DEVELOPMENT-SENEGAL: Plenty of Land, No Water for Farming

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abdou Faye

DAKAR, Aug 25 2003 (IPS) - In Sangalkam, a village 37 kilometres from the capital, Dakar, workers are busy laying the foundation of the town’s new water catch basin.

The rainwater, that the basin will hold, will be used to irrigate farms and to quench the thirst of farm animals. The basin, located in an eight-square-kilometre watershed will, when completed, hold 100,000 cubic metres of water.

Villagers, eagerly waiting for the completion of the project, have endured the lack of water for their farms ever since the breakdown of the village’s two wells.

”The basin will allow the surrounding villages to engage in income-generating activity. There’s plenty of land available; our biggest problem is water,” says Oumar Gueye, the chairperson of Sangalkam’s rural community council, emphasising the hopes of the villagers.

The construction of the basin in Sangalkam is part of a huge public works project to build 73 catch basins across the country. The project was initiated three years ago by the Senegalese government with support from the government of Taiwan. The project, which will cost nearly 13 million U.S. dollars, is expected to be completed in 2005. It will benefit farmers in 11 regions.

But for the moment, only 50 basins are scheduled for construction by the end of the year, and they will be built in only five regions: Matam and Louga in the north, Kaolack, Diourbel and Thies in central Senegal. These areas are known for agricultural or poultry production. Initially, the government had planned to implement an artificial rain project to run concurrently with catch-basin construction, but it has been put off until mid-September.

The towns chosen for the projects will also be the artificial rain test sites. The programme will target the pastoral and peanut-growing areas that have been hit hard by drought, and which have practically no water provision systems capable of storing excess rainwater.

An experiment in cloud-seeding – to induce additional rainfall – was attempted 35 years ago in Senegal, but was unsuccessful. According to Mamadou Seck, the Senegalese Minister of Equipment, Infrastructure and Transportation, the water catch basin programme will eventually revitalise parched valleys, but, more importantly, it will create new pastures that will help feed migrating flocks of livestock.

The basins, capable of storing between 20,000 and 60,000 cubic metres of water, will collect rainwater for farmers and breeders in arid regions.

Beside their ability to retain water and naturally replenish the water table, the basins will also fight erosion, says Diene Faye of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Water. Its barriers will also serve as paths during the rainy season and when certain areas of the village are flooded in winter, he explains.

With the completion of 50 of the 73 basins in 2003, four million cubic metres of water will be harnessed and stored, according to director of Rural Engineering Mohamed Thiam. Much of this water will be used to irrigate 500 hectares of land, which is expected to produce 10,000 metric tonnes of fruit and vegetables, he says.

”In years to come, we will see more farms in the interior of the country,” Thiam says. ”The other advantages of the basin will be to insure food security, agricultural diversification and food production culture”.

While horticulture plays an important role in Senegal’s food security, so it does in the country’s trade balance. In 2002, with food production at 300,000 metric tonnes, the country earned 70 billion CFA (about 123 million U.S. dollars) from agriculture. Nearly 60 percent of all food production occurs in Niayes.

”What we’re aiming at through this programme is to revitalise the rural job market so that producers no longer have to go to the city to look for job,” says Salif Ba, the programme supervisor.

The programme, however, is not without its critics. Robert Sagna, a former Minister of Agriculture, constantly contests the project’s usefulness by pointing out that with improvements made to the Manantali and Diama Dams on the Senegal River, water in Senegal has become easily available.

“With water now available in the dams, we can irrigate fields in pastoral areas and improve agricultural diversification,” he says. (END/IPS/AF/WA/TRA-FRE/EN/DV/AF/SZ/MN/03)