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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Natural Resources and Resilience

Dawit Mekonnen

Nonresident Fellow

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Bio

Dawit Mekonnen is a Nonresident Fellow in the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit. His research interests include productivity and efficiency analysis, water economics, agricultural input systems, and impact evaluation of development projects. Dawit’s current work in sub-Saharan Africa focuses on understanding the impact of irrigation on agricultural productivity, nutrition, health, and women’s empowerment. His research in South Asia focuses on water governance and energy use in agriculture in the context of the water-energy-food nexus. Prior to graduate school, he served as a research officer at IFPRI’s Addis Ababa office and as a lecturer at the Department of Economics at Haramaya University in Ethiopia. He completed his PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia, and holds MSc and BA degrees in Economics from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.

Publications

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Publications

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Working Paper

Irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s Awash River Basin: An examination of physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures

2024Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Yimam, Seid; Arega, Tiruwork; Alemu, Tekie; Gonfa, Kidist H.; Ringler, Claudia
Details

Irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s Awash River Basin: An examination of physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures

Using a representative sample of irrigation schemes, the study documents the physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures of irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s most intensively used river basin, the Awash. The findings show that about 20 percent of the equipped area of irrigation schemes in the basin is not being irrigated, while the number of actual beneficiaries on average exceeds the number of planned beneficiaries. The results also show significant knowledge gaps among irrigation scheme managers, extension agents, and leaders of water users’ associations (WUAs): 96 percent of them do not know the total water withdrawals or the irrigation water requirement per season. About 14 percent of the surveyed irrigation schemes have neither traditional water committees nor WUAs, and only 21 percent are organized in legally registered WUAs despite a substantial number of identified benefits of these organizations. Moreover, only 58 out of 489 irrigation schemes have women committee members. Many schemes lack a clear strategy for covering maintenance costs: almost 40 percent of schemes collect contributions from members only when the system fails, while 17 percent report no contributions for maintenance at all suggesting considerable risk of system deterioration and failure. The results challenge some of the assumptions about irrigation infrastructure in Ethiopia and confirm and quantify other assumptions in the literature.

Year published

2024

Authors

Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Yimam, Seid; Arega, Tiruwork; Alemu, Tekie; Gonfa, Kidist H.; Ringler, Claudia

Citation

Mekonnen, Dawit K.; Yimam, Seid; Arega, Tiruwork; Alemu, Tekie; Gonfa, Kidist H.; and Ringler, Claudia. 2024. Irrigation schemes in Ethiopia’s Awash River Basin: An examination of physical, knowledge, and governance infrastructures. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2287. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Irrigation Schemes; Infrastructure; Awash River; River Basins; Advisory Officers; Water User Associations; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

NEXUS Gains

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Irrigation technologies and management and their environmental consequences: Empirical evidence from Ethiopia

2024Bekele, Rahel Deribe; Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Ringler, Claudia; Jeuland, Marc
Details

Irrigation technologies and management and their environmental consequences: Empirical evidence from Ethiopia

The main objective of this study is to understand the interlinkages between different irrigation technologies and management systems and environmental outcomes. We use a unique and comprehensive household and plot-level dataset covering ten districts of Ethiopia complemented with remotely sensed data and qualitative information collected from the study sites. The econometric results show that compared to open-access plots equipped with pump irrigation, other irrigated configurations, and especially private groundwater-based systems, have higher vegetation cover and show less susceptibility to the most common environmental concerns mentioned in the survey regions: water logging, soil salinity, and erosion externalities.

Year published

2024

Authors

Bekele, Rahel Deribe; Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Ringler, Claudia; Jeuland, Marc

Citation

Bekele, Rahel Deribe; Mekonnen, Dawit; Ringler, Claudia; and Jeuland, Marc. 2024. Irrigation technologies and management and their environmental consequences: Empirical evidence from Ethiopia. Agricultural Water Management 302(1 September 2024): 109003. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2024.109003

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Climate Change; Data Analysis; Erosion; Irrigation Technology; Soil Salinity; Waterlogging; Water Management

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2024.109003 Source record

Project

NEXUS Gains

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Small-scale irrigation protects farmers from climate-extreme events: Insights from the 2015/2016 ENSO in Ethiopia

2024Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Mekonnen, Yalew; Warner, James; Ringler, Claudia
Details

Small-scale irrigation protects farmers from climate-extreme events: Insights from the 2015/2016 ENSO in Ethiopia

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather event of 2015/16 caused severe drought conditions in northern and central Ethiopia affecting the welfare of millions of farmers in late 2015 and early 2016. Using nationally representative panel data collected in 2012 and 2016 and recent advances in the difference-indifferences literature, this paper explores the effects of the 2015/16 drought and the potential role of irrigation in reducing the adverse effects of the drought. We find that the drought caused, on average, a 37 percent reduction in net annual crop income, an 8 percent decline in area cultivated, a 3 percent decline in household dietary diversity score, and a 10 percent decline in the share of harvest sold for rainfed farmers. On the other hand, irrigating farmers affected by the drought managed to increase their daily expenditures by 72 percent of their average daily food expenditure in the pre-drought period, and maintained their net crop income, size of cultivated land, household dietary diversity, and share of harvest sold to the market. Overall, while rainfed agricultural producers suffered sharp declines in welfare, those farmers with access to irrigation maintained their economic status. The results suggest that irrigation protected farmers from the adverse effects of the 2015/16 ENSO event and given increasing climate variability in Ethiopia, the government should intensify its investment and support to irrigation development in the country.

Year published

2024

Authors

Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Mekonnen, Yalew; Warner, James; Ringler, Claudia

Citation

Mekonnen, Dawit K.; Mekonnen, Yalew; Warner, James; and Ringler, Claudia. 2024. Small-scale irrigation protects farmers from climate-extreme events: Insights from the 2015/2016 ENSO in Ethiopia. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2242. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/139780

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Drought; Irrigation; Resilience; Farmers

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

NEXUS Gains

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Modeling the optimal energy solutions for irrigation in Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 23, 2022

Modeling the optimal energy solutions for irrigation in Ethiopia

By Dawit Mekonnen and Hua Xie

The best places for grid-based, solar, and diesel powered equipment.

Events

IFPRI @ 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27)
IFPRI at External Event

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November 6 to 18, 2022

IFPRI @ 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27)

Hybrid Event: November 6, 2022 – 4:00 AM to November 18, 2022 – 8:30 PM EST. IFPRI is participating in the 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Accelerating clean energy access in rural areas
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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October 5, 2021, 8:00 – 9:00 am

Accelerating clean energy access in rural areas

Virtual Event: OCT 5, 2021 – 08:00 AM to 09:00 AM EDT. This webinar will present research that can help countries enhance smallholder access to clean energy and address climate adaptation/ mitigation challenges. 

World Water Week 2021
IFPRI at External Event

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August 23 to 27, 2021

World Water Week 2021

AUG 24, 2021 – 06:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT. This session will showcase new insights into the multiple and synergistic roles of water in food systems and for the nutrition that was deliberated during the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. 

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News

April 29, 2020 | In the News

Agriculture and Rural Electrification in Ethiopia could Unlock US$4 Billion for the National Economy (Yahoo Life) 

Yahoo Life reported on a study conducted by the Rocky Mountain Institute, IFPRI, and with the support of the Ethiopian Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Energy and the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) which outlines the synergies between rural electrification and agricultural productivity, processing, and businesses, and the value that can flow from closely linking the two. Republished in  RMI.org, Africa […]

April 28, 2020 | In the News

How rural electrification is transforming Ethiopia’s agriculture sector (CNBC Africa) 

CNBC-Africa interviewed Research Fellow Dawit Mekonnen about his coauthored study, Capturing the productive use dividend valuing the synergies between rural electrification and smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia. Mekonnen discussed the synergies between rural electrification and agricultural productivity, processing, and businesses in Ethiopia. 

September 09, 2016 | In the News

Irrigation on rise in Africa as farmers face erratic weather (Reuters)

IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Research Fellow Dawit Mekonnen were both mentioned in a Reuters article about irrigation. Published on the heels of World Water Week, the article was picked up by The Daily Mail and other outlets. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that more than a million hectares of […]

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