Irrigation Engineering Management (MSc)

Rationale of the Graduate Program

The postgraduate programme (M.Sc in Irrigation Engineering and Management) deals, primarily, with the planning, study and design of irrigation infrastructures.

The program is designed in the way to tackle the problem and achieve better results would have been to give advanced courses at a post graduate level. The problem now as before is that the training at the undergraduate level, no matter how comprehensive it might be, lacks the most important element of a postgraduate training, which is enabling the graduates to be capable of identifying the essence of an engineering problem, converting it into a suitable model and solving it independently.

The most important rationale for developing a postgraduate program is the need of the country development of skilled human resource that is capable of handling more complex infrastructure problems with little or no guidance whatsoever, supervising the designs of yet inexperienced engineers working in a project team and thereby acquire skills of professional leadership. Such trained manpower is known to be instrumental to the effective implementation of national development programs.

Other rationales include:

• The growth and transformation plan of the government and the need of the governmental and nongovernmental organization to train their staff. To assist the national capacity building endeavor in water sector area with the view to upgrade the skills of undergraduate level experts in selected fields of hydropower, irrigation, hydrology, environment and water resources management to expedite the countries development endeavors. This will help reduce dependency in foreign experts in planning, design and development of water resources projects.
• To assist the regional capacity building endeavor with the view to promote regional cooperation and collaboration, knowledge and information sharing, create group of new generation with common attitudes and understanding towards solving common problems pertaining to the region, such as sustainable water sharing agreements, sustenance of trans-boundary ecological and environmental balance of the region
• To reduce the brain drain of national and regional (African) professionals through at home training.
• Enhance research activities through joint efforts of Institute staff and post graduate students, whereby staff members mostly play the role of identifying research topics and guidance and thus get the time they need for working on many research topics at the same time.
• Producing skilled manpower (instructors) for emerging universities.

Objectives of the Graduate Program

 The country has more than 3.7 million hectares of potential irrigable area. A major challenge is the supply of sufficient professionals who can work with relevant stakeholders to plan, design, implement, manage, operate, maintain, improve and evaluate, particularly Small Scale Irrigation (SSI) programmes on the ground. The challenge concerns both absolute staff numbers and available skill and knowledge sets.

To tailor the need for practical, hands-on engineers who can complement the increasing numbers of technical irrigation engineers as well as satisfy the current and expected large future demand for engineers engaging with farmers in tertiary units and small scale irrigation settings, this new programme on Irrigation Engineering and Management is proposed. The need for qualified manpower in irrigation engineering and management is indispensable, particularly for the Small Scale Irrigation sector. To this end the faculty will be running a two years M.Sc. program in Irrigation Engineering and Management.

Upon completion of this specialization, the student is able to plan, design and implement different scales (small, medium and large) irrigation projects, without compromising the environmental compatibility and its economic viability.

Admission Requirements

The applicant must have a B.Sc. Degree in Hydraulic/Water Resources/Irrigation/Civil Engineering or its equivalent and meet the admission requirements of the School of Graduate Studies. He/she must also pass the entrance examination administered by the school. Regarding applicants from other related disciplines, the School of Graduate Committee (SGC), will rule on the eligibility of such candidates.

Graduation Requirements

The requirements to obtain MSc. degree are:

• Successful completion of all the 9 courses including Research Methods.
• Successful completion and defense of a Master’s thesis work.