The National Irrigation Policy calls for users to be fully involved and contribute to the O&M cost of irrigation schemes, to promote ownership and sustainability. This contribution to the users is critical to limit the impact of such a massive irrigation expansion on government budget. While the Policy calls for the costs of service provision to be borne by the beneficiaries, fee recovery in the existing irrigation schemes in Uganda has generally been poor, sometimes uneconomic to administer and rarely related to performance or quality of service.

The WfP sector faces Institutional, Managerial, Operations and Management (O&M) challenges including, among others: (a) inadequate resources, (b) absence of viable financing system, (c) inadequate management structures, (d) poor community participation, (e) inadequate technology, (f) inadequate technical capacity, (g) poor construction and supervision of construction, (h) lack of attention to environmental and health concerns, (i) limited interaction between management and water users, (j) limited participation of district officials in management decisions, (k) lack of land ownership by farmers, (l) lack of community contribution to the construction and management of facilities, (m) failure to maintain infrastructures of the schemes, (n) lack of participation in decision making by farmers, and (o) decline in volume of water leading to low efficiency. These challenges are deemed to become more acute as irrigation expands, thus the willingness of the Government to transfer management responsibility to other stakeholders.

The Government of Uganda with financial assistance from the World Bank (WB) is implementing the Irrigation for Climate Resilience Project ICRP (P163836). The project finances – among others – the construction of the Kabuyanda irrigation scheme in Isingiro District, which aims at providing farmers in the project area with access to irrigation and other agricultural services, and to establish maintenance arrangements for irrigation service delivery.