Villagers taking part in a regional consultation about the project: unless the aims of a project come directly form the people it wants to help it will not succeed.

Woman from a Woman’s vegetable growing cooperative: growing vegetables is one of the few economic activities specific to women. We are helping them increase their profits by using organic farming methods, such as use of compost (as shown).

Field of onions: semi-commercial irrigation farming is popular in this arid region but struggles to make profits for the communities who invest in it. We are helping farmers develop better farming practices that will reduce their costs whilst increasing their harvests.

Maize and beans grown together on the banks of the Gorgol river.

Cattle feeding off rice straw: encouraging the integration of livestock herding and farming is essential to making the most of meagre resources.

It may not look much, but this simple earth barrage will hold back rain water long enough for it to sufficiently penetrate the ground for millet crops to grow: we are helping farmers build more of these.

Mid-Gorgol Community Project

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One of the main aims of Rainbow Development in Africa’s work in the Mid-Gorgol region of southern Mauritania is to help farming communities become more economically viable. As things stand, communities are unable to rely on agriculture to pay the bills, meaning up to 75% of young men must leave for the cities to look for jobs. Those who remain behind live in poverty.

Sometimes it is the drought conditions that cause these problems; or it could be devastating floods that wipe away entire crops. Or even locust swarms. People are having to adapt their farming practices to combat conditions such as these as well as the volatile markets that are often swamped with cheap, subsidised imports. But they do not have the skills needed to do this. On top of this, they are working in a region that has been neglected for so long there is virtually no infrastructure, and a great many obstacles need to be overcome to do something even as simple as acquire some new seed for crops. The result is that whole communities are struggling to survive and their very existence hangs on a thread.

The first step in any project is to consult local people about what sort of project they would like to be involved with as unless the main ideas and motivation for a project comes from the community it targets, it will not succeed. Accordingly, with the Mid-Gorgol Community Project, a long period of consultation ensued resulting in a comprehensive analysis of the problems and needs of the many different ethnic groups concerned. These results were then put before representatives of the communities with whom project activities and aims were set.

The resulting project revolves around three experimentation and demonstration sites where the following activities are taking place:

For irrigation farming: rice intensification techniques; crop diversification; land management; seed and fruit production; creation of a machinery spare parts stock accessible to all farmers; animal fattening and various organic practices such as use of compost, crop rotation and association planting.
For rainfed farmers (crops grown on higher land after the rains): use of animal traction for ploughing; digging rain-catchment barrages; use of Zai planting technique (where a handful of organic material is inserted with each seed).
For flood-recession farmers (crops grown on lower land that floods with the rains): introduction of drought- resistant crops; protection of crops from livestock by the use of live (hedges) and wire fencing; where necessary, training in the use of effective pesticides.
For livestock herders: use of fodder crops; training in animal health and effective use of veterinary treatments; creation of a vaccination ‘park’; creation of a stock of vaccination treatments.
For all farmers: training in financial, crop and machinery management.

This project started in February 2008.