The Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized a national training of trainers (ToT) workshop on “Managing Solar Powered Irrigation Systems”, during 26-27 September 2019, at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Tunisia. The participants were more than 25 engineers from different Tunisian states

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The workshop was part of the agreement between AOAD and FAO to strengthen institutional capacity for the workers in the field of irrigation in Tunisia and Egypt to spread recent experiences, to understand how to promote and regulate the use of solar energy in irrigation and to promote cross-sectoral policy dialogue to ensure a coordinated approach to the application of solar power in irrigation, with a view to improving natural resource management and promoting low-emission agriculture and smart agriculture, in addition to providing training for technical experts working in the field.

The two-day course tackled many important topics related to solar irrigation, including methods of designing and managing solar irrigation systems, investment and finance, incentive mechanisms and grants available to investors, investment plans and the importance of solar irrigation as a mean to raise the income of women working in the agricultural field and improve the standard of living of women and youth. The course also tackled the biological and environmental suitability, technical economic feasibility, institutional arrangements, legislation and policies supporting the use of solar irrigation, financing methods and economic capacity of systems. As well as ways of governance of irrigation systems used for solar energy to ensure the sustainable management of water resources and protect them from depletion.

 It is worth mentioning, that the solar irrigation has received a growing attention in the recent years from many countries as a reliable clean energy solution for agricultural water management, especially in areas with high solar radiation.