Burkina Faso
For decades, Sahelian Africa was the source of stories about the steady encroachment of the 
Sahara Desert, turning the Sahel into desert at the rate of x meters per year, and about food shortages, famine, drought, starvation and benefit concerts staged by rock stars..
According to the Encyclopedia of Earth however, “after several decades of declining rainfall and dwindling food production in the Sahel, reports telling a different story started to appear. Analyses made by several independent groups of time sequences of satellite data… since early 1980s, showed a remarkable increasing trend in vegetation greenness.”
Once again, the value of hopelessness appears to be over-rated. Much can, in fact, be done.
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country of West Africa, north of Ghana. Called “Upper Volta” in colonial times, most of the country is in the Sahel, the wide band of semi-arid grasslands that separates the Sahara from the jungle.
In July 2008, WNCanada began its sponsorship of a new development program in eastern Burkina Faso, in the province of Fada N’Gourma. APDC is a local NGO that grew out of programs of World Neighbors in the late 80’s and 90’s. Thanks to its work in soil and water conservation, short cycle crops and green manure technologies, villages in the province of Gna Gna that used to have food for 5-6 months per year now have food security 12 months a year with enough food left over to sell.
APDC has also experienced great success by using the empowerment of women as a starting point for community development. This begins with motivation and training of women in maternal health and child nutrition. It proceeds to training in literacy and numeracy. Thus armed with new skills and confidence, women are encouraged to form savings and credit groups, then to pool their resources to engage in income generation. Peanuts are a traditional Sahelian crop grown by women. Many women’s savings and credit groups have used peanut commercialization as the first step to income generation.
Gulmancema is the local language, and speakers of this language may be Muslim, Christian, Animist or a combination. Regardless of religious belief, they are members of a strongly male dominated society. It is amazing to witness what happens when women in such a society begin to earn money for the very first time. Traditional relationships established thousands of years ago can change overnight.
This is the beginning of the story of WNCanada in West Africa. You will learn the rest of the plot, with character development, as the years pass and the new program in Fada unfolds and takes hold. For now, we have only one short report from APDC of the beginning months of the Fada program:
“World Neighbors-Canada, following its visit to programs supported by WN/OKC in Burkina Faso, has kindly wished to support APDC in its efforts of support village communities for their development while granting financial support to the newly initiated Fada program. This support, whose first installment transfer was made in July 2008, a time of intense activities by farmers for agricultural production, allowed conducting but few activities from September to December 2008. All the first five villages involved in this program benefited from these activities. These are mainly: identification of households and investment for economic activities; sensitization on organizational aspects; training; and the collection of first data.
“Thus, 35 households from 5 villages benefited from financial support by initiating an economic activity (cow and sheep fattening) so as to increase their incomes. Training activities (capacity building) have mobilized a total of 143 peoples including women and 26 men; the collection of starting data has mobilized 440 out of 607 households that constitute the villages of the area concerned.
“During this period, most of the activities did not start because the period from May to October corresponds to the rainy season in the Sahel and from November – December corresponds to the harvests. So, it is a period when rural farmers exclusively apply themselves to agricultural production works. So, the maximum activities are to be implemented after this period.”