in Senegal, agroecology at the service of women’s independence

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In April 2022, women planted onions in the middle of fruit trees in the market gardening perimeter of the village of Tawafal, in the groundnut basin of Senegal, in the center of the country.

As far as the eye can see, acacias and baobabs populate the dusty savannah of the groundnut basin, this large area of ​​rainfed agriculture located in central Senegal. But as you approach the village of Tawafal, 120 km east of Dakar, another landscape catches the eye of the visitor: six hectares of verdant plots planted with eggplants, onions, tomatoes or more lettuces. The area had been abandoned by the men in 2017 because it was not productive enough, but the local women have clung to it and today 170 of them cultivate it.

episode 1 Agriculture: why Africa must bet on women

“Our husbands left but we found support to learn new agroecological practices that are much more profitable”, welcomes Woré Diouf, mother of eight siblings. In total, 40% of its harvests are dedicated to self-consumption, the rest for sale. “Everything we consume comes from our plots. The money that I used to buy vegetables at the market before, I now put in a tontine [système traditionnel d’épargne collective], in the school or the health of the children”, explains the farmer, who was also able to invest in a chicken farm.

In Senegal, the agricultural sector contributed 9.4% to the national GDP in 2019, according to the National Agency for Statistics and Demography (ANSD). A sector that represented 30% of Senegalese jobs, according to the World Bank. But many women are faced with lower productivity than men, due to a lack of access to land and to means of finance when they have more impact on children and their environment.

“I am less dependent”

Established in Senegal since 2009, the NGO Agrisud International, which promotes agroecology, has decided to focus on women to develop a program to support market gardening diversification in the groundnut basin. The project is based on an observation: during the rainy season, monocultures of groundnuts, millet and cowpeas (a very common variety of beans in Africa) are essential, but their production is in the throes of a drop due to the drought. , soil salinization and climate change. In all, fifteen market gardening sites have been launched by the NGO across the country.

Faced with declining income, Khady Ngom Djib, a 32-year-old farmer and mother of two, joined the Ndérep project. After only a few months, she can eat her vegetables and sell them in the village of 11,000 inhabitants. Her husband bought her the first seeds and still pays the plot’s water bills, but “I am less dependent on him. I can manage the house more independently”she welcomes.

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To diversify their income and participate in the restoration of the land around their homes, the women have also planted fruit trees such as lemon trees, as well as paths of moringa, a tree with multiple medicinal properties. Ndeye Gningue, one of the 123 farmers involved in the project, is currently harvesting the small green leaves, which she will then dry and pound to make a sauce. “We eat it with couscous, it’s very good and rich to feed children”she says.

Support for women’s activity also involved the purchase of a dryer. That day, spread out on its sliding tray, 8 kg of millet couscous dehydrated in the sun, protected from the wind by the Plexiglas walls. “I used to leave the cereal or the moringa on a table in my room but it was not hygienic, between the dust, the children and the hens coming into the room, explains Khady Ngom Ablaye Diack. And then this new technique preserves the food longer, which retains its nutritional value. »

Investing in building the skills of rural women and giving them access to equipment also aims to reduce their departure to the big cities where they go to look for something to compensate for the loss of income from field groundnut crops, due to the lack of water and soil depletion caused by climate change and overuse of land. “They can now earn a living by working on the spot, which allows them both to supervise the children at school, but also to contribute to the food security of their village”explains Louis-Etienne Diouf, project manager at Agrisud.

Homemade biofertilizers

Women are also, according to him, more receptive to the turn towards agroecology, these methods which are intended to respect the environment to guarantee a more sustainable and nourishing production in the long term. For example, women farmers have learned to make biofertilizers from neem and leucaena leaves, garlic or chilli. In each plot, recycled compost has replaced chemical fertilizers.

Attention to alternative practices which can also be explained by their impact on their own way of life. “The burden of climate change rests on women, points out Thérèse Mbaye, in charge of environmental and natural resource management within the National Network of Rural Women of Senegal, which brings together around a hundred organisations. They are the ones who struggle to find food when the soil is depleted, who are responsible for children falling ill from the spraying of pesticides in the fields, or who take care of picking up organic waste and manure when they sweep the yard of their house. »

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The activist also observes that more and more women are on village committees or municipal councils to defend their rights and develop their communities. At the heart of household management, they tend to invest their money in food, schooling, children’s health, or to put aside in case of problems. “While men will spend it on their personal needs”continues the activist, whose other fight is access to land for women in order to practice agroecology.

This article was produced as part of a series in partnership with Cartier Philanthropy.

Summary of the series “African women, key actors in food security”

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