This report provides practical recommendations and tools for governments, the private sector, donors and organisations to effectively support farmer-led initiatives to improve water managment with a focus on Africa and India. It is a collaborative research report with inputs from IWMI, FAO, iDE, IFPRI and SEI. 

Main findings and recommendations are grouped under six headings:

Smallholder irrigation could change the lives of millions of people
Small-scale AWM is outpacing the use of large-scale irrigation
Water at the right time can make a big difference to farmers’ incomes and nutrition
Smart investments in AWM could benefit farmers across sub-Saharan Africa
New investments would be supporting an existing, farmer-driven trend 
Smallholder AWM lacks supportive institutional structures 
Un-regulated and expanding small-scale irrigation poses new challenges