The North-East and North-West departments are among the country's poorest areas, and the target group includes some of the poorest people living in those areas. The most vulnerable rural people survive on a subsistence level, and they have little or no access to public and private services. Severe land degradation is the result of strong pressure on natural resources and recurrent natural disasters.

This project builds on the experiences of the Small-scale Irrigation Schemes Rehabilitation Project, which was completed in 2006. The current project's overall goal is to reduce rural poverty by improving the livelihoods and incomes of poor rural households in a sustainable manner. A specific goal is to bring about key policy and institutional changes, including a national water management programme.

The project's objectives are to:

• intensify and increase agricultural production in a sustainable manner through efficient water management and consolidation of irrigated agriculture on both a collective and an individual basis
• develop agricultural production systems and other productive and income-generating activities
• strengthen community planning, organization and management capacities to facilitate market linkages and access to financial services

The project focuses on areas where people have some access to productive resources, and particularly on people living within existing or new irrigation schemes. It offers technologies to support individual irrigation systems and off-farm income-generating activities. The people who will benefit directly from the project will have a participatory role in the assessment of priority needs and in all stages of activities.

Activities will include:

• developing irrigation systems, with a focus on constructing and rehabilitating individual and collective systems, establishing a national water management programme and an emergency fund, strengthening the capacity of public institutions and water users' associations, improving land tenure security, and promoting the use of innovative irrigation technologies
• supporting productive activities through microprojects in the sectors of crops, livestock, income generation and research and development
• strengthening the capacity of grass-roots organizations to plan and manage their development, with support for marketing and microfinance institutions