Farmers in Médina Yoro Foula, in Senegal’s southern Kolda region, are expecting a good grain harvest this year, and hope to sell thousands of tonnes of grain in the local and regional markets.

“The harvest will be far better than last year’s,” said Moussa Sabaly, from the Regional Office for Rural Development (DRDR) in Kolda.

Médina Yoro Foula département has a population of around 120,000, nearly 90 percent of whom are farmers and herders. Local farmers will also sell part of their produce in the neighbouring countries of Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea.

DRDR statistics show that in 2011, farmers harvested 8,225 tonnes of millet from 1,012 hectares. They also reaped 1,626 tonnes of sorghum from 2,255 hectares and 4,485 tonnes of maize from 2,997 hectares. Fifty-five hectares planted with black-eyed peas yielded 30 tonnes.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture’s Office for Analysis, Projections and Statistics, Senegal produced more than one million tonnes of grain in 2010-2011, including 102,714 tonnes from the Kolda region.

“Every Sunday throughout the year, producers bring three or four trucks – each loaded with ten tonnes of locally-produced grain – to the weekly market in Médina Yoro Foula,” farmer-herder Moussa Sabaly (no relation to the DRDR official), president of the National Federation of Cotton Producers of Senegal, told IPS.

“Our area is truly a grain-producing zone. I can’t say what the total tonnage of grain will be by the time the growing season ends, but we are definitely expecting an extraordinary harvest,” he said.

The ministry’s office for statistics is still working on the results of the 2011-2012 growing season, and has not provided definitive figures for the present year.

“We are expecting an increase in grain production despite difficulties linked to a lack of resources for smallholders, poor soil, and the lack of roads to provide access to farms,” said Aliou Badara Baldé, who was a grain producer before his election in 2009 as the mayor of Pata, a commune in Médina Yoro Foula.

Baldé told IPS: “The total grain production here will be 50, even 60 percent higher than last year.” The harvests will be completed between late September and late December.”

In this part of Senegal, in addition to family farms, producers are members of cooperatives known as economic interest groups (GIEs) with a view to combining their efforts to increase production.

The Pata agro pastoral coop, created ten years ago, planted 50 hectares of maize this year. “This area can yield 2.5 tonnes per hectare, which would mean a total of 125 tonnes of maize,” said Kébé Baldé, one of the leaders of the cooperative.

“We have not yet finished harvesting our maize, but we’re expecting a good yield. And our GIE has just acquired, with support from our (Senegalese and Spanish) partners, some agricultural equipment including threshers, in anticipation of a commercialisation programme which has not yet started,” Baldé told IPS.

For his part, the Senegalese minister for agriculture and rural infrastructure, Abdoulaye Baldé, speaking on the sidelines of the launch of a campaign for the commercialisation of groundnuts, said that grain production at the national level is estimated at 1,673,730 tonnes in 2011-2012, against 1,099,279 the previous year.

According to the minister, cereal production this year recorded an increase of 52 percent when compared to the 2010-2011 campaign.

“It was Ibrahima Sarr, a friend and fellow fisherman, who got me involved with smuggling people across the seas.” Senegalese fisherman Doudou Ndoye speaks with the bittersweet conviction of a man redeemed.

“Our clients paid between 200,000 and 300,000 CFA francs (400 to 600 dollars) per person, with 96 passengers on each boat,” he told IPS.

Sarr and Ndoye were “passeurs”, people-smugglers organising risky voyages from the coast of Mauritania across the open seas to the Spanish-owned Canary Islands in small fishing boats.

Those waters have claimed the lives of many hopeful migrants from Ndoye’s home, the Senegalese fishing community of Thiaroye-sur-mer. More than 150 young people from this small fishing village on the outskirts of Dakar have died in the crossing, according to COFLEC, the Women Against Clandestine Emigration Collective. They left behind 88 children. The collective says 374 minors from the village have been detained in Spain and 210 local youth repatriated to Senegal from Europe as well as Cape Verde and Morocco, where they were preparing to venture the passage.

“Seven of my own cousins have disappeared on the high seas,” Ndoye said. “From my neighbourhood alone, seven other young people have died at sea, two were repatriated after being caught by the Moroccan coast guard.”

Five years ago, at a funeral for a group of young Senegalese who died trying to emigrate, Yayi Bayam Diouf decided she had had enough. “I decided to organise women who had lost their husbands, sons or brothers crossing the sea, and create an association to fight against this curse.”

She set up COFLEC to work against clandestine migration, both through awareness campaigns that help people better understand the risks of trying to emigrate in this way, and by creating jobs that encourage young peopLe to stay and build their futures in Thiaroye-sur-mer.

Today, the collective has 375 members and a wide range of income-generating activities. There is food processing, making couscous from maize, millet and black-eyed peas. There is seafood – the collective brings three tonnes of smoked and dried fish and shrimp to market every year.

Members also make juice out of whatever is to hand, lemons, oranges and mangoes, hibiscus and ginger, as well as from the green pulp hidden inside the brown pods of the ditah (also known as sweet detar, a fruit popular across West Africa’s Sahel regions).

COFLEC also makes three tonnes of soap per year from local materials (palm oil, caustic soda, shea butter and neem oil), earning around 16,000 dollars.

All told, the collective produces 30 tonnes of various goods for sale in local markets, in neighbouring Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire, and even overseas in Europe and the United States. Receipts come to around 70,000 dollars a year.

Some of this income supports microcredit, with the group lending nearly 20,000 dollars a year to its members and to people trying to re-establish themselves after being repatriated from Europe. COFLEC has also spent nearly 100,000 dollars on two fishing boats with the aim of easing 50 former passeurs back into legitimate work on the seas, Diouf told IPS.

“We put the finance for this together thanks to our own contributions and a grant from the Beneteau Foundation, based in France. The Spanish overseas development programme also helped us with a loan,” she said.

These initiatives came too late for Ndoye’s close friend, Ibrahima Sarr: he was lost at sea after he took his place in one of the small boats sailing for El Dorado. But for the young residents of Thiaroye-sur-mer, the energy and initiative of COFLEC points to a golden future closer to home.

Regional leaders meeting in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, on May 3 appeared to slightly retreat from their positions against coup leaders in Guinea-Bissau and Mali, but the Economic Community of West African States continues to press for a speedy return to constitutional rule in both countries.

The Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, who is also the current head of ECOWAS, said “The seriousness of events in Mali and the rejection of our resolutions by the junta have slowed the momentum of implementation of our decisions.”

His remarks came as the country’s military junta rejected the regional organisation’s plan to deploy troops to the West African country – this despite the continued control of the north by Tuareg rebels and Islamist forces, and an Apr. 30 outbreak of fighting between rival groups of soldiers in the capital, Bamako, that lasted for three days.

Heads of state at the Dakar summit also had to respond to the rejection by the Guinea-Bissau military of key details of a proposed interim administration for that country.

A revised plan from ECOWAS calls for Guinea-Bissau’s parliament to extend its term, with a newly-elected speaker of the house assuming the role of interim president for a one-year transitional period.

“Neither the interim president nor the transitional prime minister may stand as candidates in the eventual presidential election,” stressed Kadré Désiré Ouédraogo, the president of the ECOWAS Commission. “Appropriate mechanisms will be found to extend the mandate of the current parliament to cover the transition period.”

Analysts say the new resolution appears to show a softening of ECOWAS’s position on Guinea-Bissau. The regional organisation initially wanted Raimundo Pereira – a member of the dominant African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and interim president at the time of the coup – to head a transitional government, but this was rejected by the coup’s leaders in Bissau.

Ouédraogo added that the ECOWAS Standby Force will be deployed to Guinea-Bissau to supervise the withdrawal of the Angolan Technical Assistance Mission, ensure security during the transitional period, and support reforms of the defence and security forces.

The PAIGC, whose candidate was poised to win a second round of presidential elections before the Apr. 12 coup intervened, has since condemned the new plan. “Our party … will not take part in any transition government and we reiterate our position taken since the coup, which is that Raimundo Pereira and Carlos Gomes (prime minister at the time of the coup) be returned to their respective posts,” said PAIGC secretary general Rui Dia Sousa.

The summit instructed the ECOWAS Commission to seek assistance from the African Union, the United Nations and the wider international community to implement these initiatives in Guinea-Bissau, he concluded.

Turning to the Malian crisis, the Dakar summit called on transitional authorities there to accelerate the elaboration of a roadmap for a return to constitutional rule, including a clear timeline for legislative, organisational and operational activity leading up to the holding of presidential elections in Mali.

“The Summit repeats that any person who obstructs the proper functioning of institutions of the Republic will be subject to targeted sanctions,” stressed Ouédraogo.

West African heads of state also made a fresh call to Mali’s armed forces to devote themselves to the protection of the country’s people and its territorial integrity, and to refrain from any acts likely to disturb the transition process. ECOWAS added that it would only send troops to Mali at the request of the interim authorities.

Here too, analysts note that ECOWAS has reconsidered decisions taken at an earlier special summit (in Abidjan on Apr. 26) when it committed to sending an armed force to Mali. The junta in Bamako rejected this out of hand, arguing that it would violate the country’s sovereignty.

At a May 2 press conference, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa, Saïd Djinnit, warned of the serious threat posed by the instability in Mali.

“The situation, particularly in the north, constitutes first of all a serious threat to Mali, but also to the whole of West Africa and globally,” he said.

“(The United Nations) will support all sub-regional initiatives to fight against terrorists present in northern Mali,” said Djinnit.

At the opening of the summit in Dakar a day later, Senegalese President Macky Sall called for all parties to persevere along a path of dialogue, adding that, “(ECOWAS seeks) to eradicate the seeds of destabilisation which, in the end, will not spare any country in the region.”

Despite the intense focus on Mali and Guinea-Bissau over the past month, Ouattara urged leaders to remain focused on development in the region.

“The management of political crises like the ones we have had to deal with at these summits must leave space for the other objectives of our regional organisation, including the construction of roads, schools, and hospitals, and improving living conditions for people and especially youth employment.”

Political scientist Massaer Diallo, the president of the Institute for Political and Strategic Studies in Dakar, said, “The final resolution from ECOWAS shows there is still a reluctance to respect democracy. Constitutional rule must be re-established in Guinea-Bissau, and it is also fundamental in the case of Mali.”

“Despite all the negotiations that can take place at the international level, the question of Mali’s territorial integrity is non-negotiable, and it calls for the entire international community to restore it.”

Six West African heads of state will attend a regional summit in Guinea on Monday, to discuss the situation in neighbouring Guinea Bissau, where an Apr. 12 coup d’état aborted presidential elections.

The Economic Community of West African States sent a delegation to Bissau, the capital, immediately following the coup to urge the immediate restoration of constitutional rule.

Ahead of the Apr. 23 summit, ECOWAS has rejected the authority of a National Transitional Council (NTC) which the coup plotters’ say they have put in place to run Guinea-Bissau for the next two years.

The NTC was established following the signing of an accord on Apr. 18 by the junta and leaders of 20 opposition parties who have come out in support of the coup.

The junta announced that the council was to be headed by Manuel Sherif Nhamadjo, who finished third in the first round of presidential elections on Mar. 18. However, Nhamadjo told Al Jazeera: “I was not consulted for the post of president of the transition.” He said he would remain in his current position as vice president of the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

Ibrahima Sory Diallo, from the Party for Social Renewal (PRS), was named as vice president by the junta. The PRS’s presidential candidate, Kumba Yala, was runner-up in the March poll, but has refused to contest a second round against the ruling party candidate and former prime minister, Carlos Gomes Junior, alleging fraud by his opponent.

Following the coup, the PAIGC has joined a coalition with eight other parties in denouncing the NTC as illegal and calling for a return to constitutional legality and the completion of the electoral process.

ECOWAS said on Apr. 19 that it regarded the creation of the NTC as an “usurpation of power”, and reminded the coup leaders that they had earlier this month committed themselves to working with the regional body – to which Guinea-Bissau belongs – to allow the immediate restoration of normal constitutional rule.

The West African leaders urged a swift restoration of constitutional order as well as the release of Gomes Junior and Raimundo Pereira, who was appointed as interim head of state following the death of President Malam Bacai Sanhá in January after a long illness. Both leaders were arrested and have been left out of the transition programme imposed by the military rulers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which was able to visit the interim president and former prime minister in custody, said it had been able to give them medical supplies, clothes and toiletries, adding that both men have been allowed to send news to their families.

According to some sources, the coup’s leaders on Apr. 20 announced that five ECOWAS heads of state would visit Bissau on Monday for discussions with military and civil authorities, with a view to finding an exit from the country’s political crisis. But the junta did not specify which ECOWAS leaders they were expecting, and the information has not been confirmed by the regional body.

The Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), currently headed by Angola, adopted a resolution at an Apr. 14 meeting in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, calling for the creation of an “intervention force under the aegis of the United Nations.” The CPLP continues to insist on the deployment of soldiers with the assistance of ECOWAS, the African Union (AU) and the European Union.

But Guinea-Bissau’s military command has accused Angola of interfering in security matters of their country. But Lieutenant Colonel Daba Nah Waina, one of the coup leaders, told IPS, “The crisis has been brewing since Angolan soldiers arrived in Guinea-Bissau with vehicles and weapons, but without notifying the chief of staff of the armed forces of the country.”

The Angolan government operates a bauxite mine in the east of Guinea-Bissau – the country is one of the world’s leading producers of this mineral – and also has an interest in a project to construct a new port in the south.

Since October 2011, some 300 Angolan troops have been present in Guinea-Bissau, drafted in to reform the army and police of the country in line with an agreement between the two governments. But the coup plotters accuse Angola of wanting to “destroy” the country’s army and called for the withdrawal of the troops.

For its part, the African Union decided on Apr. 17 to suspend Guinea-Bissau from all AU activities with immediate effect, pending restoration of constitutional order.

Both the African Development Bank and the World Bank, which have called for a swift resolution of the crisis, have suspended development programmes in Guinea-Bissau, with the exception of urgent assistance.