Critical review on improving irrigation water use efficiency: Advances, challenges, and opportunities in the Ethiopia context

•In Ethiopia, agriculture is the dominant activities to sustain the rural community’s life and basic needs.•Irrigation consumes much amount of water extracted from various sources, and hence efficient water use and management are the major concerns.•The aim of this paper is to review the advancements, challenges and opportunities improving irrigation water use efficiency in Ethiopia.•Irrigation in Ethiopia is started in 1950s with tradition irrigation system.•Challenges that hiders’ water use efficiency improvement includes crop disease, socio economic factor, institution and policy related, technical and human capacity, lack of input, market and nature related.•The future is likely to see increased use of remote sensing more versatile sensors, simulation and models to improve water use efficiency.•Clear organizational setup is required to improve the functionality of small scale irrigation schemes and at last increase WUE.•Ethiopia government has to build strong t institutional arrangements improve coordination between institutions working on irrigation development. The demand for fresh water is constantly increasing among all water users. Irrigation in Ethiopia consumes a large amount of water extracted from various sources. Hence, efficient water use and management are currently the major concerns in the country. Thus this paper aims to review the advancements, challenges, and opportunities regarding improving irrigation water use efficiency in Ethiopia. Irrigation in Ethiopia started in the 1950s with traditional irrigation systems. Now modern irrigation, including sprinkler and drip irrigation, is practiced in some parts of the country. The review showed that even though the farmers have practicing irrigation for a long time, still they cannot surpass subsistence farming. Furthermore, improvements in irrigation water use efficiency through proper scheduling and on-farm management are not satisfactory. The paper revealed the challenges that hinder water use efficiency improvement includes crop diseases, socio-economic factors, institution and policy-related issues, limitation in technical and human capacity, lack of agricultural input as well as market and nature-related factors. In the future, increased use of remote sensing techniques, more versatile sensors, simulation, and quantitative models are likely to be seen to improve water use efficiency. In most cases where water is saved as a result of the efficient use of technologies, the spare water en