Burkina Faso
A great story from our partners at Self-Help Africa about a market gardening project in Burkina Faso. For 25 years, Self-Help Africa has given farmers new seed, irrigation advice, small loans and access to markets to help them grow more food and lift their families and communities out of hunger and poverty.
Forty-one villagers in Dassui make up the ‘Wenden Kondo’ (God Will Provide) market gardening group. Through a local group the partners with Self-Help Africa, they learned how to grow the best crops and were given seeds, tools and funding for fencing and a water supply.
Today, they grow onions, cabbage, carrots, chili, garlic and rice and grain during the rainy season. They use some of the vegetables to feed their families, and some they sell in the nearby Bitte market.
Zungrana Awaya, a mother of six and the secretary of the group, is one of Wenden Kondo’s 20 women members. She says the gardening project has provided a valuable source of income for her family.
‘I was born in this village, but I left because there did not seem to be any way for me to make a living. But the garden is creating new opportunities.”
It’s a hard job, she says. But life is getting a little better. In fact, everything is getting a little better. The money that they get from their farming activities is helping Zungrana and the other villagers send their children to school and buy medicine when it is needed.
And their hard work is supporting nearly 400 people in their local community.
“My son, who is 17, says that he wants to leave because he has few prospects of work,’ Zungrana says.
But she tells him not to forget about the garden. “It is new, but we are hopeful that it will grow.”
Every day, my job is to tell a story — a story about Africa. And to help highlight the critical role women play in agriculture, I wanted to share with you a tale from Burkina Faso about a woman who is partnering with Africare to pioneer new farming techniques in her village.
Through this partnership, she was able to grow her farm from 20 hens to 175, enabling her to pay for her four children to go to school, buy more food for her family and reinvest in the farm. Read the rest of her story here.
This is just one example of the inspiring work happening on the ground in Africa. To read and watch many more stories from the field, particularly about agriculture and food security, please visit Africare’s story page.
-Nicole Eley, multimedia communications and marketing, Africare
Famine in Niger affects 12 million – Expensive imports and aid remain out of reach for 12 million people in Niger – 80 percent of the population – which is facing the worst food crisis in years. Aid organizations say that the immediate obstacle preventing them from meeting urgent food needs is a donor shortfall of more than $100 million. (Afua Hirsch, The Guardian)
Horn of Africa once again polio-free – The Horn of Africa is again polio-free, with Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda having reported no cases for more than a year, said UNICEF. The victory is attributed to a series of multi-country immunization campaigns, along with greater technical support and strong political engagement. (Peter Mutai, Xinhua News)
Make Maternal Health Priority, African Leaders Told – Speaking at last week’s African Union summit, the Deputy U.N. Secretary-General maintained that women and children are the “engines” driving future economic growth on the continent, and that leaders must making meeting the 2015 Millennium Development Goal deadline of improving child and maternal health a priority. (Abimbola Akosile, AllAfrica.com)
Kenyans to Vote on Controversial Constitution – Kenyans will vote on a controversial new constitution this week—the latest step by the nation’s leaders to bring political change to their country to quell tribal tensions. The U.S maintains a new constitution is central to this effort. (Sarah Childress, Wall Street Journal)
New focus on Sanitation in Burkina Faso – Burkina Faso has embarked on the construction of 55,000 latrines each year for the next five years to improve access to proper sanitation by more than 40 percent. The new initiative was spurred by findings that the current pace is insufficient to attain the Millennium Development Goal on sanitation in a context of rapid population growth. (Brahima Ouédraogo, IPS)
Ritu speaking with a market vendor in Accra, Ghana
This week, Ritu Sharma, Women Thrive’s Co-founder and President, has been in Ghana and Burkina Faso, trying to learn about what life is like for women farmers, what their governments are doing to empower them, and what U.S. assistance programs can do to help. Accompanied by a team of Women Thrive staff, Ritu has met with local women’s organizations, such as their advocacy partner, Coordinator Coalition Burkinabe pour Le Droit du la Femmes (CBDF), a coalition of 15 women’s associations that educates Burkinabe women and helps them advocate for better economic rights. She has also met with individual women farmers, Burkina Faso government officials, and U.S. development agencies working in the country.
Read Ritu’s daily diaries and conversations with women farmers.
For most women in Burkina Faso, where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line, life is a daily struggle. Typically living in rural areas, most women have little access to ongoing education or potable water. Yet because they are the majority of farmers and are responsible for child care, Burkinabe women spend much of their day performing field work, growing food and crops for their families. However, despite this often grueling work, many Burkinabe women are not allowed to own the very land they farm, because customary often law excludes women from land ownership, preventing them from investing in the tools, irrigation, and seeds that would make their families better fed and their children better off. Learn more about women’s role in agriculture.
-McKenzie Lock, Women Thrive Worldwide
At the end of May the Senate passed a bill to provide emergency aid for
Jordan, Burma, and food security – urgent humanitarian needs that our
government needs to address.
The problem:
The Senate funded the assistance by proposing to cut the budget of the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which invests in long-term poverty reduction, by 1/3. The U.S. has already promised MCC funding to several very poor countries, including the African nation of Burkina Faso, scheduled to sign a compact with the MCC in July. Since the news, the NGO community has been advocating hard against the proposed cuts.
The result:
Last week the proposed cuts were reduced from $525 million to $58 million by a conference of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate approved the bill last night and it is now up to the President to approve.
This month, I had the privilege of traveling to Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world. 80% of the population is rural, subsistence farmers. The women I met in Burkina Faso rely on small vegetable plots to feed their families and send their children to school. The MCC’s programs would help women have access to land, help girls go to school, and improve rural roads – key strategies for reducing poverty and increasing food security. I also met with (more…)
