Smallholder Water Management and Irrigation Project

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The objective of the project is to help farmers better manage water risks and increase their financial return through (a) reducing soil erosion, (b) collecting runoff in small reservoirs for later usage, using irrigation equipment, and (c) promoting Good Agricultural Practices in soil and water management. The project will work with around 1000 farmers to provide training, technical support and facilitation of access to finance. The farmers? training will be delivered by SOFITEX's trainers who are mandated by the Government to provide technical training to cotton farmers. Women will be trained separately from men. Technical support will be provided through certified service providers to help prepare land and install irrigation equipment, but for the simpler construction of stone contour lines, the farmers will have the option to build them or to hire service providers. In the latter case, farmers will nonetheless be required to provide a minimal amount of labor to ensure ownership. To facilitate access to finance for farmers, the project will work with SOFITEX's network of financial institutions, whose role will be to pre-finance the anti-erosive infrastructure and the irrigation equipment. In order to make the financing conditions affordable to farmers, the Global Partnership for Output-Based Aid (GPOBA), a department of the World Bank, will support farmers with a subsidy covering between 70% and 80% of the cost of investment. Farmers will contribute to the costs of the systems through loan commitments to cover between 20% and 30% of the project costs.