Siwondou and Lewel Fencing Project

The protection of crops from livestock is a pressing issue in the drylands of southern Mauritania. Increasingly, livestock densities in the region are rising due to dryer conditions further north and general demographic shifts. Farmers are finding it impossible to grow crops in their traditional, unfenced fields without loosing substantial amounts to livestock damage. This leads to tension and conflict between farmers and livestock herders.

In the Siwondou and Lewel communities of the Mid-Gorgol region of southern Mauritania, the livelihoods of the local people (numbering approximately 36,000) depend on planting and growing crops after the rains each year. This project will see 10,000 hectares of their traditional fields fenced in. This will open up the potential for 1000 hectares of rain-fed agriculture (millet and sorghum grown on higher ground after the rains where the water does not stand), 4500 hectares of flood-recession agriculture (millet and maize grown on lower ground that floods after the rains), and 500 hectares of riverside farming (maize and beans grown on moist banks of rivers.) On the remaining 4000 hectares, grass and natural forestry will be allowed to regenerate, creating extra fodder for livestock in the dry season, and helping re-green the Sahel.

It will not only be the farmers of the Siwondou and Lewel communities who benefit from this project, however. The semi-pastoral livestock herders will also benefit. By mutual and traditional agreement, their animals will be able to feed off the crop residues in the off-season, and also the areas of scrub land that have been allowed to develop within the fenced area will act as fodder for the animals.

The Mauritanian government has committed to financing 10 kilometres of the 16 kilometres required to fence in the 10,000 hectares. Rainbow are financing the remaining 6 kilometres.