Many farmers in Africa spend a lot of their time bringing water to their fields.
Victor Ndwaniye is a small farmer from Nasho, a small lakeside village in Rwanda. He used to irrigate his vegetable farm by collecting water in a bucket and pouring it onto the fields.
Victor needed to water his field of fruits and vegetables at least twice a day during the long dry season from June to September. This meant spending a lot of time collecting water. It also meant time away from his fields, which limited how much he could grow.
Since 2020, Victor has been using a new solar-powered irrigation system on his plot of flat land. “The old irrigation system has long been unable to cope with the needs of many local farmers in the region,” he said.
The solar system uses sunlight to power irrigation pumps that deliver precise amounts of water to crops, even when water is scarce.
A growing number of farmers in Rwanda are also using solar-powered irrigation.
Farmers like Victor are seeing remarkable improvements in how much they can grow with solar-powered irrigation.
“Before using solar irrigation, I could only harvest 1 ton of vegetables per hectare. After two seasons with solar irrigation, my yield of carrots and cabbages tripled to 3 tons per hectare,” said Victor.
In Africa, 600 million people do not have access to electricity. Sixty percent of Africa’s workforce works in agriculture. Projects like solar-powered irrigation pumps may help increase access to electricity and improve agriculture across Africa.
David Brown adapted this story for Mongabay Kids. It is based on an article by Aimable Twahirwa, published on Mongabay News.
