News

Water catchments in the Cameroon highlands

22.06.2017

The Save Your Future Association (SYFA) is a grassroot non-profit organization working in the Western Highlands of Cameroon, precisely in the Northwest Region. SYFA was founded in 2001 by environmentalist Dieudonne Tantoh Nforba, popularly known as “Farmer Tantoh”, and was officially registered in 2005. The three goals of SYFA are environmental protection, environmental education and community building.

Since its creation, SYFA has worked with communities in the highlands of Bamenda, which stretch to Oku and Donga Mantung, which is 1 614 metres above sea level. The organization has built more than 20 spring water catchments and planted trees to protect those catchments to provide portable water; created a botanical garden in Nkambe, Cameroon; planted over 800 flower gardens and lawns in communities; and planted over 25 000 trees to mitigate climate change and protect soils against erosion. SYFA has also worked with ten farming groups and more than 15 environmental clubs to provide technical expertise on sustainable organic farming techniques, integrated aquaculture practices, agroforestry techniques and environmental protection. SYFA has also hosted over 55 international volunteers and interns from all over the world to support its work.

The organization has strategic objectives: to build a resource training centre by 2018; to build and conserve more than 1 000 spring water catchments by 2030; and to advocate for the planting of trees, flower gardens and lawns in all the homes and communities of the Northwest Region by 2030.

SYFA founder Farmer Tantoh is an Ashoka Fellow in Cameroon as well as a Forest Nation Ambassador. He has received several international awards, including the African International Achievers Award and the Green Apple International Award. His story shall be published in a children’s book in the United States of America in 2019, titled “I am farmer”, to be introduced in primary schools across the country.

Currently, 70 percent of SYFA’s projects are focused on protecting water catchments and building tanks for transporting water to underprivileged communities living in the Bamenda Region. Planting trees and surrounding the catchments with electric fences and barbed wires helps to protect the catchments, which are often destroyed by farmers and grazers as they move uphill in search of more fertile lands and greener pastures. After securing the catchments, the spring water is harnessed and tanks are built to collect the clean water, which is channeled to tap stands for human consumption, drinking troughs for livestock and irrigation pipes for farmers.

SYFA’s current water project is taking place in Rong Village, in the mountains of Ndu, where they are building two water tanks: a 10 000 litre (L) tank downhill and a 20 000 L tank uphill. The organization hopes to install a solar pump that will transport water to the uphill tank. Using gravity, water will flow to seven tap stands that will be constructed in Rong, which has a population of about 5 000 people. SYFA has also started working with children and youth in the village to plant lawns around all of the houses. The first phase of the project is possible thanks to financial donations from the White Feather Foundation. The second phase of the project aims at conserving the whole watershed of about 5 hectares, installing a solar pump, and building a stone wall around the downhill tank to protect the solar panels and pump. SYFA is currently looking for partners to continue with this project so that Rong Village can have its first-ever portable water system.

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News and photo by SYFA/Farmer Tantoh