Zimbabwe

Area equipped for irrigation is 173 513 ha [ZW01]. The figures refer to year 1999. Irrigated area per province adds up to 173 412 ha [ZW02]. The remaining 101 ha were assigned to Bulawayo and Harare, because no statistics for these areas were available. The irrigated area per province estimated that way is visible in the table below and also can be downloaded as Zimbabwe irrigation areas in PDF or Zimbabwe irrigation areas in Excel.

The location and command area of 33 irrigation projects was derived from the FAO irrigation map for Africa [ZW03]. The total area equipped for irrigation in these schemes was 3 830 ha. The remaining irrigated area was assigned to center pivot schemes as digitized from satellite imagery [ZW04] or to cultivated land in the surrounding of center pivot schemes.

Area actually irrigated was 123 866 ha (71.4 percent of area equipped for irrigation) in year 1999 [ZW01]. Most formal irrigation schemes in the country depend on water stored in small- and medium-sized dams [ZW01]. It was estimated that more than 17 000 ha of agricultural land are irrigated commercially using groundwater [ZW05]. It is however not reported whether these statistics refer to the area actually irrigated or to the area equipped for irrigation. Based on this information area equipped for irrigation with groundwater was estimated at 20 000 ha.

References

[ZW01]: FAO. 2005. AQUASTAT country profile Zimbabwe, FAO, Rome, Italy.
[ZW02]: Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. 2002. Report on the status of irrigation development in Zimbabwe.
[ZW03]: FAO. 1987 (updated in 2005). Irrigated areas in Africa. FAO, Rome, Italy.
[ZW04]: Earth Satellite Corporation, 2004. Landsat GeoCover (2000/ETM+) Edition Mosaics, tiles 071-694, 071-695, 071-701 and 071-702. Sioux Falls, USA, USGS (available at http://glcfapp.umiacs.umd.edu:8080/esdi/index.jsp).
[ZW05]: Masiyandima, M. and Giordano, M. F. 2007. Sub-Saharan Africa: opportunistic exploitation. In: Giordano, M. and Villholth, K. G., The agricultural groundwater revolution. Opportunities and threads to development. International water Management Institute (IWMI), Colombo, Sri Lanka, 79-99, http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/publications/latest.