More water, new hope: A woman farmer in rural Senegal
Like many farmers in Senegal, Guilé Mané used to struggle through the dry season. Rainfall here can be very low and irregular, even in the rainy season.
Members of the Diapo Ande Liggeye (United to Work) farmers’ association. (© FAO / Benedicte Kurzen/NOOR for FAO)
“We were working in the fields during the rainy season, but we did not do anything during the dry season,” says Guilé, 39, who heads a farmers’ association called Diapo Ande Liggeye (United to Work) in her home area of Keur Bara Tambédou.
The lack of water meant crop and food shortages, more frequent illnesses, and insufficient income from the sale of whatever the farmers managed to grow.
“Sometimes parents could not even pay their children's monthly school fees.”
Guilé and the other women had to walk long distances to reach sources of clean water and use part of their income to pay for it.
Now, Guile’ says, her life has changed because of a new water-gathering and storage system put in place through FAO’s “1 million cisterns for the Sahel” programme, which focuses on vulnerable rural communities in arid and semi-arid regions of five countries affected by climate shocks.