The Centre-West region is one of Burkina Faso’s thirteen regions. This region is immersed in two climatic zones: the Sahel-Sudanian zone, which covers the vast majority of the region, and the Sudanian zone further south. Long-term climate studies are a key indicator that not only help us understand current and future changes in the region’s climate, but also enable better planning of agricultural activities for better resource management and production optimization. This article therefore aims to decipher the region’s rainfall projections over a century and understand their implications for irrigated agriculture at different levels.
The droughts of the 1970s and 1980s led the government of Burkina Faso to secure water resources and agricultural production by building large reservoirs and irrigation schemes. In the early 2000s, this policy of securing water resources was pursued through small-scale village irrigation, which involved developing irrigated agricultural areas around small to medium-sized reservoirs. This study presents the case of water management in a hydro-agricultural area located in Mogtedo (Burkina Faso), with a view to proposing optimisation solutions. The study was based mainly on a literature review and the use of the database of the Irrigation Development Support Programme (2011-2016) in Burkina Faso, with a view to assessing the extent to which agricultural water needs are being met. Analysis of water management in the study area revealed organisational and structural shortcomings within the organisations in charge of water management. It also shows that there is a precarious balance between water supply and demand. This balance is threatened by an unfavourable climatic outlook, which could result in a considerable deficit in the reservoir’s capacity to meet the needs of multiple uses. In order to delay the occurrence of such a collapse, solutions have been proposed, in particular, to improve in particular the efficiency of the use of agricultural water and to better protect the water reservoir against sedimentation.