invasion of Prosopis Julifora and Expansion of lake Besaka expansion are the major treat of irrigation in awash river basin.