Abstract:
This paper highlights an approach to assessing the performance of the water delivery system
from the perspective of farmers. The methodology uses the concept of fuzzy set theory to
analyse the responses from farmers concerning their perception of the irrigation service
provided. The paper takes the view that as part of performance assessment of schemes where
data on water delivery are not available or their integrity cannot be guaranteed, it is possible to
use farmers’ assessment to determine how effective the water delivery system is. The methodology was applied in a case study of Dawhenya irrigation scheme in Ghana. By decomposing the
utility into reliability, timing and tractability and subsequently applying fuzzy set theory to the
analysis of the linguistic responses of farmers, this study has enabled us to assess how well the
water delivery system is performing from the point of view of the most important stakeholders
– the farmers. The analysis indicated that the most important factor was reliability followed by
tractability and timing in that order, while the farmers’ level of satisfaction with the factors in
order of increasing satisfaction was: timing, reliability and tractability
