Quality management toolkit for irrigation

Irrigation is becoming an important policy direction for many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries in building community resilience to climate change impacts. However, in many cases, the planning and implementation processes of irrigation investment projects and, therefore, irrigation infrastructure suffer due to a lack of capacity and tools to support quality management (QM). This irrigation infrastructure quality management toolkit development project will be implemented in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. The main objectives are to understand and capture the status of irrigation investment QM systems in SSA countries and related global practices, and generate, publish and disseminate an adaptive best practice QM toolkit and user manual, and provide training. The project aims to enhance the QM capacity of stakeholders involved in the planning and implementation of irrigation investment projects in SSA countries by developing a toolkit and user manual to support and guide the QM processes, and training professionals to use the toolkit / training manual; and providing web-based dissemination services of the toolkit and user manual. The toolkit and user manual will be made available online (the standard mode) and also offline as an interactive pdf to guide QM processes throughout the project life cycle, i.e., site identification, preparation of concept note, and feasibility study and detailed design, which come under quality assurance, as well as to ensure proper management of construction contracts, i.e., quality control. The outcome of the project is to ensure that informed decision-making will lead to changes in the planning and implementation of irrigation investment projects.