This blog is now dormant
Please note this blog will be dormant. I am amalgamating it with Sociolingo’s Africa. All posts have been transferred there and no new posts will appear here. I’d like to say thanks to loyal readers for their support and encouragement over the years and I hope you’ll enjoy Sociolingo’s Africa too.
Go to Sociolingo’s Africa Mali posts for Mali content.
Cotton in Mali : A tale of woe
An article on BBC NEWS about ‘Misery in Mali’s cotton-picking fields‘ reminds us of the woes of Mali’s farmers. These are not the huge cotton companies one sees in the US South, but family units who co-operate together. The work is hard and for very little return. An article, ‘Cotton-omics‘ on the OXFAM website gives some insight into the figures:
Here’s a hypothetical example based on normal crop yields and prices for a farmer growing the typical seven acres of cotton, according to Ibrahim Coulibaly, an agricultural expert from Mali’s Association of Professional Producers. In this case, a farmer will clear about $US200 for a year’s work. From this, a farmer would be hard pressed to pay off the debts taken on to purchase the tools, fertilizer, and other inputs needed to operate a farm. Then, with what little money is left, the farmer would have to repay loans, and cover all household costs, health care, education, and other expenses. It’s a difficult life for farmers with few other options for earning income.
A Fairtrade article focuses on the story about the Dougourakoroni co-operative in the south of Mali in Kita Region, although it also has a lot of good information about cotton in Mali and some general information about the country. Many small farmers switched from peanuts to cotton as their cash crop following drought and disease in the early 1980s and now, according to the article, 40% of rural Malians are dependent on cotton production.
Yale Global online has an article from 2005 referring to cotton in Mali which argues that Africa needs fair trade not charity and that allowing producers to export to a subsidy-free world market will lift many out of poverty.
‘Journey to the Lands of Cotton: A Brief Manual of Globalisation’ on the Open Democracy site is a rather long extract of an article by Erik Orsenna who has written a sort of field diary of a trip to the cotton producing countries of Mali, the USA and Brazil. Of particular interest is an interview with Amadou Toumani Touré, President of Mali.
‘We are condemned for our deficit. But no one looks at the causes of that deficit. Without the subsidies they get from their state, American farmers would produce dearer cotton than we do. Since independence we’ve increased our production by a factor of twenty. For forty years we’ve fought day after day to better ourselves. We’ve gone all out for competition. Without the slightest chance of winning, because the most powerful player is cheating.’
The argument about the role of US cotton subsidies and fair trade will not go away. Is it really a case of Africa blaming its problems on outsiders as the US Ambassador to Mali claims in the above article? Will the privatisation of the Malian cotton industry bring the results the World Bank and others claim or is it just another part of vested interests protecting themselves? The questions remain whilst Malian farmers struggle.
Mali : National Education Plans
I’m sorry that these plans are only available in French, but I hope they will be helpful to you. You’ll need Adobe Reader to read the pdf files.
Source: Planipolis UNESCO IIEP
Cadre de dépenses à moyen terme du secteur de l’éducation 2006-2008
Ministère de l’éducation nationale, 2006, 73 p.
Authors / Organisations : Mali. Ministère de l’éducation nationale
Type of document : National Education Plans
Mali. Proposition de plan d’action pour la mise en oeuvre accelerée du PISE 2 pour la scolarisation primaire universelle
Bamako, Ministère de l’Education nationale, 2006, 64 p.
Authors / Organisations : Mali. Ministère de l’éducation nationale, Secrétariat Général
Type of document : National Education Plans
Programme décennal de développement de l’éducation: les grandes orientations de la politique éducative
Bamako, MEN, 2000, 73 p.
Authors / Organisations : Mali. Ministère de l’éducation nationale, MEN
Type of document : National Education Plans
SAHEL: Outbreak of polio prompts mass vaccination campaign
Source: IRIN NEWS
SAHEL: Outbreak of polio prompts mass vaccination campaign
OUAGADOUGOU, 13 June 2008 (IRIN) - The World Health Organization (WHO) and the governments of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali are launching a cross-border polio vaccination campaign today following an April 2008 report of a polio case at Tillabéry in southwest Niger, 100km from the borders of Mali and Burkina Faso.
The campaign will target the Gao region in Mali, north-eastern Burkina Faso, and southern Niger, including Maradi, Tahoua and the capital, Niamey.
“Hundreds of thousands of children will be vaccinated, the majority of them in Niger, to avoid the virus spreading into neighbouring countries,” Mathieu Kamwa, coordinator of the WHO West Africa office told IRIN.
“We will pay particular attention to populations that frequently move across the borders of these three countries,” said Kamwa.
The campaign aims to create a polio barrier to prevent the spread of the virus in polio-free areas of the three countries.
WHO officials fear the re-emergence of polio in Tillabéry, which has been free of the virus for three years, because of its proximity to the borders Burkina Faso and Mali.
Burkina Faso and Mali have had no reported polio cases since 2004 and both are on their way to receiving certification as polio-free countries in October 2008. Niger meanwhile reported nine cases in 2008.
Tillabéry is 180km from Nigeria, where 21 percent of the world’s polio cases were reported in 2007 making it one of four countries in the world alongside India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where polio is still endemic.
According to WHO’s Kamwa, 247 cases of polio have been reported in Nigeria since January 2008.
Polio mainly affects children under five years old, with one in 200 infections leading to irreversible paralysis, according to the WHO.
Austrian Hostages in Mali 13-06-08 - Sahara hostage telephoned relatives
Contributed by Christiane Lauschitzky
Here’s the latest update on the Austrian hostages:
13-06-2008
(Source: http://salzburg.orf.at/stories/285307 )
Sahara hostage telephoned relatives
As a relative of the kidnapped Wolfgang Ebner (Salzburg) told APA (Austrian Press Agency), the man from Hallein supposedly telephoned his family a few days ago. He is said to be very ill. Supposedly Ebner is suffering from malaria and cholera, which the Foreign Ministry on Friday did not confirm. “We are not aware that Ebner and Andrea Kloiber suffer from a specific disease, but there are indications that their health is not too good,” said Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, spokesman of the Foreign Ministry in Vienna. Even though there is a possibility that public knowledge of the phone call might endanger the two Austrians, the joy about that unambiguous sign of life is bigger than any fear, Launsky-Tieffenthal declared. According to one of his relatives Wolfgang Ebner were allowed to talk to one family member but in English so that the kidnappers who do not know German were able to follow every word he said.
Ebner said that they could hardly move freely since the area they are being held is a minefield, a fact which would a make a possible handover difficult. To use helicopters is not possible because the different groups are fighting each other and would shoot them down.
The foreign-ministry spokesman also said that most likely everything Ebner told his relatives was agreed on previously with the kidnappers. Communication with relatives could not run freely and openly.
Safety of hostages at the centre
The talks reassure the families that their loved ones are still alive and nourishes the hope that the kidnappers will release the two tourists unhurt.
Rumors that the Salzburgers had already been released and arrived in Libya, could not be verified by Launsky-Tieffenthal: “There is no evidence.” The crisis committee of the Foreign Ministry and all people who are concerned with the release of the hostages above all their relatives hope for a quick safe ending of that affair: “The safety of Ebner and Kloiber is still in focus as it has been until now.”
Tensions between ethnic groups
Once again Launsky-Tieffenthal pointed out that tensions in northern Mali between Tuareg tribes, although not directly linked to the kidnapping inevitably has an impact on the efforts to release the hostages.
The two Austrian tourists to the Sahara were kidnapped February 22, 2008 in Tunisia close to the Algerian border by a group called Al Quaida in the Islamic Mahgreb and where then carried off to their hideouts in northern Mali. This area is controlled by a Tuareg group that fights the Malian government.
The kidnappers demanded from the Austrian government to fight for the release of group members from Tunisian and Algerian prisons. A ultimatum to the Austrian government, to meet this demand, that had been extended twice, expired in April.
04-06-2008
Austrian foreign minister Ursula Plassik went for a secret visit to Mali and Algeria to further negotiations on behalf of the two Austrian hostages being held. She supposedly met with the Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré and with other high-ranking officials in both countries. One of the reasons for her visit was to make sure that negotiations for the release of the two are continuing. The visit occurred, according to Plassnik, very recently but due to the sensitive nature of the negotiations she refused to disclose further details. One of the Austrian newspapers had claimed that there was hope for a release of the hostages in the not too distant future. Plassnik did not confirm this claim, though. She said that the Malian authorities were very interested in the release of the two Austrians. (Source: www.orf.at )
Austrian Hostages in Mali
It is about three months that the two Austrians, Andrea Kloiber and Wolfgang Ebner were abducted in the Tunesian desert. After about a month of complete silence there’s news about them. According to Malian government officials negotiations are still in progress and are moving ahead. This statement contradicts rumours that both hostages had been killed. Peter Launsk-Tiefental from the Austrian foreign ministry confirms the Malian official and says that part of the efforts of the Austrian government to liberate the hostages is to assure that they are still alive. Due to the sensitive nature of the negotiations and the fact that the abductors have access to all published material the Austrian foreign ministry does not want to make know details about the negotiations but say that there is a good possibility that the two Austrians could be released soon.
(Sources: http://diepresse.com, www.kurier.at, http://derstandard.at)
MALI: Gun running worsening
Nothing new in the following article but the situation does seem to be deteriorating.
MALI: Gun running worsening
BAMAKO/TIMBUKTU, 12 June 2008 (IRIN) - Mali has become an established transit route for weapons heading from West Africa’s increasingly peaceful coastal states to active conflicts in West and Central Africa, an ECOWAS expert has warned.
“There are two factors on the supply side - stabilisation in Cote d’Ivoire and in Guinea Conakry,” said Jonathan Sandy, small arms programme manager with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Bamako, who says regional monitoring has shown a steady uptick in the number of guns entering Mali over the last five years.
“On the demand side, some of the weapons stay in Mali and are used for criminality. Others go to active conflicts in the north of Mali, in Niger, Chad and even as far away as Sudan,” he said.
Violence between the Malian army and Touareg rebels in northern Mali has escalated in recent months, with 20 rebels reportedly killed this week in the heaviest fighting since a rebel assault in May killed 25 people.
The Malian national arms commission says the weapons it has seized range from sophisticated automatic weapons to ancient revolvers. The seized weapons were manufactured in countries including the United States, China, Egypt, Italy, the Czech Republic and Russia, according to the arms commission.
In the Timbuktu region of northern Mali, arms commission officials said they have collected over 1,300 illegal weapons over the last five years, but that at least 5,500 weapons are still in circulation in that region alone. 450,000 people live in the Timbuktu region.
ECOWAS has also registered a 100 percent increase in the number of arms being manufactured locally over the last five years. “It’s a good source of employment, but our concern is that it is not regulated,” Sandy said.
Ahmed Hamid Maiga, head of the arms commission in Timbuktu, said deepening poverty, a declining agricultural sector, and rampant population growth explains increasing domestic demand for weapons.
“People have got to eat and drink,” he said. “People think if they get a gun they will get something to eat. There are many cases of fights between pastoralists and cultivators. Other people fight over access to water sources.”
ECOWAS’s Sandy said strengthening national arms commissions in Mali and around the region and improving information and awareness is the best way to stop the spread of weapons.
MALI: Religious leaders oppose abolition of death penalty
Source: IRIN NEWS
MALI: Religious leaders oppose abolition of death penalty
BAMAKO, 11 June 2008 (IRIN) - A new bill to abolish the death penalty is sparking hot debate in the National Assembly amid protests from Islamic groups who say abolishing it goes against Islamic principles.
“Our recommendations focus on maintaining the death penalty in conformity with Islamic principles,” said Boubacar Camara, an Imam and a member of the High Islamic Council of Mali (HCIM). “The Islamic Council refuses to endorse a legal decision that is fundamentally opposed to what God and His Prophet have decreed.”
President Amadou Toumani Touré introduced the bill to abolish the death penalty in a speech he delivered in September 2007 but protests from religious groups and the opposition party Union Nationale pour la Renaissance (UNPR) in November and December 2007 put the bill on hold.
It is now being debated once again, and if passed by the National Assembly the President would initiate a process to amend all other laws referring to the death penalty, including the penal code.
Though the death penalty has not been enforced in Mali since 1979, the controversy is one of principle over practice, according to Lamine Keita, communication officer at the department of justice.
Anti-abolitionists
Banning the death penalty goes against Islamic principles and would weaken the state’s ability to deter crimes, according to Camara.
“The death penalty is defined in Islam as a legitimate act of retaliation, as enacted by God in the Koran,” he told IRIN. “According to the Koran it allows one to preserve human life and social stability. Its abolition would open the way to widespread insecurity, anarchy, and general social instability.”
Under the Koran the death penalty is a “required and unequivocal requirement” in criminal cases involving deliberate attacks on human life, according to him.
Thierno Hady Thiam, chairman of the Islamic council, agrees the nation’s security is at stake. “We should simply abandon the bill because it could undermine the security foundations of the state and society. For instance [crimes such as] high treason committed against the state or complicity with external enemies or coups d’etat would be seen as less dangerous to attempt.”
The same groups have expressed opposition to a proposed amendment to family law in Mali, claiming it too goes against Islamic principles.
But it is not only religious groups who oppose the ban. According to one observer, opposition cuts across many sections of society. Amadaou Togo, an adviser in the justice ministry told IRIN abolishing the death penalty would be inappropriate in Mali.
“It is unfair to ask authorities to adopt. a legal document which includes clauses that go against citizens’ religious and moral sensitivities. Clearly there is no way that they [the authorities] can fight for ideas that are imported from societies whose practices and customs are a million miles from ours,” he argued.
Pro-abolitionists
But human rights groups welcome the President’s actions. “We salute the head of state in abolishing the death penalty in Mali,” Brahima Koné, president of the Malian Association for Human Rights (AMDH) said. “The death penalty is anti-constitutional, given that Article One of the constitution proclaims the sanctity of human life.”
Koné continued, “For years, we have recommended the death penalty be abolished, particularly given the possibility of legal errors in making a legal pronouncement, particularly in a state like Mali where medical services lack the means to detect the mental state of offenders.”
And according to AMDH records when analysing the link between the death penalty and crimes committed in other countries, it does not deter crime. “The president should not maintain the death penalty for the simple reason that it is not a deterrent,” Koné added.
Though it has not been enforced for many years Koné fears maintaining the death penalty in law is risky because it could be abused by political groups in the future.
The human rights organisation Amnesty International has been running a campaign pushing Parliament to adopt the bill since 2007. “Two-thirds of the world’s countries have abolished the death penalty since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948,” said Adama Sangaré from Mali Amnesty International, “and Mali should join them.”
And according to Sangaré, some members of the Muslim community are supporting Amnesty’s campaign, arguing in their interpretation of the Koran, it is forbidden to kill.
Other concerns
While it is far from certain that the bill will be passed, even if the President does succeed, amending all related laws will be time-consuming and complicated, estimates Lamine Keita, communications officer in the Justice ministry
But Ladji Samaké, head of the country’s prisons hopes passing the bill will catalyse a wider overhaul of the country’s incarceration system, which is currently characterised he says, by poor facilities and overcrowding. “We need to put in place better prison facilities, and set up special detention centres for prisoners with psychological problems - that is the most important next step,” he told IRIN.
The authorities should ensure that those people who are not condemned to death are confined for life so they do not present a danger to society, he added.
As the debate continues neither side looks ready to shift and several members of Parliament are calling for the justice ministry to hold a day of debate between all interested parties to try to find a way forward. “We need to canvas civil society’s voices on the issue and try to get out of this impasse,” Samaké told IRIN.
MALI: Teacher strikes may mean ‘blank’ school year
Source: IRIN NEWS
MALI: Teacher strikes may mean ‘blank’ school year
BAMAKO, 10 June 2008 (IRIN) - In Mali the most important exams come last: the baccalaureate at the end of June. But this year, with secondary-school teachers in their seventh straight month of strikes, the exam risks going unmarked, meaning students may face a blank school year. That is making many of them angry.
Secondary school teachers have refused to invigilate or mark any secondary school exams. While the government sent in emergency invigilators from the national teaching academy to monitor the exams which began in late May, these invigilators are not qualified to mark them.
“It is time for the arm-wrestling between the government and teachers to stop. Our future of is at stake,” said Mohamed Ibrahim Baby, secretary-general of the Association of Malian students (EMEA). “How can we study throughout the school year yet not have our exams marked?”
The baccalaureate is the minimum qualification for many professional posts in Mali, including the teaching profession, and under a quarter of Malian students reach the position to take it.
Teacher demands
Teachers are asking the government to give them a US$142 housing allowance, calling for contract teachers’ salaries to be increased and for salaries to go up year on year as teachers remain in the system. Currently, while pay increases annually at the same rates as all state-sector workers - they went up by five percent in January 2008 - the pay-grades do not. Meanwhile qualified teachers who are not state-certified receive lower salaries than government-qualified teachers and are unable to participate in teacher training.
“None of our demands have yet been met,” complained Youssouf Berthe, secretary-general of the country’s group of teachers’ unions, COSES. “The government has paid university professors US$142 each to help them with housing - why can’t we get the same? This isn’t a luxury we’re demanding, it’s simply so we can live in decent conditions.”
And the fight does not look set to end. “We have decided to go all the way this time - we will not stop until our demands are met. They must be resolved once and for all this year,” Amadou Lougué a teacher at Kati Secondary school, 20km from Bamako told IRIN.
Protests have worked in the past. In 2007 teachers unions protested for the government to meet back-payments for overtime worked, and the government relented in February 2008.
In a press conference on 8 June President Amadou Toumani Touré announced the government was seeking solutions to end the crisis, but that when it came to the housing allowance the government would not give in.
The reason he gave was simple: “The state cannot afford to pay such an allowance,” he told reporters.
“We have made enormous efforts to improve the lot of teachers. If we also give housing allowances today, tomorrow they will ask for more, and after that health-workers and other state officials will ask for the same thing,” President Touré continued.
The education ministry has set up a special Parliamentary commission to meet with teachers’ unions, parents and students associations to try to resolve the crisis.
Some school-heads welcome the move. “We will take all necessary steps because we must save the school year. A blank school year doesn’t suit the students or their parents and will not serve the country,” said Daouda Simbara, head of a secondary school.
In the meantime, parents and students are calling for the stand-off to end. The EMEA has appealed for “good sense to prevail” from all involved, while Mamadou Traoré, member of a Bamako-wide parent-teachers association told IRIN, “Teachers must know that every fight has an end. The government has already satisfied some of their demands. They must now think about the lives of students who have not yet completed the school year.”
He added, “You cannot get everything you want at the same time.”
Keyhole gardens - an idea for Mali?
I wrote the following post for Sociolingo’s Africa, but thinking about it I realised that this is an idea that may work for Mali too. As usual what is needed is for someone to pick up the idea from CARE and do a pilot and show people how it works.
There’s an interesting post on BBC NEWS about ‘keyhole gardens’ in Lesotho. You can see some in the picture. The two metre diameter gardens are built of rocks, layered with tins, mulch and ash and are producing food all year round.
(Mahaha’s family) has three keyhole gardens and that’s more than enough to supply all 10 of them with all the vegetables they need, and with some left over to sell - it’s changed their lives 
Mahaha Mphou does not know much about global economics, but she does know how to grow vegetables. She and the rest of her family of 10 have become some of the most enthusiastic evangelists for a home-grown idea that has almost certainly saved them from starvation. Ntsie Tlali from Care, the non-governmental organisation behind the gardens, believes they are revolutionary.
Encyclopedia of Earth additions to the profile of Mali
The Encyclopedia of Earth has additions to the profile of Mali. There are really good and detailed profiles of the Bandiagara, World Heritage site and Eco-Regions of Mali, although other headings are obviously work in progress and are in outline only.
Cliffs_of_Bandiagara,Land_of_the_Dogons, Mali
Inner Niger Delta flooded savanna
South Saharan steppe and woodlands
West Saharan montane xeric woodlands
Citation:
Surface, Maggie (Lead Author); Lakhdar Boukerrou (Topic Editor). 2008. “Mali country profile.” In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [Published in the Encyclopedia of Earth June 4, 2008; Retrieved June 8, 2008]. <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Mali_country_profile>
More about the Earth Encylopedia
the Encyclopedia of Earth, a new electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other’s work. The articles are written in non-technical language and will be useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public.
Update on Tuareg clashes 07-06-2008
Last week was a bad week for hopes of peace in northern Mali, despite Libyan attempts to broker a ceasefire. The latest round of violent incidents in the north of Mali lasted 4 days and subsided last thursday (5th June). An army supply convoy was attacked by the rebels and offensives by the Malian army destroyed the rebels logistical base. On friday a rebel convoy bringing ammunition from across the Algerian border was intercepted. The head of the land army has now been promoted to armed forces chief following the overhaul of military leadership in the country. The latest report published by Reuters indicates that the Malian army is claiming to have killed 20 Tuareg rebels and injured a number of others near the Algerian border during the fighting up to the 4th June. one Malian army soldier was ‘lightly injured’. This is an addition to the 17 rebels and 15 Malian soldiers reported killed in the fighting in May.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L0776573.htm
Mali sacks military chiefs as Tuareg revolt grows 06-06-2998
Source: AlertNet
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By Tiemoko Diallo BAMAKO, June 6 (Reuters) - Mali has replaced most of its military and security chiefs to improve leadership of its armed forces as they struggle to quell an escalating year-old Tuareg insurgency in the remote Saharan north. President Amadou Toumani Toure’s government decided to replace a handful of the country’s top officers at an extraordinary cabinet meeting late on Thursday after two days of fierce fighting in the region near the border with Algeria. The overall armed forces chief, the head of the air force and the national directors of both the police and the paramilitary gendarmerie were replaced, according to a government communique cited by state media on Friday. Colonel Gabriel Podiougou, head of the land army, was promoted to overall armed forces chief.
MALI: All it takes to save the lakes from climate change is money
Source: IRIN NEWS
MALI: All it takes to save the lakes from climate change is money
LAKE FAGUIBINE, 5 June 2008 (IRIN) - Ahmed Toure spends most days squatting beside the only surfaced road running through the Timbuktu region of northern Mali, his face and eyes shielded against the sand and dust by a traditional Touareg wrap and dark glasses. He is waiting for work, or just a ride to somewhere else.
The wait for work is often a long one. “There’s very little opportunity these days,” he said. Getting a ride out is easier; many people are heading for the more fertile south of Mali, or even further to Cote d’Ivoire, Benin and elsewhere.
Until the 1980s, this remote region in the far north of Mali, in the Sahel region on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, was the country’s grain basket. Four interlinked lakes, of which Lake Faguibine was the largest, provided fishing and over 60,000 hectares of fertile land for farming and watering animals.
But the lake started drying up and the region’s prosperity evaporated with the water; today, Lake Faguibine is bone dry.
In the 1980s some aid agencies started handing out food and working with pastoralists, but for the most part people say they just get by on what they can forage, grow in market gardens, or buy.
“The past was a time of plenty with fish, forests, and animals,” said Mohamed Ali Ag Abdoulaye, an elder in the village of Bintagoungou, close to what was Lake Faguibine. “Now everything is gone.”
Simple solutions?
The solution to the problem is simple to understand but apparently hard to do.
When the lake network was functioning it was fed by two canals from the Niger River, one 104km long, the other 57km. originally the waterways were several metres wide; now they are clogged with sand and debris, and have shrivelled to just a few centimetres across in some places.
Kalfa Sanogo, a representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Mali, said the clogged canals, combined with two major droughts in 1973-74 and 1984-85, which had severely depleted the lakes, were at the root of the problem.
Clearing and re-digging the canals in the scorching desert heat is the solution, but getting the work done in this remote region, more than 1,000km north of Mali’s capital, Bamako, where there are few roads, power sources, or connections with the outside world, is extremely difficult.
“The physical obstacles to getting this done are huge,” Sanogo said. But the payoff of getting the water flowing is huge too. “At least 350,000 people would benefit from this project. In a country of 12 million people, that is no small thing.”
Getting it done
In 2006 the government set up the Lake Faguibine Authority to get the lakes reopened. Col Ascofare, the director, says his equipment includes a couple of rusty mechanical diggers and dump trucks, and a limited supply of fuel for them. For the rest of work he has to rely on manpower, mobilising hundreds of local men to clear sections by hand.
In two years of work Ascofare has only made enough progress to reopen a small part of the waterways. Around one of the four lakes which have started now refilling because of the work, a splash of green millet and the villagers steadily planting and harvesting is evidence of the project’s potential.
Locals say they are harvesting three crops a year, and as a result food prices in the area around the lake have halved in the last year.
Stopping the sand
Ascofare’s enemy is the towering wall of sand that skirts the northern edge of the lake system. The Sahara is steadily creeping south, drowning everything in its path in sand, including the Lake Faguibine canals. “We have got to find a way to stop the sand; if we had no sand here, we would have no problem. Every year, the men I mobilise just have to keep on digging out the same section of canal.”
He needs money - perhaps as much as 13 billion CFA francs (US$), he estimated - to buy machines and equipment, and seeds to plant up to 300,000 trees per year to hold the sand back.
“This could create huge employment here if we got the funding and the work could begin properly,” he said. “This one project alone could feed and stabilise the whole region, providing natural riches for everyone. No-one would need food aid, seeds, development aid; we would be self-sufficient again on our own crops.”
If Lake Faguibine is not saved, “We will just go backwards,” he said.
Overstretch
Sanogo, of the UNDP, said Mali’s government was already overstretched, trying to deal with pressing health, food and water needs an African country that is geographically one of the largest and economically one of the poorest. “Whether this happens or not is up to the donors,” he commented.
The UN Special Adviser on Conflict, Jan Egeland, who travelled to Lake Faguibine as part of a week-long mission to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on the Sahel region, said the Lake Faguibine project and others like it should be a priority.
“We must ask ourselves if we are really going to let life-saving projects like this, which are directly related to climate change, go unfunded?” Egeland wrote in a diary entry on the day he visited Lake Faguibine. He is contributing the journal of his Sahel mission to IRIN.
“It would really be a moral failure if climate change projects that already exist to help the people affected would go unfunded by those industrialised nations that caused climate change.”
Mali army reports heavy clashes with Tuareg rebels 05-06-2008
Source: AlertNet
<!– 05 Jun 2008 16:34:38 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove –>
BAMAKO, June 5 (Reuters) - Mali’s armed forces are engaged in heavy fighting with Tuareg rebels after attacking their positions in the northeast Kidal region, and both sides had suffered casualties, a senior Malian officer said on Thursday. The clashes took place around the Insalat stronghold of Tuareg insurgent leader Ibrahima Bahanga, whose nomadic fighters have been attacking army garrisons and convoys in the rugged northeast of the West African Sahel state since last year.
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Sociolingo's Mali Blog Feed- This blog is now dormant
- Cotton in Mali : A tale of woe
- Mali : National Education Plans
- Test post
- SAHEL: Outbreak of polio prompts mass vaccination campaign
- Austrian Hostages in Mali 13-06-08 - Sahara hostage telephoned relatives
- MALI: Gun running worsening
- MALI: Religious leaders oppose abolition of death penalty
- MALI: Teacher strikes may mean ‘blank’ school year
- Keyhole gardens - an idea for Mali?
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