Tavengwa Chitata

Tavengwa Chitata is a Grantham Scholar at the University of Sheffield. He holds an MSc in Water Management and Governance specialising in Water Conflict Management with IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands and an MPhil in Irrigation Engineering with Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe. Tavengwa did his BSc in Land and Water Resources Management with the Midlands State University.

He has been a Teaching Assitant at Midlands State University, assisiting with the teaching of Water Engineering, Soil and Water Conservation, Principles of Irrigation as well as Climate Change related modules. He is also a Guest Lecturer in the Water Management and Governance program at IHE-Delft, The Netherlands. Tavengwa joined the Department of Geography in October 2018. Tavengwa's professional and research work borders between natural, and social, sciences. He is keen on using interdisciplinery approaches in his reseach work on (ground) waterand /or irrigation infrastructure.

Tavengwa is actively involved in the following projects:

1. Understanding how irrigation water infrastructure works for sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems, https://grantham.sheffield.ac.uk/scholars/tavengwa-chitata/ funded by the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures.
2. Transformation to Groundwater Sustainability (T2SGS), https://www.t2sgroundwater.org/ funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730211.

Understanding how irrigation water infrastructure works for sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems (Working title)

The project

This research addresses the need to better understand how small scale irrigation infrastructure can contribute to securing sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems in rural areas of Africa.

Smallholders

Smallholder irrigation holds considerable promise for enhancing food security and reducing poverty for sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population. High level policy organisations such as World Bank and FAO, see improved productivity of smallholder agriculture as key to achieving including SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero hunger), with irrigation infrastructure central to achieving SDG 6 (Water for all). Because rain-fed agriculture is barely viable in semi-arid parts of Zimbabwe, the need for water infrastructure is particularly acute there.

Irrigation

However, there are inefficiencies and inequities in the ways in which irrigation systems work, with concerns about limited access and about depletion of ecosystem functioning (reduced river flows). In recent decades, there has been a strong policy focus on building institutions such as irrigators associations, and establishing water rights regimes. Conversely, there has been a relative neglect of infrastructure and its effects.

But the capacity of irrigators to distribute and use water effectively depends on their ability to control the water flow – and this is determined by infrastructure. For example, the form of water offtake structure, the size of storage facility, or the permeability of canals. Further, the operation of infrastructure is shaped by social factors, such as who dominates the irrigators association, who is represented, how funds are collected, and how conflicts are resolved.

Methods - Multidisciplinary approach

Engineering approaches to irrigation focus on designing optimal solutions, which often work differently than intended. Social scientists highlight power and the unequal social relations that shape the functioning of water infrastructure. However, relatively few studies take a combined socio-technical approach to understanding the functioning of infrastructure in irrigation systems and the effects that this has on livelihoods and ecosystems.

In order to take a combined approach, this research seeks to understand how irrigation infrastructure works and to identify the potential for positive social and environmental adaptation. It assumes that both irrigation infrastructure and institutions are, in practice, subject to processes of adaptation and improvisation by engineers, water operators and water users. Such processes of bricolage result in uneven outcomes but also provide opportunities for facilitated interventions and positive change.

Supervisors: Miguel Kanai, Vanessa Speight, Frances Cleaver and Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum