Land degradation in Burkina Faso. The country’s forests are under pressure from the expansion of farming areas. Courtesy: Burkina Faso Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development

By Brahima Ouédraogo
OUAGADOUGOU , Jul 20 2013 (IPS)

Burkina Faso has just received a grant of 30 million dollars from the Forest Investment Programme to help protect the country’s forests and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with deforestation.

Burkina’s forests are under pressure from the expansion of farming areas and the over-exploitation of firewood and other non-timber forest products. These include harvesting of immature fruit, extensive livestock grazing, bush fires, and – in certain regions – by gold mining, according to Luc Conditamdé, head of Tree Aid, an NGO based in Burkina Faso and Niger.

“Planting (new trees) is no longer as important as properly managing state and communal forests. The government needs to get communities to take more responsibility as forest management is decentralised,” Conditamdé tells IPS.

Improving governance and management of forests is one of the key objectives of the FIP, a programme in the framework of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) implemented by the world’s multilateral development banks.

Eight pilot countries were selected for the FIP, including the three African countries Burkina Faso, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each has been chosen for their potential to significantly reduce emissions from deforestation; conserve, manage or enhance carbon stocks; and incorporate climate finance into their policy frameworks and development activities.

A semi-arid country in the West African Sahel might seem a surprising choice, but Burkina Faso met many of the required criteria, says Mafalda Duarte, CIF coordinator and chief climate change specialist at the African Development Bank.

“Burkina Faso is the only country selected that has a relatively ‘low’ forest cover and a relatively ‘low’ rate of deforestation, which may be interpreted as a low potential for REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation).

“Nevertheless, its semi-arid ecosystem makes it a good site to test the relevance and the operationalisation of REDD+ in that kind of ecosystems, which are widely spread worldwide,” she tells IPS. “In addition, Burkina has quite a long experience in participative management of forests.”

FIP has four objectives, including facilitating transformational change in forest policy and practice in developing countries; and piloting replicable models to improve understanding of how policy, forest-related investment, sustainable management and long-term emissions reductions interact.

“The backbone of this programme is the involvement of local communities, who have to be regularly consulted,” Samuel Yéyé, the Burkina Faso co-ordinator for FIP/REDD tells IPS.

Burkina’s FIP programme will work in four regions of the country, each representing a different ecosystem. In addition to reducing emissions and enhancing stocks of carbon-storing forests, it is expected to have significant benefits in terms of poverty reduction, preservation of biodiversity and adaptation to climate change.

According to Yéyé, preliminary studies have already been carried out on the preservation of tree cover in these regions, their capacity to sequester carbon, and into ways to help generate income for locals through the use of non-wood products.

“Communities must make their contribution to forest conservation, and we must create new economic activities so that people do not one day revert to destroying the forests as a means of earning an income,” Yéyé emphasises.

Tree Aid’s Conditamdé says one of the keys to improved preservation and management of Burkina’s forests lies in transferring skills, responsibilities and resources to local authorities.

“Article 77 of the Code Général des Collectivités Territoriales dealing with transfer of responsibilities for the environment and management of natural resources has not been implemented. This causes problems in the management of forest resources at the level of the commune, and contributes to local authorities taking only limited responsibility in managing forests,” he tells IPS.

He also cites challenges linked to poor coordination between various bodies, as well as a lack clarity over the laws and regulations that formally govern land ownership. “These are often poorly understood by most people, for example the process of registration for forests. This situation complicates the handling of management of communal and community forests.”

But Conditamdé sees promising signs that the FIP programme will help.

“Putting transparent and equitable mechanisms in place to allow different actors to participate in formulating policy and implementing activities will help to address (these problems),” he says.

According to the implementation plan for Burkina’s FIP grant, the project will reduce CO2 emissions linked to deforestation and land degradation in Burkina Faso by around 30 to 70 million tonnes over a period of 10 years.

Rasmane Ouédraogo, coordinator for the national Poverty-Environment Initiative, says forests are critical to livelihoods in Burkina Faso, where 80 percent of the population depends on natural resources.

The authorities are expecting that the economic benefits of reduced soil degradation and better protection due to the FIP grant will be worth an estimated at 1.56 billion dollars over the project’s life.

“We had to convince the politicians, particularly those in charge of the economy and finance, that the environment contributes significantly to the national economy.  The contribution rose from three percent of GDP to more than 6.48 percent between 2002 and 2008,” Ouédraogo says.

An economic evaluation conducted in 2009 by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Fisheries showed that investments of this nature could lead to an increase in revenue for farmers ranging from 25 to 40 percent.

Despite an abundance of rain, promising good harvests for the current growing season, small-scale farmers and non-governmental organisations are calling for support to smallholders to be maintained with a view to eradicating food insecurity in Africa’s Sahel region.

The Permanent Interstate Committee for drought control in the Sahel forecasts that between 57 and 64 million tonnes of grain will be harvested in West Africa in 2012-2013, representing an increase of between five and 17 percent over the previous season.

“According to some studies, around 30 percent of cereal production is lost during and after harvest due to inappropriate harvesting techniques, threshing and storage; so you can understand that we’re only cautiously optimistic (there will be enough food for all),” said Roland Béranger Béréhoudougou, the regional head of disaster response and humanitarian assistance for the NGO Plan International.

But ROPPA, the West African Network of Smallholder Organisations and Producers, and the international charity Oxfam say the region is still facing its third major food crisis in less than a decade.

Africa’s Sahel region is expecting a good harvest, thanks to abundant rain. Credit: Zahira Kharsany/IPS

To avoid the next drought becoming a humanitarian emergency, they say, donors and governments must support investment in the productive capacities of small producers and build up reserve stocks of food. This will enable a swift response to future crises and help communities to manage volatility.

Oxfam noted that even in a year when harvests are good, 20 percent of the population suffers from malnutrition and hunger while 230,000 children across the Sahel die from causes linked to hunger.

In addition, the instability in Mali – where a transitional government is struggling to come to grips with the capture of the northern part of the country by Islamist groups – threatens to provoke a sharp drop in production of rice in the north, by as much as one- third, while half of all livestock could be lost in some regions, the group said.

“We’re in crisis every other year,” said Issiaka Ouandaogo, head of humanitarian affairs at Oxfam’s office in Burkina Faso. “So even when we have a good year, 20 percent of the population in the Sahel still faces food insecurity. We need to help small producers boost their resilience. That means access to seeds and agricultural inputs must be the focus.”

The successive failed harvests have left some rural households heavily indebted, so part of a good harvest now will go directly to repaying loans, often agreed at punishing rates of interest, Béréhoudougou told IPS.

In some villages in Niger’s western region of Tillaberi, smallholders who owe money to local merchants have pre-sold their millet crop for the equivalent of 14 dollars a bag – sometimes even less – while the real price of a bag of millet in the period immediately following the harvest is between 20 and 30 dollars, according to Béréhoudougou.

“The price of millet can rise to as much as 36,000 CFA (72 dollars) during the lean period (just before the next year’s harvest),” he said.

“We need to put an end to the hellish cycle of debt for rural households with a variety of actions such as cash transfers, cash-for-work programmes, micro-finance and cereal banks,” said Béréhoudougou.

“There’s support for farmers in Burkina Faso,” said Bassiaka Dao, president of the Burkinabè Peasant Confederation, “but it doesn’t match the needs of producers on the ground. Farmers need to be educated on the management of improved seed and subsidised fertiliser.”

According to Dao, 80 percent of small producers don’t enjoy this type of support from the government. Every year, he told IPS, the distribution of fertiliser and seed is announced, but then nothing is delivered, or farmers get too little – just one or two bags of fertiliser for the whole season.

In the west of Burkina Faso, Oxfam has put 20,000 dollars into a fund for small loans to allow farmers to buy these vital inputs for themselves. Their needs are modest, Dao told IPS: 40-60 dollars for a farmer working one hectare, perhaps

According to Dao, since it was set up in 2010, Oxfam’s rolling fund has helped 120 producers in that part of the country. The rate of repayment has been excellent: this year, 184 farmers will get loans from the fund, which has grown to 46,000 dollars.

“The fund’s beneficiaries are today producing 2,000 tonnes of grain between them. Some have bought livestock and escaped poverty,” said Dao, who wants to see a credit system adapted to the revenue of small farmers. “None of the formal banks or micro-finance institutions match up to our needs in terms of credit.”

For far too many households in Burkina Faso, going to the toilet means heading for the bush. The Burkinabè government has launched a new campaign to change this, calling on prominent personalities as both sponsors and champions.

“It’s an initiative based on solidarity between individuals and communities in order to speed up construction of latrines and put an end to defecation in the open air – which is a widespread practice more or less everywhere in the country – and to reduce diseases linked to poor hygiene,” explained Halidou Koanda, who works for the non-governmental organisation WaterAid.

In 2011, WaterAid and the Burkinabè Ministry for Water and Agriculture carried out a survey of the home villages of 70 notable people from all walks of life, including members of parliament, government ministers, and former presidents, prominent business people and sports personalities.

“When we toured their home villages, we found the same thing everywhere: the rate of open air defecation was close to 95 percent,” Koanda told IPS.

“In rural areas, it’s not rare to see VIPs who are hosting guests in their home villages for some occasion find themselves struggling to provide facilities for their guests to relieve themselves,” he said.

According to a 2010 survey carried out by the National Institute for Statistics and Demographics (INSD), the rate of access to a toilet inside the household is just 3.1 percent nationally. Nearly ten percent of urban households have a latrine, whereas in rural areas that falls to less than one percent.

“Even though the government and its partners are spending money on sanitation, the number of projects being completed each year will not allow us to attain the Millennium Development Goal in 2015,” said Marie Denis Sondo, director general of waste water and excreta at the ministry for water and agriculture.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a series of development and anti-poverty targets agreed by U.N. member states in 2000. One of the targets is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Faced with the slow progress on the question of hygiene and sanitation, the Burkinabè government and its partners launched a national campaign of advocacy and mobilisation for adequate access to sanitation in 2010.

At the end of the campaign, the government and its partners had constructed 617,000 household latrines and 13,200 public toilets built at a total cost of around 120.7 million dollars.

But the resources marshalled by the government and donors will not allow enough latrines to be built to reach the MDG in 2015, said WaterAid’s Koanda.

“So society’s leaders must lend their financial support to build latrines as well as give some of their time to raise awareness and mobilise people so that questions of hygiene and sanitation are prioritised,” Sondo told IPS.

The response to this call has come from the very top. The Burkinabè prime minister, Luc Adolphe Tiao, hails from the village of Pouni, a hundred kilometres south of the capital. Dominique Ido, Pouni’s mayor, told IPS the sanitation situation there is much the same as in other rural areas of the country.

“There are very few households with their own toilets in the village. Maybe two percent,” he said. “There are communal latrines in the schools and other public places, but people don’t use them at night. So we are hoping to bring everyone we can together around this initiative so we can increase the number of toilets between now and 2015.”

In August, the prime minister made his contribution. “The government decided last February that each person will make a gift of toilets in his village or neighbourhood. So I’ve constructed thirty in my village, hoping that this gesture will lead others to follow,” said Tiao.

“Sanitation has become a real problem in our country, and it’s an important indicator of development,” he said.

According to WaterAid, if significant numbers of VIPs follow the prime minister’s lead, it may still be possible to reach the MDG on sanitation.

To mobilise additional funding, the government and its partners also organised a “sanitation marathon” on public radio and television, which raised around 170,000 dollars.

“It’s the first time, but a successful effort. Now the government wants to see the initiative organised in each region so the most celebrated sons in each area can rally round the political and administrative authorities to make sure the question of toilets is no longer just a matter for the government,” said Koanda.

Arthur Kafando, the minister for commerce, said that his village, Rayongo, on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, is a newly subdivided area and lacks sanitation facilities. “I built a dozen toilets. We want to help people to understand the importance of these matters for their well-being. So we are going to appeal to many others to help us.”

Salou Bandé is proud to stand at the front of the only classroom in the village of Bénnogo, 90 kilometres north of the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, sharing his knowledge with his students. He is part of an initiative to improve education for nomadic children in the West African country.

Bandé’s slender build marks him out as a member of the nomadic Peul people, and he was one of the first teachers at the “School of the Shepherds”. This innovative educational institution takes in between 20 and 25 students each year, specifically targeting 12-year-olds who have never attended formal school.

“We start with a unit in Fulfulde (the local language) on malaria, then we continue with classes in history, geography, French language, and earth and life sciences – which covers livestock rearing, health, the environment and hygiene,” Bandé told IPS.

Bandé said he has 18 students in his class, including 11 girls. “They study as far as the Cours élémentaire 2ième année (the third year of primary school), then an exam administered by the Provincial Department of Basic Education allows the students to join formal school system. Our first cohort is now in its fifth year of high school.”

There are 300 students attending the unusual school in this region of the country.

According to Boubacar Barry, head of the education programme at the Association for the Promotion of Livestock Herding in the Sahel and the Savannah (APESS), putting children in formal school has a severe impact on a pastoral family’s livelihood.

Working alongside the Ministry of Education and Literacy in the north of the country where pastoralists make up 17 percent of the population, Andal et Pindal – a local association that has been instrumental in setting up the school for shepherds – conducted a study in 2003 which found that less than one percent of livestock herders’ children were enrolled in school.

The special school conducted its first classes that same year, welcoming students between nine and 15 years old in six counties of the northern province Sanmantenga. Of the 197 students in that first intake, 144 completed the four-year cycle and sat for a final exam.

This year, according to Mamadou Boly, a retired primary school inspector and president of “Andal et Pindal” (whose name means “knowledge and enlightenment” in Fulfulde), the shepherds’ school achieved an 85 percent success rate, and nearly two-thirds of students went directly into CM2, the final year of primary school. Several have gone on to secondary school and vocational training centres.

“We thought we were just training children from the cattle pens, but these children have left their settlements and are conquering the world,” said Boly.

Burkina Faso is attempting improve education for the nomadic Peul children by forming a “School of the Shepherds”. Credit: Julius Cruickshank/CC BY 2.0

He told IPS the school was born out of concern by individuals in pastoralist communities: “People who had been to school, and who realised that their community was not progressing.”

Moussa Diallo, president of the parent’s group at the school, registered both his son and daughter at Bénnogo. “We’ve realised that there is no longer enough space for livestock and agriculture. So to succeed in these sectors, knowledge is needed,” he said. “We can see the difference with those who have not gone to school.”

Boly agreed. “The kids say they don’t want to go to formal school, but it’s essential. So we have framed the standard curriculum with an accent on pastoralism, on earth and life sciences, health and hygiene,” he told IPS.

“It’s the management of time and space that’s different. It’s always the community itself that decides at what time each school opens and closes. When the students get out early, they can go water the animals and help their parents.”

In addition, the school is not in session at all from May to December, leaving students free to take part in the annual migration with the herds in search of pasture.

With the school in Bénnogo well established, further classrooms have been opened in six other villages in the region. With support from the Education Ministry and foreign partners, 15 more schools are expected to open in the 2012-2013 school year in the eastern and south-central regions (where rates of literacy and school attendance are lowest).

“The relevance of Andal et Pindal’s work lies in its focus on a very specific group which must be educated in its real context if we want to provide an adequate education which responds to the specific needs of its intended beneficiaries,” explained Rémy Abou, director general for basic education and non-formal education at the ministry for education. His department has helped the association design programmes and provided it with learning materials.

“We appreciate what this association is doing, because the government can’t do everything – especially when it comes to non-formal education where there is such a wide range of different needs,” said Abou.

“What the shepherd school has achieved is a precious safeguarding of the pursuit of education amongst people for whom education was not a priority,” said Barry from APESS.

It’s called “the bearing of the body” in Burkina Faso: when a death is deemed suspicious and a group of men carry the corpse through the community, believing the deceased will guide them towards the person responsible for the death. The accused – almost always women – are then chased out of their homes.

According to the Ministry for Social Action and National Solidarity, some 600 women across the country have fallen victim to this practice. Most have found precarious shelter at one of 11 centres around the country, run by various non-governmental organisations.

“It’s generally women who are accused of witchcraft – and when it’s men, they are able to move to other villages,” said Gérard Zongo, from the non-governmental organisation Commission Justice et Paix (CJP), which recently launched a campaign to support women accused of witchcraft.

Burkina Faso recently adopted a plan of action to end the practice of banishing women accused of witchcraft from their homes.

The new action plan, to be implemented between now and 2016, will see the Ministry for Social Action take over responsibility for victims of this type of social exclusion. Women driven from their homes will have access to legal and psychosocial support, as well as financial support to re-establish their livelihoods.

The plan has been five years in the making, said Boukary Sawadogo, director-general of the ministry, because its final drafting was complicated by the sensitivity of the question of witchcraft in this West African country.

“We’re not passing judgment on sorcery in Burkina, but we will respond to the facts, which are exclusion and violence,” he told IPS.

“It’s a social phenomenon which one cannot simply decree an end to. It’s a process that calls for a favourable environment to secure participation by everyone,” Sawadogo warned. “If the traditional chiefs are not ready, then you’ll never achieve it.”

While civil society and human rights organisations welcome the action plan, they are not entirely satisfied with the government’s level of ambition on this question.

“Contrary to what many people think, we could quickly put an end to this phenomenon. It calls for clear legislation; for example, we could ban ‘the bearing of the body’,” said Zongo, who directs CJP’s programmes against social exclusion.

“The authorities must be more ambitious, to achieve the plan’s objectives,” he said. “We feel they are not very proactive.”

For instance, the plan calls for legal support for women who have been excluded. But to date, only one woman has won a case – in early April – and been reunited with her family.

“It’s an excellent thing to have an action plan, but it’s still not perfect,” said Haridata Dacouré, president of the women’s rights NGO Femmes et Droits pour le Développement.

Dacouré believes that any approach which attempts simply to punish people who threaten and beat women accused of witchcraft will fail, pointing out that these actions are carried out by a crowd and it’s difficult to prosecute, convict and sentence the entire group.

Instead, she suggests measures that would oblige the head of the community, perhaps even the chief, to pay damages to the victim.

“I’m convinced that when we target the wallets of these people who burn down women’s houses, who assault and exclude women like this – when instead of the government taking care of the victims, we go into their pockets for money to reintegrate people – then they’ll think more carefully before they act,” Dacouré told IPS.

As part of its campaign to support women accused of witchcraft, Commission Justice et Paix is organising a series of “solidarity days” intended both to end these women’s isolation and to facilitate their reintegration. The campaign includes the adoption of victims by sponsors – to date, 120 women have been paired with sponsors who pay them regular visits to help ease their social isolation.

“We believe that the gravity of the problem needs to be urgently recognised,” said Sister Maria, from Ouagadougou’s Centre Delwindé, established in 1965 and home to nearly 400 excluded women, “to raise popular awareness so measures can be taken to avoid so much harm to people whose only crime is lacking the power to defend themselves.”

Burkina Faso’s Network for Access to Essential Medicines (RAME) has called on the Burkinabè government to increase the budget allocation to the health sector to avoid interruptions to AIDS treatment.

Despite an emergency plan announced in January, which will see the government spend around one billion CFA francs – two million dollars – to procure AIDS drugs in this West African country, patients and civil society groups are demanding permanent measures to ensure the availability of anti- retrovirals and reagents.

According to RAME’s coordinator, Simon Kaboré, there has been an interruption in the supply of drugs and reagents – chemicals needed for routine testing – which has hampered the fight against opportunistic infections. Furthermore, many AIDS associations are no longer putting new people on ARVs due to limited stock.

“It was good to see the government recognise its responsiblity vis-à-vis these illnesses and release a billion francs,” Kaboré told IPS, “but it’s not enough given the need to continue to put new people into treatment regimes as well as maintain care for older patients.”

Kaboré’s network, based in the Burkinabè capital, Ouagadougou, is a member of a monitoring committee for ARVs and other supplies linked to the the treatment of AIDS; he says around 27 million dollars will be needed this year, but the amount raised from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other partners is only around 13 million.

“We need the government to do more,” Kaboré said, underlining that government aid has come very late because for several months, many people living with AIDS could not get their regular monitoring at health centres. “Many have even lost their lives because they could not get ARVs.”

“Arrangements have been made so that we don’t remain in this situation,” says André Joseph Tiendrébéogo, permanent secretary of the government’s National Council for the Fight Against AIDS and Sexually Transmissible Infections. “We’re thinking about how to provide more than the billion francs.”

According to Tiendrébéogo, if nothing has been done by Mar. 31, there will be a disruption not only to the registration of newly-infected people, but in care for those who are already in treatment. He explained that a delay in negotiations over Burkina’s application for the 10th cycle of the Global Fund is at the root of the interruption of financing for ARVs. The Fund contributes 75 percent of the cost of care for AIDS patients in Burkina Faso, he told IPS.

Martine Somda, from REVS+, an association of people living with AIDS, told IPS that for several months, 60 people who needed to receive ARVs could not due to insufficient quantities of drugs.

“We stopped new enrolments at the end of 2010, and we have lost a dozen patients because most of those ill who received care for free are in the informal sector and cannot take over the payments,” said Somda, whose association – based in the western town of Bobo-Dioulasso – includes around 1,000 HIV+ people in treatment.

Somda is even more alarmed by another problem. “The drugs have arrived, but it’s necessary to rebuild stocks or we will have a shortage of reagents. It’s not a reassuring situation.”

The average cost of tests is around 34 dollars for a CD4 and transaminase count, she says.

“A sovereign country cannot rely on external resources. We need concrete action because we know that one day, people will be fed up,” says Mamadou Sawadogo, coordinator of the Network of People Living With HIV and AIDS in Burkina.

In 2007, Sawadogo’s network, which unites 84 associations working on AIDS, raised around 70,000 dollars by means of a “Sidathon”, a campaign to raise funds for AIDS care; this year they will organise another.

According to a 2000 report by the macroeconomic commission of the World Health Organisation, the cost per person of AIDS treatment is 34 dollars, which which would require the government to allocate 21 percent of the budget to the sector for optimal health, rather than the present 15.6 percent, Kaboré told IPS.

“We need an innovative system for finance, such as the one they have in France with Unitaid, by means of a small tax on airline tickets, or in Guinea which does the same, or even like Mali and Ghana which have just decided to put in place a fund to support the struggle against AIDS,” he says. “Because the number of people on ARV treatment continues to grow.”

The story of a pair of buffalo aggressively prowling the edges of a village in eastern Burkina Faso is a warning sign of severe water stress in the region which threatens humans and wild animals alike.

Low rainfall is having disastrous effects on wildlife in W Regional Park, which stretches across Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger. Credit: Nicolas Barbier/Wikicommons

People in nearly half of Burkina Faso’s administrative districts could face food shortages this year, and the the country’s environment ministry has also warned of disastrous consequences for wildlife. Water shortages are likely to cause increased conflict between people and animals, as is already the case in the eastern Bogandé region, where villagers were astonished by the boldness of two desperate buffalo.

“The buffalo wounded a farmer, but then remained near the village of Dorongou,” says Arzouma Tindano, who lives in the region. “We’ve never seen that. But the explanations from the wildlife officials – that the animals’ presence is linked to a lack of water – has calmed everyone.”

Urbain Bélemsobgo is the Director of Wildlife and Hunting in Burkina Faso. “This year, water stress is likely to result in shortages for large mammals who are most dependent on adequate water supplies,” he says.

“Normally, one needs to find permanent water sources within a ten kilometre radius. In a park covering 235,000 hectares (in Burkina alone), presently, you can go 30 or 50 kilometres without finding a single water hole,” says Pierre Kafando, the coordinator of Burkinabè portion of the W Regional Park, a 10,000 square kilometre area that stretches across Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger.

The park – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – is home to between 2,500 and 3,000 elephants, the largest concentration in West Africa, as well as up to 15,000 buffalo; there are also large numbers of roan antelope and big cats including leopards, lions and cheetahs. Some 450 bird species inhabit the transfrontier reserve, and it is also home to the highly endangered African wild dog.

The park’s administration includes wildlife management groups, which bring together people living near the park’s boundaries, the government, and operators with concessions for hunting in designated areas; according to Burkina Faso’s Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the groups raise awareness of the importance of protecting wildlife among farmers, who also receive financial benefits from the park.

Kafando says the low rainfall is having disastrous effects on wildlife, with many smaller species such as monkeys and oribi and duiker antelope already dying in worrying numbers.

“W Park usually receives 950 millimetres of water each year,” he told IPS. “This season, we have only had 600 or 650 mm. Most of our water holes have dried up and the situation is catastrophic.”

The survival instinct leads elephants to dig in dry stream beds where the water table is near the surface. “But these water holes are also traps for buffalo who get stuck in them,” Kafando says. But elephants and other species are also seeking water and food outside the park.

“We have observed animals ranging outside of their usual territory in the northeast and eastern parts of W Regional Park. These unusual movements of elephants and buffalo are due to the lack of water,” says Bélemsogbo. “And don’t be surprised if behind a herd of buffalo, one finds a lion or a leopard.”

The possibility that large animals are moving outside the park’s boundaries is confirmed by Célestin Zida, the Provincial Director of Environment and Sustainable Development in the eastern province of Tapoa.

“Lions are leaving the park and coming to eat local farmers’ donkeys. There have also been many complaints from locals who have already lost their granaries (to elephants),” says Zida.

Beginning in late 2011, the government has spent around 180,000 dollars creating artificial water points, drilling wells and installing solar-powered pumps to ease the water shortage. Some of the hunting operators have put in similar wells.

“We have to take preventive measures,” says Benjamin Traoré, one of the rights holders in eastern Burkina, who says he has drilled four wells in his site.

An emergency plan, with some 700,000 dollars of support from the World Bank, aims to drill 30 new wells and refurbish others, and to rent tankers with which to replenish existing ponds, according to Bélemsobgo. A broader European Union-backed programme costing 17 million euros will over the next five years establish water points, harmonise management across the park, and support increased tourism, he says.

“We have to do everything possible to protect these animals,” says provincial environment director Zida, “because if we lose them, we will not see some of them ever again.”

This year Fatimata Koama and her associates received more than half a million CFA francs as a reward for planting – and looking after – 1,200 trees in their small corner of Burkina Faso.

A locust bean tree in Burkina Faso. Credit: Vitelleria/Wikicommons

“Trees are important,” says Koama. “We plant mostly exotic species, but also mango, moringa, and pawpaw trees.”

Koama, who lives in the Nayala province of this semi-arid West African country, is the leader of a collective which calls itself “Magoulé”, meaning “I believe” in the local San language.

Magoulé’s payout – equivalent to about 1,200 dollars – is just part of more than 100,000 dollars disbursed over the past two years as a strategy to strengthen reforestation efforts, according to environmental group SOS Sahel and the Burkina Ministry of the Environment.

Forest cover threatened

According to a 2010 study by the environment ministry, 110,500 hectares of forest are degraded each year in Burkina Faso, about four percent percent of the total forested area. According to the study, valuable species like the yellow-flowering kapok, palmyra and locust bean tree are seriously threatened by deforestation.

The programme of incentives is designed to help slow this rapid deforestation; agreeing contracts that provide farmers a modest reward for looking after seedlings they plant has improved the survival rates of young trees to around 70 percent, as compared to just 10 percent in conventional reforestation campaigns.

“If a (newly-planted) tree survives for 24 months, we reward those who planted it,” explains Mouni Conombo, coordinator of SOS Sahel in Nayala. “We don’t pay them for all the work that goes into tending the sapling, but we encourage them, helping them understand how it is better to plant a tree and nurture it.”

The environmental NGO has been working with this strategy since 2001, using donor support to pay a cash bonus to producers who care for seedlings. Their success led the environment ministry to adopt the approach as a national policy.

Stimulating conservation

According to Salifou Ouédraogo, SOS Sahel’s executive director, the scheme was a response to the failure of classic reforestation programmes, in which as many as nine out of every ten saplings died. “We did some research, and found this method (of paying a bonus) had been used by the colonialists to introduce cocoa and coffee in Côte d’Ivoire,” he told IPS.

“At that time, villagers who were forced to plant the new cash crops would use hot water to secretly kill the cocoa and coffee seedlings. But the colonialists gave chiefs an incentive by giving them rewards such as rifles and cloth (for trees that survived). Cocoa and coffee were then accepted,” says Ouédraogo.

In its contemporary form, the reward has worked out to about a dollar per tree for the Magoulé group this year, but that doesn’t take into account the value of the growing trees.

“It’s been three years since I signed a contract,” says Boureima Dao, from the commune of Ey, in Nayala. “I have 11 hectares and I have earned a bonus of 206,000 CFA (around 438 dollars) for my orchard of fruit trees, which includes guava, papaya and mango trees.”

In Nayala province alone, more than 170 contracts have been signed with local farmers.

Expanding success

“People think that reforestation is very simple, but there are precautions to be taken so that the seedlings we stick in the ground will actually fight desertification,” the director of forests at the environment ministry, Adama Dolkoum, told IPS.

“Among these measures is protection of the saplings – because we are in an area with plenty of livestock. There are also human activities to account for, and there are natural factors which affect the success rate of plantations.”

“After the droughts of 1973-1974,” says Joachim Ouédraogo, director general for conservation at the environment ministry, “there were industrial reforestation efforts across Burkina with machinery and guards… and that worked well to begin with. But there were problems with this approach and with the ownership of these plantations. The strategy of using contracts makes those who plant trees take responsibility for them,” he told IPS.

The new strategy is not one hundred percent effective. “We give the seedlings to associations and they undertake to fulfill the contracts, but for every ten associations who sign up, only five return for the seedlings the following year, because the others have not respected the terms,” said Ouédraogo.

But for those who do, the strategy has transformed attitudes towards planting trees.

“It is different from the traditional programmes of reforestation in which one only provides seedlings,” says Conombo, of SOS Sahel in Nayala. “What we are trying to encourage is a real commitment to planting a tree and caring for it as one would care for a child.”

The conviction of three policemen for the February death of high school student Justin Zongo should be another building block in the struggle against impunity in Burkina Faso, say student leaders and human rights defenders.

At the conclusion of a two-day trial on Aug. 23, in Ouagadougou, the capital of this West African country, police constables Belibi Nébié and Béma Fayama were each sentenced to ten years in prison. They were found guilty of intentionally beating and injuring Zongo in February: the injuries led to his death soon afterwards. An officer, Narcisse Roger Kaboré, was sentenced to eight years for his involvement in the incident.

Lawyers for the three convicted men, who say the punishment is excessive, have announced they will appeal the judgement, but Ambroise Farama, lawyer for Zongo’s family, is satisfied.

“Justice has been served, because those responsible (for his death) have been named,” said Farama. “The aim of a lawsuit like this is to remind the forces of law and order that they cannot simply stop someone and torture him.”

The family had demanded only the symbolic amount of one franc as compensation.

Pushing back impunity

The death of Justin Zongo, on Feb. 20 in the southwestern town of Koudougou provoked violent demonstrations throughout the country, including the torching of public buildings, extensive destruction of private property, and six deaths, among them a police officer in the centre-west region.

The authorities, who initially attributed Zongo’s death to meningitis, retracted this claim following the riots as well as pressure from human rights organisations. A full inquiry into the death was ordered, leading to charges being laid against the police for the teenager’s death.

“The key point is that they have recognised that Justin did not simply die of meningitis. One must realise that his meningitis was provoked by his injuries,” said Kisito Dakuyo, the head of the Burkina Faso Movement for Human and People’s Rights (MBDHP) in the central Boulkiemdé province.

“We are interested in an educational significance that goes well beyond this verdict, and which challenges all those who harbour the idea of carrying out such acts,” said MBDHP’s national president, Chryzogome Zougmonré.

Zougmonré, who last year launched a campaign against all forms of torture under the theme “torture is an illegal, barbaric and cowardly act”, draws a parallel between the Justin Zongo affair and that of Arnaud Somé, 23, who died in suspicious circumstances in July 2010, also provoking riots in the southwest of the country.

Somé died after he was detained by police for possession of cannabis. The police were accused of torturing him and people took to the streets in several days of violent protest, setting fire to the regional police headquarters in Gaoua. The intervention of the army and the gendarmerie – armed elite police with responsibility for public order – was needed to restore order in the city.

In June, two members of the police force were found guilty of Somé’s fatal beating and sentenced to five years in prison.

Following the verdict, Dakuyo has renewed hope for justice in other cases, such as the unsolved assassination of Norbert Zongo, a journalist who was killed in December 1998.

“We believe that this is the beginning of justice for all the other dossiers which are pending, because our people have a thirst for justice, and this verdict gives hope for all outstanding cases,” said Dakuyo.

“There is positive momentum,” agreed Zougmonré. “We have noted that for too long, some police have been committing acts like these (beatings), particularly at certain sites of preventive detention (commissariats and guard posts). This must stop, because in a state ruled by law, one cannot tolerate the daily abuse of Burkinabè citizens.”

Opposition members of parliament in Burkina Faso have called on France to open its archives to look for evidence of involvement of the French secret services in the 1987 death of Thomas Sankara.

The late Thomas Sankara. Credit: Olivier Bain/Wikicommons

The call is the latest effort in a long-running struggle to force a full and open inquiry into the assassination which brought Burkina Faso’s current president, Blaise Compaoré, to power.

“Evidence presented in other countries indicates that France was involved in the death of Thomas Sankara,” said MP and lawyer Stanislas Benewindé Sankara – no relation to the former president – at a Jul. 16 press conference in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabè capital.

Benewindé Sankara and 11 other opposition parliamentarians wrote a letter to the French National Assembly in April asking it to open an inquiry into the assassination, calling on “cooperation between the two countries” and “the democratic values of France”.

The move builds on a petition launched in December 2009 by an international collective of lawyers demanding an independent inquiry into the death of Thomas Sankara. The lawyers – supported by several non-governmental organisations – hope information from the French archives will shed light on an affair which it believes demonstrates the workings of “Françafrique” (a term used to denounce an alleged policy of hidden machinations by the French government in Africa).

As the statute of limitations for crimes of this nature in Burkina Faso approaches, Sankara’s family and supporters have turned to the judicial systems of other countries.

But they have failed to establish the competence of foreign jurisdictions to consider a matter which took place amongst soldiers and on a military base.

In 2006, the lawyers’ collective turned to the U.N. Human Rights Committee for an investigation, but was stunned by the decision of the Committee two years later to close the file on the Sankara affair without any inquiry taking place.

Effectively, the Committee declared itself satisfied with the responses from the Burkinabè government and its recommendations, notably the identification of Sankara’s grave and the payment of compensation to his family, though this compensation has been rejected.

According to a Burkinabè lawyer who has followed the Sankara affair from the start – and who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity – the Burkinabè government will feel strengthened by the fact that after the decision from the U.N. Rights Committee, no other international court can consider the case.

“This is something that has taken place in Burkina, involving Burkinabès. So no one can force the Burkinabè government to agree to open a case,” explained the lawyer.

But according to the lawyers’ collective, the call for the opening of the French archives was supported by 6,600 people and has already received support from many personalities and associations in various countries.

Twenty French parliamentarians have so far backed a resolution demanding the creation of a commission of inquiry in France – 10 more MPs are needed to move forward.

These French parliamentarians, like their counterparts in Burkina, are convinced by evidence pointing to an attempt to destablise Burkina Faso, led by the French secret services. They believe it is their obligation “to do everything possible to shine a light on the hypothesis suggesting that French secret services worked together with elements of the Burkinabè military”.

In July, Simon Compaoré, the secretary general of the ruling Congress for Democracy and Progress party, attacked the determination of the MPs to reopen the Sankara affair, calling it simply “a way of passing time”.

Still relevant?

Yet the integrity of Burkina Faso’s justice system is among the factors behind a series of mutinies and protests that have shaken the country this year, according to former prime minister Ablassé Ouédraogo. In February, violent student demonstrations followed the killing of a student, Justin Zongo. The authorities initially said he died from meningitis before retracting this statment under pressure. Since then, five police officers have been charged with beating Zongo to death.

“There is no justice in Burkina. People do not trust the judicial system,” said Ouédraogo.

Arba Diallo, an opposition MP who served as foreign minister under Sankara, says the 1987 case is extremely relevant to the problems facing the country today. “If we are now in crisis, the most important reason is the failure of our judicial system. Is our justice system capable of playing its role?” he said.

“The day that this happens will be the day marking the end of an impunity which is the principal disease [affecting the country] today.”

Advocate Benewindé Sankara remains determined. “It’s now more a political than a judicial process and the current political scene in France could work against us. But when there is willingness shown towards Burkina Faso with its intermediaries in France, the case will one day be examined.”

The Burkina Faso authorities have sounded the alarm over the increased rate of degradation of forests in this Sahelian country.

According to a study by the Ministry for the Environment and Sustainable Development, some 110,550 hectares of forest are destroyed each year, just over four percent of the country’s total wooded area – around three-quarters of this annual loss linked to farming. The data covers forest loss between 1992 and 2002, but the trend continues, according the ministry.

The environment ministry’s study shows that in the eastern region of Kompienga, the destruction of wooded areas avearaged 1,600 square kilometres over each of the past 15 years. In Poni and Noumbiel, in the south-west, savannah forests have lost 60 percent of their area, giving way to scrublands.

“The contributing factors are decreased rainfall, bush fires, the demand for wood and non-wood products, and clearing of forest in order to have larger harvests,” said Soumaila Bancé, the country coordinator for the Convention on Biodiversity at the National Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development.

“We have an increase in demand which exceeds supply. The population is growing and the resources are no longer sufficient to feed it. The area that we have restored is not enough to cover the demand,” said Bancé. The growth rate of the Burkinabé population is 3.1 percent, according the most recent census, in 2006.

But poverty is also a factor, pushing unemployed youth to go after resources which do not belong to anyone/public-common resources. They cut green wood without waiting for it to reach maturity, said Bancé.

“They’re gathering immature fruit; only when the fruit is allowed to ripen, is there the chance of regeneration because the seeds of ripe fruit can germinate and grow up to replace the big trees,” said Bancé.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is extremely concerned by the accelerated degradation of forests in Burkina Faso, which also affects the soil. The IUCN says that between 1992 and 2009, the centre-west of the country saw an extremely elevated rate of deforestation for agriculture, which estimates the area lost to cultivation at 40 percent.

Overall, there was an acceleration of degradation beginning in the 1990s, according to an IUCN study published in May 2011. Between 1982 and 1990, the union put losses at around 11 percent per year, but in the past decade, the area degraded reached 43 percent.

“There are a number of threats which threaten the biological diversity of our country due to the accelerated degradation of forests,” said Mouni Sawadogo, head of the IUCN programme in Burkina Faso.

The degradation of forests threatens the existence of more than sixty plant species. The red list of the IUCN shows that there are also animal species threatened with extinction, and in some lakes, stocks of some fish species are only a twentieth what they were 30 years ago.

According to Bancé, the baobab, kapok and wild plum trees are among the plant species threatened with disappearance.

“There is a awareness, but the lack of financing means there’s no follow-up, and the forest code is not applied/enforced,” says Sawadogo.

“If we want to restore biodiversity and slow the destructive action in the forests, we must continue with reforestation,” says Sina Sere, the director general of the National Centre for Forest Seeds. Each year, ten million seedlings are planted in the framework of reforestation campaigns, but very few survive for lack of care.

A strategic plan for 2010-2020, adopted in Nagoya, Japan, calls on each country to restore at least 15 percent of its degraded zones each year between now and 2015.

According to the IUCN, forests currently produce a sixth of world emission of carbon when they are logged, overexploited or degraded.

In contrast, stresses the IUCN report, forests react sensitively to climate change when they are managed sustainably. They produce wood for fuel, which can favourably replace fossil fuels. And they also have the potential to absorb a tenth of the expected world carbon emissions for the first half of this century in their biomass and store it permanently.

“We must involve people in the management of forests because they have a real capacity to respond. It is here that innovative smallholders or conservation actions can succeed; we have to learn from their experience, and combine this with research findings and make this available so we can reproduce what has already worked,” insists Sawadogo. “This will allow [us] to maintain biodiversity on the ground, and also allow people to live in this way.”

“For the preservation/conservation of natural resources – the sustainable use of natural resources – social and economic components must be integrated in the process of conservation,” addes Sawadogo. Principles of good governance must be respected at all levels of natural resources, he says.

*The original story incorrectly stated that IUCN was the International Union of Concerned Scientists when it is in fact the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The government of Burkina Faso has responded to long-standing demands of farmers for greater support for small family producers with the launch of “Operation 100,000 Ploughs”. Smallholder farmers say this will strengthen the country’s food security.

“The operation is welcomed by the Confédération Paysanne du Faso,” said Bassiako Dao, who is president of the country’s largest smallholder farmer organisation. “Because today, the difficulty facing our agriculture sector is that it is not mechanised. Mechanisation would allow us to quickly reduce the labour time needed.

“Instead of having five people working year-round on two hectares, with an animal-drawn plough, just one person can work two hectares in four days, covering half a hectare per day. The four others are freed up to do something else,” Dao told IPS.

The operation, launched in June, will make 20,000 ploughs available to the poorest rural households in each of the next five years, half of them to be given to women. According to Dao, the ploughs will be made affordable thanks to an 80 percent subsidy from the government.

Access to such equipment varies widely across Burkina Faso. The agriculture ministry says that half of the farmers in the cotton-producing regions of the country have access to some level of mechanisation,

but in other zones this falls to just one or two percent.

Agriculture vital

The agriculture sector generates 40 percent of the gross domestic product of Burkina Faso and the authorities hope that with funding for agricultural mechanisation over the next four years, it can raise the proportion of farmers who are mechanised country-wide from the present 20 percent to 75 percent in 2015.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, draught power is the most widespread form of mechanisation in Burkina, where 30 percent of households own at least one draught animal; 30 percent of these households also possess a tool for tillage and 20 percent have a cart.

Alfred Sawadogo, head of the non-governmental organisation SOS Sahel, also welcomed the announcement of the programme which, he says, responds to the demands from smallholder farmer organisations for the improvement of family-based production.

“The government must support family farms and help them to modernise and improve their productivity. In the west of the country, the availaibility of land allows family operations to expand to up to 50 hectares from a base of five or seven hectares,” Sawadogo told IPS.

Farmers also say that tilling with a plough allows the soil to better absorb water, preserving moisture far longer than a field tilled with a traditional hoe, known in Burkina Faso as a daba. Sawadogo also explains that animals provide a natural fertiliser in the form of manure.

“This is why the programme is attractive, because it will allow small agriculture to develop itself,” says Dao.

Women, who constitute an important part of the agricultural labour force will receive half of the ploughs. “They will till more than the usual quarter of a hectare – they’ll be able to cultivate as much as four hectares,” says Dao. “The sight of women bent over, working in a field, babies on their backs; that will be finished, thanks to this initiative.”

“We have been waiting for this operation to boost our farming for a long time, because with the daba, we couldn’t do much better. More than 70 percent of producers use hoes,” says Nimbnoma Sawadogo, president of the Regional Agriculture Chambers of Burkina Faso.

Food security

At the G20 summit held last June, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo Nwanze, warned that to neglect small producers risks aggravating food insecurity and instability of the prices of staple foods.

According to IFAD, the current increase in food prices had pushed 44 million people into poverty worldwide, creating a new and explosive situation.

Since the demonstrations against the high cost of living in the country in 2008, the government has provided around 15.7 million dollars of support to farmers in the form of agricultural inputs.

The investment is in line with the idea that agriculture is a particularly sound investment: according to numerous studies, GDP growth arising from agriculture is twice as effective in reducing poverty than growth in other sectors.

“We have to encouarge this initiative which will benefit families. On the other hand, we are opposed to those who have plenty of money, and buy 150 hectares and a Caterpillar and then strip the land of trees and plant cotton or maize,” says SOS Sahel’s Sawadogo, who is critical of authorities’ encouragement of agri-business operators in recent years.

“It’s a bad form of agriculture which will destroy our environment and our soils which cannot support work with tractors for a long time. If there is not adquate support so that there is organic fertiliser with livestock to enrich the soils, the tractors will turn our soil into sand,” warned Sawadogo.

Despite decisively putting down the most recent mutiny by rebellious soldiers, the Burkinabé government is facing questions over its ability to provide a long-term resolution to a crisis that has gripped the country for several months.

Soldiers have taken to the streets since March, demanding a daily food allowance and a housing subsidy among other things. Provisional reports say the latest rebellion, at the end of May, resulted in dozens of injuries and seven deaths, including six mutineers and a 14-year-old girl who was killed by a stray bullet.

After three consecutive nights of violence, looting and shots fired into the air in Bobo-Dioulasso, the economic capital of the country, soldiers from the presidential guard were sent to put down the rebellion on May 31. Nearly 60 soldiers were arrested, according to military authorities, who have announced that they will be charged with “rebellion and theft”.

One earlier mutiny, on Apr. 14, involved the unit responsible for presidential security, leading President Blaise Compaoré to dismiss the top leaders of the military and replace the prime minister. He also personally assumed the portfolio of minister of defence.

“I am worried because everyone is asking how this could happen in Burkina Faso,” the former foreign minister, Ablassé Ouédraogo, told IPS. “We have lost the credit we had with the international community because we were perceived as a peaceful country, a stable country.”

“I believe we need a long-term, a structural solution to the country’s problems because the country’s problems are structural. Short-term solutions won’t definitively solve this question. Burkinabés must discuss this amongst themselves; there is a responsibility to deal with things differently than they have been thus far,” added Ouédraogo, now a private consultant.

Etienne Traoré, an opposition member of parliament from the Faso Metba party (the name means “builders” in the Moré language) said the protests by soldiers, who have demandied a daily food allowance and a housing subsidy, are an expression of wider frustration and a profound malaise in the population.

“This is the result of a style of governance that produces social exclusion, oppression, alienation and which has created frustration for people,” he told IPS.

“There is distrust (of the government) and one of the reasons for this is that people are tired of the system and want change,” said Traoré. Several opposition parties suspect Compaoré, whose term will expire in 2015, of wanting to amend Article 37 of the constitution which limits the number of presidential terms a person may serve, to allow him to stand for re-election. Compaoré has ruled the country since a 1987 coup d’etat; he was first elected to the presidency in 1991, and if he were to stand again, it would be for a fourth term as head of state.

“The question of Article 37 is on everyone’s mind at the moment. Let those who are not involved with a change to the article say so clearly, and that will lift the weight of suspicion,” says Ouédraogo. But the former foreign minister also says it is a mistake to focus on the question of another term for Compaoré.

“When we analyse the national situation, Article 37 is not the most pressing issue… we should be focusing on problems of development, because in Burkina Faso, we have three major challenges on this level,” said the former minister.

According to Ouédraogo, these challenges are the high cost of living, the struggle against poverty – especially the equitable sharing of wealth – and justice.

“There is no justice in Burkina. People do not trust the judicial system. It’s essential to have a fair judicial system,” said Ouédraogo.

The string of mutinies were preceded by violent student demonstrations in February, demanding justice after the killing of a university student, Justin Zongo, in Koudougou, in the centre-west of the country. The authorities initially said he died from meningitis before retracting this statment under pressure. Since then, five police officers have been charged with beating Zongo to death.

The outgoing European Union repesentative in Burkina Faso, Amos Tincani, was also critical of inadequate reforms to the judicial system, before leaving the country at the end of May. He said he believed the success of reforms in Burkina was linked to success in similar efforts in other West African countries.

According to Tincani, a 22 million dollar project to pursue reforms never saw the light of day because of a lack of political will.

“In Burkina Faso’s present crisis… there are deep problems which go back a long time, but justice is the most important concern for all social groups in the country,” he said.

By Brahima Ouédraogo and Terna Gyuse
OUAGADOUGOU and CAPE TOWN, Dec 8 2010 (IPS)

More than 20 million people will be vaccinated between now and the end of the year in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger as a mass vaccination campaign using a new conjugate vaccine unfolds across West Africa. Manufactured in India, MenAfriVac offers health authorities a powerful weapon against a deadly disease.

Meningitis is an infection of the membrane that surrounds the brain and spinal column. It is most prevalent in a region known as “the meningitis belt”, which extends across sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east.

Between 1995 and 1997, a severe meningitis epidemic infected 250,000 people in this region, killing 25,000. Five to ten percent of patients who catch the disease die within 24-48 hours after symptoms appear; 10 to 20 percent suffer serious neurological damage, including loss of hearing and learning difficulties.

According to the World Health Organization,14 African countries put in place stronger surveillance in 2009 which recorded a total of 78,416 suspected cases of meningitis, and 4,053 deaths – the highest number since the 1996 epidemic.

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are at the heart of the affected region, and all three countries are involved in the latest phase of the introduction of the new vaccine. Where the previous vaccine offered immunity for just three years, the MenAfriVac protects for ten years and can be given to people aged from one to 29 years of age.

It’s a victory that has harnessed the capability of Indian pharmaceutical companies to produce advanced drugs at an affordable price.

According to Dr Prasad Kulkarni of the Serum Intitute of India Ltd, which manufactures MenAfriVac, the company was approached by the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) in 2002 about developing a vaccine against group A meningitis for sub-Saharan Africa.

Kulkarni says several multinational pharmaceutical companies had already declined an invitation from the MVP, a partnership between WHO and the non-profit organisation PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health), because with group A meningococcus essentially non-existent in industrialised countries, the cost of devoting resources to this project rather than something more lucrative was deemed to high.

“Serum Institute’s company policy is dedicated to making affordable vaccines available to the children of the world,” says Kulkarni. “Therefore developing a meningococcal conjugate vaccine fit into our business strategy and philanthropic philosophy, and we told MVP that we could manufacture the vaccine in volume at a cost that would not exceed US $0.50 per dose.”

The vaccine is produced at SIIL using technology developed at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). SIIL scaled up the process for commercial manufacturing.

“Transferring the conjugation technology from CBER to SIIL was probably the greatest challenge, but acquiring this know-how gave SIIL the opportunity to add a better product and replace a polysaccharide vaccine that does not work very well,” Kulkarni told IPS.

Dr Marie-Pierre Preziosi, who works with WHO’s Product Development and Research Team of the Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Department says MenAfriVac has many advantages over the previous vaccine, beginning with the longer protection it confers.

“It [also] confers “memory”, that is, if a person is immunised and meets with the bacteria or the agent of the disease again later on, the body will remember and will react better. And it works in younger children. All in all it’s a very good tool for prevention that we have in hand.”

The vaccine was approved by the Drugs Controller General of India in December 2009 – and MenAfriVac is a useful addition to India’s drug arsenal as well, as there have been outbreaks of group A meningitis in South Asia in the past 30 years. The vaccine was pre-qualified by the World Health Organization in June 2010.

“Transferring the technological expertise to make a conjugate vaccine to SIIL considerably reduced the production cost of the vaccine, and the model allowed for the opportunity to design a vaccine-based strategy [in line with] the actual vaccination needs in Africa,” Kulkarni says.

SIIL is now producing a meningococcal vaccine that will be used in 25 countries in Africa where 450 million people are at risk for meningitis.

SIIL will provide 25 million doses of MenAfriVac over the next ten years. According to the MVP, each dose will cost around 40 cents, compared to $10-20 cost of the vaccine elsewhere in the world or $100 for a tetravalent vaccine in the U.S.

Burkina Faso alone needs 14 million dollars to immunise the part of its population that is most at risk. In December, 70 percent of the 15 million Burkinabés will be vaccinated, covering the reservoir population for the disease. The country’s health minister explains that the remaining 30 percent of the population should then enjoy de facto protection.

According to WHO, 500 million dollars will be needed to vaccinate the at-risk population under 29 years of age across sub-Saharan Africa; the agency is working to mobilise this money from donor countries and institutions.

Excerpt:

By Brahima Ouédraogo
OUAGADOUGOU, Jul 18 2009 (IPS)

Burkina Faso was one of several countries that where a rapid rise in food prices led to rioting in the streets in 2008. Policy-makers had sensed a crisis developing, but the country was not able to build up sufficient reserves of imported commodities such as rice, wheat and oil to avoid it. There is now an emphasis on achieving food security.

Bonou tells IPS that Burkina Faso is one of the handful of countries respecting the Maputo commitment to spending at least ten percent of its budget on agriculture.

A ten-year old programme of building small dams to support irrigation has continued, and production of improved seed has been reinforced.

Government is also supplying producers with free seed as well as heavily subsidised fertiliser, tractors and pumps for irrigation.

IPS: How much has it cost to invest in increasing agricultural production? Alphonse Bonou: Last year’s investment in tractors and pumps cost 15 billion CFA francs (about $30 million). Seed came to 6.5 billion CFA francs (approximately $13 million) and fertiliser 10 billion CFA francs (approximately $20 million).

This year, we will not be committing the same budget because seed has been produced by the National Seed Union of Burkina Faso. But with fertiliser, the quantities distributed will go up and the price too, though slightly.

IPS: So because of the crisis, the state, which had pulled out of seed production, came back into the fray! AB: The state has always invested in seed production. But since the advent of structural adjustment programmes, seed production is meant to be transferred to the private sector. However, the state maintained 17 seed farms, however these farms could not produce all the seed needed, given the area under consideration.

Each year, with our support and the support of research, farmers make preparations to produce the correct quantity of seed needed. This is why in 2004, we pushed for the creation of the National Seed Union of Burkina Faso, which plays an important role in the production of seed.

Most importantly, today everyone knows that improved seed quality can contribute 40 percent to the yield and performance of each crop. Other factors make up the remaining 60 percent (farming and irrigation methods).

We have established seed farms and provided land for seed-producing initiatives. Each year there is an expected harvest of 6,000 tonnes: last year, there were 10,000 tonnes and we are expecting 15,000 tonnes this season.

IPS: Could Burkina Faso one day reach food self-sufficiency? AB: Actually, we’re already there, we just need an organisation to improve the management of small-holders’ harvest, where forecasts are not always available. After the harvest, everyone just wants to rest and attend to things like funerals. With such a long break (there is only one rainy season, the three months from July-September), it is difficult to make any predictions.

As a result, grain stores are not integrated into a properly managed distribution channel. This is why we need regulation to help small producers.

IPS: What are you doing to ensure producers can work all year long without waiting for the rain? AB: Irrigation is an important part of our agricultural policy, because with our climate (700 – 1200mm of rain each year in Burkina Faso), if everything hinged on the rain falling, nothing would go as planned if the rainy season wasn’t good. So some free time must be used (for farmers) to get back into production – which cannot be done without proper water management.

It is expected that irrigated agriculture will increasingly become more important than rain-fed agriculture as we move towards a new cycle of producing three times a year in areas where water can permanently be supplied.

We want to mirror the example of Israel, where people work only when they want to work. Right now we have 30,000 hectares of irrigated land and we want to take this to 500,000 hectares.

IPS: Is Burkina Faso presently respecting the 2003 Maputo declaration’s call to invest 10 percent of the budget in agriculture, in order to increase agricultural production and attain food self-sufficiency within five or six years? AB: Before 2003, the country invested heavily in agriculture, taking into account external aid. After 2003, Burkina Faso became stronger and now invests 15 percent of the national budget. I believe that Burkina Faso is a leader in terms of volume and is second-placed regarding yield, after Malawi.

IPS: Will the new land law not deprive small farmers of land, especially women? AB: The land and agrarian reorganisation bill of 1989 stated that the land belonged to the State, but the new law significantly takes women into account because it says that 25 percent of communally-owned land should be placed under the ownership of women, either as individuals or associations.

Women are also able to compete for the remaining 75 percent. But on the (reserved) 25 percent , no men will have access.

IPS: Will small producers in Burkina be protected by agribusiness, an element identified as necessary in recent years? AB: Let me point out that agribusiness does not refer to large farms. I went to Israel, where, from one quarter of a hectare, people have a yield of 100 tonnes of tomatoes. They make agribusiness work because they have a market and make money.

Here, the concern is that people will be working with large plots. But this is not the case. All our efforts will help all producers, and we will do everything to make sure they have the inputs and are able to freely access the land.

The law which has just been adopted says: the owner of each plot of land in the rural areas will be given a certificate of ownership of land. A lease, valid for up to 99 years, will be given to everyone. The state will maintain control of major facilities and large forests. Medium-sized facilities and forests will be registered in the name of municipalities. The private sector will be given land as well as land titles, as a way of adding value to the land.

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