Are African irrigation dam projects for large-scale agribusiness or small-scale farmers?

Abstract The economic development of rural economies across the global south is often related to access water and infrastructure. It has been argued that construction new dams would unleash agricultural potential African nations are exposed seasonal scarcity, strong interannual rainfall variability, associated uncertainties in availability. While security presented as pathway poverty alleviation invoked justify large dam projects for irrigation, it still unclear what extent small holders will benefit from them. Are built subsistence farmers or large-scale commercial agriculture? Here we use remote sensing imagery conjunction with advanced machine learning algorithms map irrigated areas (or ‘command areas’) have appeared surroundings 18 major continent between 2000 2015. We quantify expansion irrigation afforded by those dams, changes population density, forest cover, farm size. find that, while case nine year there were no detectable farming patterns, 2015 a substantial fraction command area (ranging 8.5% 96.7%) was taken farms (i.e., parcels >200 ha). Seven remaining 9 showed significant increase average size number 2015, accounting anywhere 5.2% 76.7% area. Collectively, these results indicate many recent Africa either establishment transition small-scale mid-to-large scale agriculture.