Participatory Innovation Development in water management in Tigray, Ethiopia

This article describes one of the local innovations identified by the Northern Typical Highlands (NTH) platform of Prolinnova-Ethiopia: an intricate system of harvesting water from waterlogged land to allow cultivation in the long wet season, coupled with storage of this harvested water to use for supplementary irrigation in the following dry season. This had been developed by Mr Abadi Redehay, a 45-year-old man who lives with his wife and four children in Mai Berazio village of Tahtai Maichew District, near the historical town of Axum in the Central Zone of Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia. This local innovation was already known to the local farmers and the development agents (DAs) learned about it from the local people.