Work is starting on the Vea Irrigation Dam in the Bongo District of Ghana. The announcement was made on March 4, 2022 by Upper East Regional Minister Stephen Yakubu. The project to rehabilitate the water reservoir is being implemented by MM Rann Luuk Constructions.
The work is being launched 42 years after the dam was commissioned in 1980. The aim is to stimulate agriculture during the dry seasons. “The lack of maintenance of the dam means that today all the canals and laterals are damaged, making it difficult to get water to the farms of 4,000 farmers,” explains Upper East Regional Minister Stephen Yakubu.
Water to irrigate 1,700 hectares of rice plantations
According to Ghanaian authorities, Rann Luuk Constructions has 30 months to restore the eroded downstream slope of the dam embankment to improve its stability and rehabilitate the irrigation canal network. The company will also carry out drainage works, construct the agricultural roads and fence the perimeter of the irrigable area. This will increase the dam’s irrigation capacity to about 1,700 hectares of rice plantations from the current 850 hectares in several communities, including Vea, Bongo-Nyariga, Yorogo, Dindubisi, Bolgatanga, Zaare, Yikene, Gowrie and Sumbrungu. The Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA) of Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture is overseeing the project, which will also provide drinking water to the people.
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Through this project, the Ghanaian government also wants to reduce rice imports. According to our colleagues at Ghana News Agency, Ghana would have spent a total of 6.874 trillion Ghanaian cedis (nearly $974 million) on rice imports from 2017 to 2020. To achieve this goal, the collaboration of farmers is essential. “Community leaders and farmers in the Upper East have been asked to protect the dam, which will be re-commissioned in two and a half years, by planting trees around the banks of the Yarigatanga River on which the structure was built. This should prevent structures from gushing into the dam’s watershed,” says the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council.
Inès Magoum