Reading about the Alatona irrigation project the MCC paid for in Segou area of Mali.  According to the document, the project cost $253 million and benefited 8,000 people by creating irrigation of about 5,000 hectares.  So the cost per hectare was $50,000.  And the cost per person was $30,000.  Makes no sense at first glance. It appears that yields in the first couple years have been on the order of 5 tons per hectare, and rice prices are about $500 per ton, so the gross value generated is about $2500 per hectare.  Assuming the costs of production per hectare are on the order of $1000, then the project takes about 30 years before it breaks even.  Gee, they could have opened a gold mine with that money, and even if price of gold had plummeted to $500 the mine would probably have been more profitable.

But what about equity and sustainability?  Incomes per person must have been on the order of $500 per person, so by simply distributing cash for the next 60 years the project could have let every single person choose how to allocate their own talents, and have the time to do that.  Most of the young people, presumably, would have gone to school in Bamako.

So I am always against irrigated projects?  Shouldn’t areas like this become irrigated farmland?  Sure thing.  But… this project appears to have had some huge overhead, unless the numbers are all wrong (which they could be).  I wouldn’t doubt for a second that some heavy equipment operators, consultants, and corrupt middlemen made a killing.

I think there is little glory in spending $30,000 per person and so “lifting” people out of poverty.  So there.