A low-cost automated irrigation system designed to scale down the plight of poor smallholder farmers in Nigeria is underway.

The technology  will enable farmers to grow crops all-year round, thereby increasing food production and reducing food costs.

The battery-powered technology was built by a team of students (now graduates) of the University of Abuja (UniAbuja) and presented at the 2021 Mzuzah Sustainable Project competition aimed at “inspiring the next generation of African leaders.”

Nigeria has about 38 million smallholder farmers – about 20 per cent of its population —responsible for 90 per cent of food production, with many of them dependent on rain-fed seasonal farming, which limits their capacity and incomes.

Currently, unpredictable weather patterns, such as erratic rainfall and extreme climate conditions, have disrupted planting and harvesting seasons, leaving more farmers to grapple with crop failures and poor yields that exacerbate food insecurity.

Although, a couple of automated irrigation systems have been developed to solve the food crisis in Nigeria and Africa in general, but smallholder farmers who constitute  majority of  the poor, cannot afford them.

In 2021, five students, led by Moses Oluma from the Electrical Engineering Department, joined forces to develop the battery-powered irrigation system to increase crop yields and improve resilience to climate shocks.

“I saw the challenges smallholder farmers in the communities around the university (UniAbuja) faced. They can’t farm during the dry season, and the modern irrigation systems are very expensive. That was why I assembled the team and came up with this device to help farmers.

“Two of us were from the Electrical Engineering Department, another two from the Agriculture Department and the fifth team member was a Chemical Engineering student,” Oluma told Weekend Trust.

 

How it works

Oluma explained that his team used affordable sensors that could read parameters as to when the soil is lacking a particular level of moisture. The sensor then sends the reading to the other end of the system, where a water reservoir is installed, and the exact water needed is released to the crops through a network of conduit pipes, he said.

“It works automatically, with or without the farmers’ present on the farm. All that is required is to prompt the system. We have sensors in the soil that indicate when the moisture level is low and specify the water to be released for irrigation. Irrigation stops automatically when the appropriate moisture level is attained.

“It is powered by four 9-volt batteries. We use batteries to make the device affordable to smallholder farmers operating medium-sized farms of 250-500 square meters. Solar power can be used, but it is expensive,” he stated.

Oluma estimated that it costs N200,000 (about $100) to install the system on a small farm, adding that the team would make a provision for an installment payment plan to make it accessible to as many farmers as possible.

“The cost also covers installation and training of farmers. We are not really interested in making profits. We want to use the device to mitigate climate change and ensure food security. It has a warranty of five years and if it develops any issue during the period, our technicians will fix it for free.

“We are now at the stage of sourcing funds for commercial production. We have published the research and are working with some non-governmental organisations to scale it,” he added.

 

Room for improvement

The team lead explained that evaluation from pilot testing of the irrigation system on farms in Giri, Abuja, was encouraging, noting that improvement had been made in some identified weaknesses.

He said, “From the feedback we got, some sensors we used did not have a high sensitivity range. We encountered wrong readings a couple of times. If a sensor is giving the system wrong feedback, it means the irrigation is not done precisely; and it can trigger irrigation when it is not needed, whereas the whole essence is to see how it can save water too.

“What we are doing now is buying sensors that have very high readings, and before we give out the device, we will do rigorous testing to ensure that the sensor is working perfectly. Sixty per cent of the parts are sourced locally. The water reservoir, conduit pipes that supply water to the farm and the batteries we use to power them are all sourced locally.”

The Director of the Centre for Undergraduate Research at UniAbuja, Professor Taibat Atoyebi, described the project as scalable and worthy of investment, noting that it would assist smallholder farmers across the country.

She advised the team to integrate renewable energy to power the technology and further develop it for usage on large-scale farms.

“It is something they can work on,” she added.

 

Device can tackle food insecurity, poverty – Experts

Nigeria, and indeed, Africa are confronted with food insecurity and its attendant devastating impact, such as hunger, malnutrition, diseases and deaths.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in its 2024 Cadre Harmonise report, published in collaboration with other development partners, revealed that over 31.8 million Nigerians were suffering from acute food insecurity, compounded by malnutrition among women and children across the country.

About 11 million children, or one in every three children, face food poverty in Nigeria, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with 100 children under five years dying of malnutrition every hour.

In its 2023 report titled, ‘Climate change impacts on food security and nutritional incomes in Nigeria: Challenges and policy options,’ the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) lamented that the number of malnourished Nigerians had skyrocketed since 2012, exceeding 26 million as of 2021.

“The percentage of arable land equipped for irrigation has been less than one per cent. However, it remained at one per cent between 2008 and 2010 and 2017 to 2019. This shows the limited attention accorded to climate change and food security issues in Nigeria,” the report added.

The report also stated that the amount of food insecure in Nigeria had increased steadily from 20 million in 2014 to 39 million in 2021, attributing it to the adverse effects of climate change on agricultural produce.

Corroborating NESG’s report, Andrew Woghiren, founder and managing director, Sustainable Insights Limited, observed that water, energy and food were crucial to resolving the hunger crisis in Nigeria and Africa in general.

“Energy is the principal limiting factor in enhancing agricultural production. Policies that balance the drought-proofing of rain-fed agriculture and irrigation development are needed,” he told Weekend Trust.

The Eighth Annual Goalkeepers Report released in September by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation painted a grimmer picture on malnutrition — one worsened by a steep fall in foreign aid to Africa from 40 per cent to 25 per cent despite half of all child deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.

Professor Atoyebi maintained that the team’s project had the potential to create a multiplier effect of reducing poverty, food insecurity and unemployment.

“We presented the automated irrigation system for the Mzuzah competition and it was among the top three projects recognised at the national level. It can assist in off-season production of crops, which is a major challenge in Nigeria.

“It is a technology that can reduce poverty and food insecurity and even create employment. Once farmers are able to use irrigation, it will boost their output and they can always employ more hands,” she said.

Professor Hamza Mani, irrigation programme leader at the Institute for Agriculture Research, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, agreed that if the low-cost automated irrigation system saw the light of day, it would empower many smallholder farmers, increase food production and ultimately mitigate malnutrition.

“It is a good initiative. With such irrigation technology, farmers can grow crops three times in a year. The ability to boost food production will be high and it will invariably reduce malnutrition.

“Most of these politicians, especially members of the National Assembly, can play a great role in assisting the team. Through their constituency projects, they can sponsor research like this,” she said.

These low cost technology will contribute significantly to food availability all year as irrigation production is the only solution to  erratic rainfall and food shortage.

In 2022, Nigeria spent N1.9 trillion on food imports to meet the local production shortfall. The country’s food import bill hit its highest in five years in the first quarter of 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), surging by 95.28 per cent to N920.54 billion from N471.39 billion recorded in the same quarter of 2023.

The African Development Bank estimated that Africa’s most populous country forked out about $10 billion on food imports, out of which cereals, corn, maize and wheat gulped $3 billion.