Dam and Irrigation Sites Final Design of 4 Sites for Land Husbandry Water Harvesting and Hillsides Irrigation (Lwh) Project

Location: Karongi, Nyanza and Gatsibo districts

Name Of Client: Min. of Agriculture & Animal Resources (Kacyiru, P.O. Box 621, Kigali, Rwanda)

Duration Of Assignment (Months): 12 months

Total No. Of Staff-months: Approximate 50 mm

Description Of Project: The Government of Rwanda is pursuing a comprehensive Poverty Reduction program which includes development and implementation of various sustainable development projects. The Land husbandry, Water harvesting and Hillside irrigation (LWH) Project is one of the development initiatives designed under the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) and partly funded by the World Bank in order to tackle the issues related to food insecurity and rural communities livelihoods income. The project focuses on modernization and commer-cialization of agriculture for strengthening the economic access of the rural communities to food for consumption and livelihoods improvement. The emphasis of LWH is on broadening and deepening support provided to the rural communities.
The Land Husbandry, Water Harvesting and Hillside Irrigation (LWH) Project uses a modified watershed approach to introduce sustainable land husbandry measures for hillside agriculture on selected sites, as well as developing hillside irrigation for subsections of each site. The Project envisions the production of high-value (organic) horticultural crops with the strongest marketing potential on irrigated portions of hillsides of the watershed. It is in this regard that the Project will invest in water harvesting infrastructure, including valley dams and irrigation infrastructure on the selected sites. Water harvesting infrastructure will be developed jointly with the irrigation infrastructure including the water conveyance open-channels and pipes.
For this purpose the project’s team is conducting detailed feasibility studies of the dams and supplemental irrigation infrastructure necessary for hillside irrigation at four sites (Karongi-12, Karongi-13, Nyanza-23 and Gatsibo-8). For each dam and irrigation sites, this study includes review of existing designs and studies, field visits and geotechnical investigations, detailed design of dams and irrigation networks, prepara-tion of tender documents, design workshops with the Service and the Panel of Experts and dam safety calculations. Z&A is involved with the detailed design of the irrigation networks in all four sites with a total area of 1115 ha and the geological investigations of the four dam site areas.

Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment (Z&A):

The service covered the fields of:

• Review of existing designs and studies.
• Field visits and geotechnical investigations.
• Detailed design of dams and irrigation networks.
• Tender documents.
• Design workshops.
• Dam safety calculations.