Africa: Combating drought, one garden at a time
Ms. Saidou is now a member of a village market cooperative that sells the garden’s surplus, beyond what members keep to feed their families, in the local market.
Untied Nations News
June 17, 2023
Excerpt:
The unpaved road to the village is bumpy and sandy. For people living here, however, the path and the intense heat are part of daily life.
High temperatures have not stopped Foureyratou Saidou, a single mother of four and recent widow, from tending to the community garden next to the village. The payoffs are worth it, she said.
“In this garden, we now grow and harvest onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and other vegetables that we eat and that we can sell in the local market,” she says. “Before, we didn’t have much to live for. Now we do, and we don’t want to leave.”
Ms. Saidou is among thousands of farmers benefiting from the World Food Programme’s (WFP) integrated resilience programme, launched nearly a decade ago in Niger and four other Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania.
She is also among millions of women farmers across the world who are harvesting hope ahead of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, observed on 17 June. Her leafy garden represents a step towards cultivating land into a livelihood.
Supporting the Niger government’s national priorities and in partnership with multiple UN and non-governmental partners, the WFP initiative covers such areas as land rehabilitation, livelihood diversification, school meals, nutrition interventions, and improved agricultural production and market access.
So far, the effort is assisting 3 million people across the Sahel region, including 1.8 million in 2,000 villages in Niger last year, to better prepare for and recover from myriad interconnected shocks, including climate change, land degradation, soaring prices, and conflict.
