Interview by Abby Massey
Salibo Some is the Director of the Africa Sustainable Development Council (ASUDEC) in Burkina Faso. This interview is the second post in a series about Salibo and his work with ASUDEC. To read the first part of this series, see Transitioning from Subsistence to Entrepreneurship.
What are the main obstacles that small scale farmers face in sub-Saharan Africa—and specifically in Burkina Faso?
Salibo Some is the Director of the Africa Sustainable Development Council (ASUDEC) in Burkina Faso. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)
Farmers’ problems cannot be singled out off the global development problems. To me, there are 3 fundamental development problems that are faced in sub-Saharan Africa:
1) Water control: Water is a source of life; meaning that wherever there is water, food security, biodiversity and overall livelihood can be enhanced.
2) Population growth: Birth is a desperate solution to insecure life in poor communities or a genuine religious weapon for some religious groups. While in the first case any death is seen as a big loss, in the second case, death is generally endorsed to God and life is unvalued. In both cases however, continued birth is guided by fatalism, and leads to chronicle hardships and unsustainability. Family planning is critical to maintain a balanced population/resources ratio that will enable durable food security, biodiversity, overall livelihood and global peace.
3) Education: Education is the panacea to all problems. I mean by “education”, awareness improvement, literacy, skill development, and civic education. Good education improves the hearth, the head and the hands of the learner so as to promote wisdom, knowledge and skills. A good education should provide the basic understanding that environment is everything, including oneself, his “likes” and “dislikes” and that every element of the environment has a critical role to play and therefore, must be preserved and valued. Education must be promoted by all means in order to ensure long term resiliency of the world community and to preserve humanity.
Can you explain the integrated approach that ASUDEC uses to alleviate hunger and poverty?
Smallholding farmers in Burkina Faso draw their living from multiple activities, including agriculture, livestock, forestry and small businesses. They would grow several crops, raise several animal species or trade several items, all at the same time. Though, they lack the appropriate skills to succeed in either domain of activities. Moreover, they endure high illiteracy rate and increased awareness deficit in several areas, including environmental issues, health, civism, market and political issues, etc. In some cases it is the climate, and physical and social environments that tend to discourage development efforts.
In this context community development require a long time, interdisciplinary approaches, inter-institutional partnership (where ever possible), genuine investments and above all, real commitment from local leaders, civil servants and local people. As a grassroots organization we strive to do our part. We advocate integrated holistic approaches, abiding by our cornerstones, mostly “the respect of local values”, the “chameleon wisdom” and “inter-institutional partnership”. We also advocate long-term involvement instead of “hit and run” policy. In general we start with stock farming as pivotal income generating activity to which we add other disciplines progressively and according to the needs and to the wiliness of the people to go further steps in their fight to emancipation. Material subsidies go along with awareness improvement, skill development and literacy activities. Finally, microfinance comes behind to empower women economically and to help emerging farmers to transition progressively into entrepreneurship.
Some tend to see this as heavy, but it is not. Complexity is a mental problem, particularly when viewed from outside. To be cost effective and efficient in mass education (awareness, training, literacy), we have been researching support for a numeric village project with no success to date. If implemented, this innovative mass education and training approach will make a real revolution in West Africa, starting in Burkina Faso.
Please explain ASUDEC’s “passing on the gifts” practice and why it is so important to the success of the organization?
While poverty deepens and spreads out over Africa, harnessing resources for community development is a sacerdotal endeavor, particularly for local grassroots organizations like ASUDEC. Although it is impossible to reach out the totality of the large bulk of needy people, the benefits of the petty resources we collect from thoughtful donors can still be extended to a good number of poor through genuine management and approaches. As in compliance with our cornerstone (respect of local values) and with inspiration from Heifer International we adopted the practice of traditional solidarity where animals, labor, construction materials, skills, etc., are shared among friends and parents to enable beneficiaries of the gifts to start or to strengthen their own socioeconomic activities, mainly agriculture and livestock. Initially, the gifts were gradually passed on partially (construction materials) or in totality (animals) until completion of the pass-on commitment. In addition to other difficulties, this proved to be complex and frustrating. As of 2009, we changed to improve transparency for the beneficiaries, to reduced subsidies and to increase beneficiaries’ participation, etc. While the initial beneficiaries are selected through the Local Council of ASUDEC (CLA), POG beneficiaries are selected by POG authors among their friends or parents. Over time every one can then follow the spinoff effect of his donation within the community with strong trust in ASUDEC and in its approach. This new approach preserves the dignity of the poor and makes him feel truly proud of becoming become also a donor.
Microcredit is controversial; some believe that it doesn’t work because the beneficiaries accrue debt. What are your thoughts on this?
The combined effect of precarious living conditions and multiple hardships often tend to hinder or to annihilate project impacts in rural Africa. In general, only a small number of subsidized income raising project beneficiaries continue to progress satisfactorily after the end of the project. The large majority would cripple with their projects or would fall back into their initial states of despondency shortly after, explaining the continued defeat of local development and calling for more genuine approaches. This is further complicated by the high illiteracy rate and increased awareness deficiency among the populations.
In recent years, microfinance has being promoted into a buzzword around the world as a panacea for poverty alleviation. By experience, I join those who think that classical microfinance system cannot alleviate poverty in Africa. This is because of the following:
- long time handouts have educated the people against credit systems,
- scarcity of business opportunities in village areas,
- multiple hardships and difficult living conditions,
- high level of ignorance (increased awareness deficiency) and illiteracy of the people
- credit systems are instrumental and simply not adapted to local conditions,
- In their need to survive, classical microfinance institutions apply high interest rates under rigid principles. The poor is not given enough time to use the credit fund before reimbursing it and so, often fail to take full advantage of it.
- In general, rural poor in particular often use their credit funds to meet their basic needs of food, health, children schooling, etc., and fail to pay them back satisfactorily.
In general, women are more successful than men in micro credit activities. Those who do not understand the local family-hood tend to denigrate African men and to favour women, particularly when it comes to income issues. Men endure such a wide range of economic responsibilities and are so burdened that many cannot save money like women:
- The African ancestral vision of life is profoundly spiritualist. The husband being the head of the family he must ensure that harmony prevails among his family members and between his family and the forefathers. This requires a great deal of wisdom, commitment and financial capacity. Animals being used to communicate with the forefathers and the spirits, he endures an important financial erosion.
- Of all sources of expenditures in African society, social relations are most money demanding: 1) The husband must ensure that his family is also counted in the community and so, must get involved in social problems, the most important of which include funerals and spiritual rites. In these issues in particular, his contributions at his families in law are an obligation.
- Finally as head of the family, the husband is first concerned with the livelihood of the family (food, health, children schooling, clothing, etc.). It is in this sole area were women intervene to help him out with their income generating activities. And, etc, etc. Therefore, African men are not irresponsible; they are simply swamped with responsibilities.
Given all of the above, helping women alone does not help the women much because their economy will forcedly go to support their husbands. Holding one horn does not allow a good control of the animal. Men must also be supported. Overall, the real challenge of continued development rests on how to help the poor to meet their daily needs while transitioning into effective entrepreneurship. I think that this can be achieved only through a Participatory Microfinance, a concept that ASUDEC has been advocating for months now.
Stay tuned for more on ASUDEC in the coming weeks.
