Burkina Faso Ecofarmer Fearing Lost Land
Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer who turned an area of semi-desert into a forest in Burkina Faso, fears he will lose the land of his ancestors to developers who will tear down the trees he has nurtured for some 40 years.
He devised a technique which is now used across Africa's Sahel region to help stop the spread of desertification, restore fertility to the soil and enable people to grow more food.
Sawadogo has travelled widely sharing his technique called Zai, helping people to grow food and make money from dry land.
But the ancestral plot on which he developed his technique is under threat. Investors building a housing project have annexed parts of his land, and carved it up into smaller plots, he said. One plot contains the well he built ten years ago, and another the graves where he buried his parents.
Bruno Locatelli/CIFOR