# Tono Dam and Irrigation Project The Tono Irrigation Project is one of Ghana's flagship agricultural water schemes — a dam and gravity irrigation system on the Tono River in the **Kassena-Nankana District of the Upper East Region**, near Navrongo, designed to supply year-round water for rice, tomato, onion and other crop production in one of Ghana's driest, most food-insecure zones. **Origins and scale.** The dam was built in the 1970s–early 1980s with Chinese and other donor support, as part of Ghana's push for large-scale irrigated agriculture under successive governments. Its reservoir impounds the Tono River (a tributary system feeding the White Volta basin) and the scheme was engineered to irrigate roughly **2,500 hectares** of farmland across a network of canals, with a main dam wall, spillway, and a distribution system serving organised irrigation plots. It is one of the three big northern irrigation schemes — alongside **Vea** (also Upper East) and **Bontanga** (Northern Region) — that anchor Ghana's dry-season farming in the savannah belt. **Why it matters.** The Upper East Region has a single, unreliable rainy season. Without irrigation, farmers there get one harvest and then face the long dry spell. Tono changed that: it made **double-cropping** possible, especially for rice, and turned the Navrongo–Tono area into a significant rice and vegetable bowl. Tomatoes and onions from the Tono area travel south to Accra, Kumasi and beyond, and the scheme supports thousands of farming households, plus the livelihoods of traders, transporters and processors around it. **The challenges.** Tono has suffered the classic problems of Ghana's irrigation infrastructure: **siltation** of the reservoir reducing its storage capacity, ageing and leaking canals, poor maintenance, and erratic water delivery to the tail-end of the scheme. Over the years there have been rehabilitation efforts — including support from the World Bank, the African Development Bank and bilateral partners — aimed at desilting, lining canals, and improving the irrigation management so farmers at the far end of the network actually receive water. Management has increasingly involved **farmer-based organisations** and the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA), which oversees the scheme. **Current context.** As of my last verified reporting, Tono remains operational and central to Upper East agriculture, with ongoing rehabilitation and modernisation discussions tied to Ghana's broader food-security and "Planting for Food and Jobs"-era irrigation agenda. If you need the very latest on any new rehabilitation contract, funding or dam-safety works this month, that's a fast-moving procurement matter — check GIDA, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, or GhanaWeb for the newest release. A fitting Akan thought: *"Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a, yenkyi"* — there is nothing wrong with going back to fetch what you forgot. Tono is exactly that: Ghana returning to the land and water it already has, to feed itself properly.