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.