Irrigating Tree Nurseries in Northern Ghana
A toolkit for growing tree seedlings with less water and zero fuel, using solar power and gravity
S.V.W. Dubbink (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
J.C. Diehl – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
W. Schermer – Mentor (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Northern Ghana faces ongoing environmental degradation and declining tree cover, making agroforestry nurseries critical for landscape restoration and climate resilience. However, many community-led nurseries struggle with unreliable water access, high evaporation losses during the Harmattan season, and inconsistent seedling survival, limiting both production capacity and long-term impact.
This project was conducted in collaboration with Vitara, a Ghanaian-Dutch social enterprise focused on agroforestry and women's economic empowerment. The aim was to identify the primary causes of nursery underperformance and develop a scalable, context-appropriate solution. Six weeks of fieldwork and fifteen expert interviews across multiple nursery sites revealed that water management, rather than shading infrastructure, was the dominant factor influencing nursery performance. Northern Ghana faces not an absolute lack of water, but a lack of water management in the dry season. This insight became the foundation for the design process.
The resulting design is a modular gravity-fed irrigation system constructed from locally available materials. Water is pumped from a nearby dam into elevated polytanks using solar energy and distributed through a fixed irrigation network during the night. This approach reduces evaporation losses, lowers labour requirements, and provides more reliable irrigation throughout the dry season. The proposed pilot module supports approximately 25,000 seedlings and is designed to be replicated and expanded in parallel.
The final outcome is a practical implementation toolkit that translates the research findings and design decisions into an accessible guide for piloting, evaluation, and future scaling. By combining technical feasibility with local operational realities, the project provides a pathway towards more resilient nursery systems capable of supporting large-scale landscape restoration in Northern Ghana.