Central Haouz Irrigation Project

Central Haouz Irrigation Project

Like the farm credit project launched several years earlier, the Central Haouz Irrigation Project focused mainly on increasing food production to improve the living standards of rural people and reduce the country’s dependency on imports of essential foodstuffs such as wheat, sugar, vegetable oil and milk.

Haouz, a region with a high agricultural potential thanks to the quality of its soil, lacked a reliable irrigation system to compensate for the arid climate, and was also lacking in functional rural infrastructure and adapted support services.

The project’s objective was to improve use of land and water resources through:

1. construction of two pumping stations
2. development of an irrigation and drainage network
3. rural road construction
4. stronger outreach and development services
5. construction of milk collection centres
6. training and technical assistance activities
7. monitoring and evaluation services

Because of economic problems, in 1985 the project area was modified to scale back construction of new irrigated perimeters. In 1989, virtually all irrigation infrastructure, outreach centres and milk collection centres had been built and monitoring and evaluation services had been set up. The project area was then enlarged to allow for the expansion of irrigation works.

Source: IFAD