“The turning point came when my husband and I participated in the FAO training together. That’s where my motivation to become a beekeeper came from,” says Fatoumata Kandé, a farmer and mother from the village of Sare Bidji in the Kolda region of southern Senegal. “Beekeeping in Senegal has traditionally been considered a man’s job. The training helped me understand that I too can contribute and make a difference.”
As a member of the local cooperative, Coopérative Agroalimentaire de la Casamance – Miel (CAC/Miel), Fatoumata’s husband, 52-year-old Mamadiang Mballo, has practised beekeeping for over 15 years. Beekeeping fascinated Mamadiang from a young age, but he started this livelihood with one clear objective in mind: to ensure his children got an education.
Over the years, Mamadiang set off alone in the mornings to collect honey and return to sell it at the local market. But this changed after the couple attended a farmer field school together, organized as part of the FAO Strengthening Agricultural Adaptation (SAGA) project funded by the Government of Québec.
The farmer field school training is part of the CasaMiel initiative, which is led by implementing partner Société de coopération pour le développement international (SOCODEVI) in partnership with the CAC/Miel cooperative and local communities. The initiative is meant to increase the production of honey in Senegal while strengthening beekeepers’ resilience in the face of climate change and reducing gender inequality in the sector. Through the gender-sensitive, farmer field schools part of the initiative, Fatoumata got inspired to engage in beekeeping and received the tools to do so.