Small-scale irrigation in Ethiopia is a key strategy to improve and sustain the food production system. Besides the use of surface water for irrigation, it is essential to unlock the groundwater potential. It is equally important to use soil management and water-saving systems to overcome the declining soil fertility and the temporal water scarcity in the region. In this study, the solar MajiPump was introduced to enable dry season crop production in Ethiopia using shallow groundwater sources. The capacity of the MajiPumps (MP400 and MP200) was tested for the discharge head and discharge using three types of solar panels (150 W and 200 W rigid, and 200 W flexible). Besides, drip irrigation and conservation agriculture (CA) farming systems were evaluated in terms of water productivity and crop yield in comparison to the farmers’ practice (overhead irrigation and tilled farming system). Results indicated that the maximum discharge head capacity of the MajiPumps was 18 m, 14 m, 10 m when using MP400 with 200 W rigid, MP400 with 200 W flexible, and MP200 with 150 W rigid solar panels, respectively. The corresponding MajiPump flow rates ranged from 7.8 L/min to 24.6 L/min, 3 L/min to 25 L/min, and 3.6 L/min to 22.2 L/min, respectively. Compared to farmer’s practice, water productivity was significantly improved under the CA farming and the drip irrigation systems for both irrigated vegetables (garlic, onion, cabbage, potato) and rainfed maize production. The water productivity of garlic, cabbage, potato, and maize was increased by 256%, 43%, 53%, and 9%, respectively, under CA as compared to conventional tillage (CT) even under overhead irrigation. Thus, farmers can obtain a significant water-saving benefit from CA regardless of water application systems. However, water and crop productivity could be further improved in the combined use of MajiPump with CA and drip irrigation (i.e., 38% and 33% water productivity and 43% and 36% crop productivity improvements were observed for potato and onion, respectively). Similarly, compared to CT, the use of CA significantly increased garlic, cabbage, potato, and maize yield by 170%, 42%, 43%, and 15%, respectively under the MajiPump water-lifting system. Overall, the solar-powered drip irrigation and CA farming system were found to be efficient to expand small-scale irrigation and improve productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia.

Irrigation is widely considered a potential means to improve agricultural productivity, nutrition, and income, as farmers can carry out farming and production year-round. However, the feasibility of irrigation technologies is highly dependent on the long-term economic return farmers achieve. Solar-based irrigation could address the challenges of underinvestment in irrigation within Africa. Evidence on the economic viability of the adopted solar pumps such as MajiPump is very scant and focused on ex post evaluation. This study evaluated the income and nutritional feasibility of solar-powered irrigation using the MajiPump in sub-humid Ethiopian highlands using the farm simulation (FARMSIM) model and compared it with the manual pulley system. Results from the FARMSIM model show that farmers’ adoption of Maji solar pump technology to grow vegetables is economically feasible with financial support such as credit or loan for initial and capital investment to acquire the pump. The average profit under the solar MajiPump, drip irrigation, and conservation agriculture was 3.6 times higher than that of the baseline scenario. While the pulley technology provides the same amount of irrigation water to grow vegetables, its feasibility is limited due to high labor costs and time, estimated to be more than seven times the baseline. The simulation results show that the alternative scenarios’ nutrition level has improved relative to other scenarios and met the minimum daily average nutrition requirement level for proteins, iron, and vitamin A but fell short in fat, calcium, and calories. The results suggest that farmers who adopt improved small-scale irrigation technologies (solar MajiPump and drip system) have a higher potential to increase production and income from irrigated crops and improve their nutrition if part of the income generated is used to purchase supplemental food for their nutrition.

Stroh formalism provides an elegant method of solution for two-dimensional anisotropic elasticity problems through the generalized eigen relation associated with the dual coordinate system that gives the material eigen values and eigen vectors, and also the fundamental elasticity matrix and its associated Barnett-Lothe tensors. The extended Stroh-like formalism of Hwu and Hsieh has expanded the scope of basic Stroh formalism by addressing the electro-mechanical coupling effects in electro elastic plates. This paper presents an inclusive solution that addresses the two-dimensional problems in infinite electro-elastic, anisotropic, and isotropic plates with an arbitrary hole under remote arbitrary coupled electro-mechanical loading. This is achieved by adopting the Stroh formalism and its subsequent versions to consider the anisotropic and electro-elastic plates, and further, by incorporating the arbitrary biaxial loading condition into the boundary conditions, and the generalized mapping function into the basic formulation to accommodate all types of in plane loading and a variety of hole shapes respectively. Various equations of the solution are derived explicitly for easy understanding and computer implementation. The stress function is derived explicitly to satisfy the condition of traction free hole with remote electro-mechanical loading under generalized plane stress-open circuit condition. The stresses and electric displacements around the hole boundary are obtained by taking the derivative of the stress function with respect to unit normal along the hole boundary. The solution presented can be degenerated to the anisotropic or isotropic case by choosing the corresponding material properties, or appropriate values of complex parameters respectively. This general solution has exactly reproduced the results of other solutions in the literature for piezoelectric plates given by different methods. New results of stresses and electric displacements are obtained for various arbitrary holes in [PZT5H/45/-45/PZT5H]_s graphite/epoxy plate and PZT 4 plates. Results for holes in piezoelectric laminates and PZT 4 piezo layer are also presented by FEM.

In the area of globalization any manufacturing industry must be competent in terms of productivity, quality, cost and delivery. A fundamental improvement in production is necessary to succeed in the international markets. Work study is one of the earliest scientific management methods used to determine the best way to perform production tasks in order to reduce idle time and worker fatigue as a result, increase productivity. Kombolcha Steel Products Industry, the member of MIDROC Ethiopia Technology Group, producing a variety of metal and engineering products, such as steel poles, steel structures, structural hot dip galvanization, corrugated sheet metal, etc. The company's main focus was meeting the delivery deadlines, with little attention to implementing standard working method and procedures during the production. The inefficient method of piercing the holes in the u-channels to fabricate the electric pole cross arms is causing a drop in productivity.