Yacouba Sawadogo: The Man Who Stopped the Sahara. Planting Trees with an Ancient Technique

His struggle began in 1974, without any special means, opposed and even mocked by the village chiefs of Yatenga province, Burkina Faso. Yet, with the help of an ancient agricultural technique, zai, he saved more than 40 hectares of land from the desert. In 2018, he won the Right Livelihood Award.

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the man who stopped the desert

Yacouba Sawadogo He was considered the village idiot. Or at least, that's what everyone in the small province of Yatenga in Burkina Faso thought, simply because of his dream: planting trees to halt the advance of the desert.

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THE MAN WHO STOPPED THE DESERT

Burkinabe farmer, for almost forty years he has been fighting against the drought and desertification which steals arable land from the population of Burkina Faso, thus limiting their access to food and arable resources. When he began in 1974, without any cutting-edge resources or significant capital, no one understood the scope of his ideas. Indeed, they mocked him, opposed him, and even tried to sabotage his attempt to restore forest to the vast expanses of sand in this arid region near the edge of the Sahara Desert, which are increasing every year due to the worsening climate crisis. The statistics are horrifying: approximately 75 percent of the territory is affected by it, Flora and fauna disappear, and the biosphere turns into desert. But the trees are thinking, stealing water and taking away precious, already depleted agricultural land. Even the village leaders were not at all happy with Yacouba's initiatives, believing he was not entirely sane. Yet, everyone was wrong, except him.

Today, in fact, the arid land has transformed into a 40-hectare forest, also visible from satellite, which includes about 96 species of trees and 66 plants, some of which are edible, others with medicinal properties. In this renewed habitat, wildlife has also returned. Sawadogo began saving 17 hectares of land from the desert, drawing on ancient African wisdom and using an agricultural technique which is called zai, Which, in simple terms, consists of digging a series of small holes about ten centimeters deep to collect the little rainwater, concentrating it in one area, and gradually irrigating the drought-stricken areas. Sawadogo adds manure and other biodegradable waste material.

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YACOUBA SAWADOGO

The technique used by Sawadogo has spread as far as Mali, and now the seventy-year-old farmer intends to teach it to anyone who wants to learn from him. Many farmers, in fact, come from nearby villages to get advice on which seeds are best to plant. Time has proven him right, and no one is skeptical anymore. In fact, Yacouba Zai, as he's known, has helped dozens of farmers achieve self-sufficiency and is fighting the desert, so much so that his story became the subject of a 2010 documentary directed by Mark Dodd, “The man who stopped the desert”, and also of a book.

His is a fantastic example of creating an entire ecosystem, countering some of the interests of speculators. Thus, last December, the forest was hit by an arson attack that burned half a hectare, and was then expropriated by the authorities. But Sawadogo doesn't stop there, and his commitment is there for all to see, around the world. In 2018, in fact, the dreamer farmer was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, a sort of Nobel Prize for those who, as we read in the presentation, "offer practical and exemplary answers to the greatest challenges of our time".

(Featured image from the Right Livelihood Award website. Photo credits: Right Livelihood Award)

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