Nils Gevaert

The sun still beats down on Senegalese fields in November: the peanut harvest takes place in abnormally hot weather coupled with dry winds, with farmers working among the few trees still standing, here a baobab, there an Acacia albida. Deforestation is visible to the naked eye, and although the end of the rainy season makes the countryside green, the onset of the dry season will give the landscape of this region a desolate air of advanced desertification. I have been doing an internship with the Association for the Promotion of Fertile Trees and Agroforestry (APAF for short) here in Diokhar in the Petite Côte region for a month now. Let me introduce myself: I am a master’s student in Population and Development Sciences at the ULB, and it is under the auspices of ULB-Coopération that I find myself here, in the heart of the Senegalese Sahel.

After a month of reflection on how I could contribute here, as well as on-the-ground support from Nicolas Sarr, the agroforestry manager for the Diokhar area, I am now familiar with the association and its activities. But what are they? Agroforestry involves combining vegetable farming with tree planting to create a better symbiosis between plants, trees, soil, and water: in short, it means combining the planting of fertilizer trees, fruit trees, and vegetables in a field to combat the drought and food insecurity that affect this part of Africa.

Our daily routine during October consisted of transporting fertile trees to new fields, supervising plots being planted, and holding numerous meetings with villagers, farmers, and APAF Senegal officials.

At the end of October, I traveled to Mbour with the entire APAF team to review my work. It was then decided that I would participate in the territorial assessment initiated by Marine Protte Rieg, a French intern who had already mapped the Diokhar area, the association’s main area of activity. Mr. Mansour Ndiaye, executive president of APAF Senegal, has the dream and the will to make Diokhar the first ecovillage created by the association: in addition to the activities already accomplished through agroforestry, the project aims to support actions related to health, green energy, food security, and education to improve the lives of the inhabitants of this area. It is in this context that I have been conducting a socio-economic survey over the past few days to better determine, together with the villagers, the actions that will be relevant to meet their needs. Each interview is conducted with a head of household, sometimes accompanied by other family members, to gather information about their agricultural, pastoral, and economic activities. In a second stage, the villagers express their wishes for the future ecovillage.

The inhabitants of Diokhar are all extremely motivated, which is why the village is a pilot area for APAF’s new ideas (anti-erosion barriers, rotational grazing, eco-villages, and many others). One of the strengths of this project is the cooperation between the administrative, academic, religious, and private representatives who are involved, something that is so rare in an initiative such as this. Strong social cohesion, a hard-working village agroforestry committee, and women’s economic interest groups ready to get to work are all positive factors for the success of this project.

No dark clouds on the horizon, you might ask? Unfortunately, yes. The region is extremely dry and the lack of water is clearly felt. Theft of livestock and equipment is sadly commonplace, and a highway project threatens to destroy existing agroforestry fields… But as a farmer pointed out to me today: “We want to work and we have confidence in APAF”… So we remain touchingly optimistic here in Diokhar and, despite a few difficulties, the ecovillage project has every chance of succeeding, thanks to motivated villagers and an association that is doing exceptional work. “We’re in this together,” as they say. And we’re keeping smiling.

Nils Gevaert, intern