This paper engages with the coupled social and environmental dynamics of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa through the case study of Bagré in Burkina Faso. A mix of traditional social science research and participatory methods meant at strengthening the role of local farmers in decision making over irrigation development allows identifying how people affected and sometimes displaced by the construction of irrigation infrastructure frame the idea of justice and identify related principles for their compensation. The research highlights that people affected by the project link the legitimacy to get plots in the newly build irrigation system to the duration and nature of customary rights that individuals have on the land. They also stress the importance of free choice when it comes to irrigation practices and of defining current compensation rules that account for the needs of future generations. While such views had not been considered in previous irrigation development projects implemented in the area in the 1990s and 2000s, the agency now in charge of overseeing irrigation development in the Bagré area has streamlined some of these in its procedures. Compensation practices follow the social safeguard policy of the World Bank whose aim is that none of the people affected by the project are worse after project implementation than before. However, the deliberate choice to attribute a large share of the future irrigated area to agro-entrepreneurs puts undue pressure on already scarce land resources and constitutes a risk to increase environmental inequalities and create new vulnerabilities. This happens even though agro-entrepreneurship is not yet observed in the area and may well fall short of the expectations of the World Bank and the Government of Burkina Faso that saw in agrobusiness the trigger for far reaching regional economic development.