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Restored wastelands do not just empower women in the Sahel region, but also mitigate desertification and climate change. It regreens the Sahel.
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Led by the NGO Catholic Relief Service (CRS) and the CGIAR research institute ICRISAT, the PASAM-TAI project in Niger, tackles women’s poor land access and widespread land desertification through the Bioreclamation of Degraded Lands (BDL).
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Women are denied the right to own cropland in the Sahel, but a village chief can allot degraded lands to women. The women form legally registered associations. They lease each of its members a plot of land.
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Women prepare these biodegraded lands for cultivation, by breaking down the surface crust. Micro-catchments, also called demi-lunes, are built to catch and store runoff rainwater.
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Workload for the first year is quite intense and women are helped by husbands to prepare the land.
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Every association member receives a small parcel of this land to produce vegetables and make an income. Plants like Pomme du Sahel, Moringa and stenopetala trees are intercropped with traditional vegetables like okra, tomatoes and leafy vegetables.
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The BDL plots need to be protected from animals grazing in the farms They secure their farms with wire, straw, palm leaves, thorny bushes and similar material to protect their crops.
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A Pomme du Sahel tree is planted in the open side of the demi-lunes to avoid water logging.
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Moringa leaves are highly nutritious. In Niger, many young children suffer from acute nutritional deficiency and BDL can help provide vegetables and fruit to remote villages in the Sahel.
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Women plant indigenous vegetables like okras in planting pits called zai holes. Leafy vegetables such as roselle, a type of Hibiscus, and sorel are also intercropped.
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Women also produce tomatoes from reclaimed land. Cultivating high value vegetables improves the food security of the families and generates additional incomes.
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In eastern Niger, 241 hectares of degraded land was converted into productive agroforestry farmland through this BDL system.
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10,770 women were trained to restore degraded lands through the integrated BDL approach. A training manual has been designed in French, and local languages Hausa and Djerma.
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10,770 women were trained to restore degraded lands through the integrated BDL approach. A training manual has been designed in French, and local languages Hausa and Djerma.
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A 50% increase in agri-income (over non-BDL participants) was observed in a mid-term evaluation study conducted at the end of three years of the five-year project. Women are also empowered through better income and food, access to land and agricultural
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Post-harvest chores can entail a heavy work burden for women farmers. ICRISAT and partners are working towards the adoption of agri-technologies, like providing grinding mills for threshing grains to reduce their workload.
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The PASAM-TAI project in Niger recognizes the invaluable contribution of rural women in enhancing agricultural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.