Growing Power
Oasis gardens help African women
nurture a new future for themselves
WEST AFRICA
Ndèye Fatou Diaw Guene, team leader at
the United Nations Development
Programme’s Senegalese climate-change
and environmental unit, is beaming. For
the first time, she is working on a project
with Senegal’s national forest program that
helps 22 women garden in Dakar’s only
semiprotected forest, Mbao, known as the
capital’s green lung. “This is truly innovat-
ing. Women from nearby villages are secur-
ing land previously used as industrial
dumping grounds to cultivate trees and
grow vegetables and fruits,” she says.
Gardening not only restores the forest and
prevents wildfires, it gives women a steady
income and new status as food providers.
That’s a big change from business as
usual in West Africa, where traditionally
male breadwinners grow cotton or rice,
while women collect water and firewood.
In countries like Senegal, Mali, Niger, and
Benin, where desertification caused by cli-
mate change is killing crops, a new trend
has sprung up: “oasis gardens” cultivated
by women from neighboring communities.
By organically rehabbing degraded soils,
using solar energy and/or better irrigation,
the women are helping boost the land’s fer-
tility despite drought. “We grow onions,
peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants using
homemade organic fertilizer, which we then
sell at markets to supply the garden’s fund
and feed our family,” explains Doussouba
Dabo, a member of a cooperative in Massan-
tola, a village in western Mali.
In adapting to shorter rainy seasons,
some of the women have become experts
on sustainable land-management practices.
South of Dakar, in the Sédhiou region, a
collective of 319 women from three com-
munities built a wooden reservoir to
improve rainwater collection. In 2018, they
were able to produce more rice than in the
previous year, giving 11 nearby villages food
for six months instead of two. “Their lives
are not only visibly improved, but the next
generation will be much more impacted by
having seen their mothers work,” Fatou
Diaw Guene explains. “These women will
have purchasing power with money earned
and be more respected in the household
and community.” —Sarah Hurtes
New drought-
fighting
agricultural
techniques
enable
women in
Mali to
support and
feed their
families.IM
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