Rainwater harvesting is increasingly seen as a strategy for enhancing
agricultural productivity and boosting farm income in many drought
prone areas. While extensive efforts are going on in constructing and
providing smallholder farmers with water harvesting structures, such
as ponds in Rwanda, there is limited knowledge of the factors that
influence adoption of such structures and their impact on households’
input use and farm income. This study applied propensity score
matching technique to assess the impact of rainwater harvesting ponds
on farm income of small scale farmers in Rwanda. The study also
assesses the factors that influence adoption of rainwater harvesting
ponds by using a binary logit model. Results show that households
with rainwater harvesting ponds are significantly better off in terms of
achieving higher income than those without ponds, even though they
are comparable in essential household characteristics. The study finds
that household size, physical and financial asset endowments, group
membership are significant in explaining the household decision to
adopt rainwater harvesting ponds. It discusses the implications of
these findings for policy.