Armed with Apps and Crops, Senegal's Women Save Farmland

The women of Thiamene, a tiny straw hut village in northern Senegal, used to scrape together a living by collecting wild baobab fruit and selling milk from their cows.

But their earnings have plummeted since an Italian-Senegalese agribusiness, Senhuile, took over the surrounding land five years ago, blocking their paths to the local market and river, and spraying pesticides that make their herds scatter, they say.

“Life here is precarious, especially for women,” said 42-year-old Fatimata Sow in the village square, gazing at the vast landscape of arid ground dotted with the stumps of trees.

While the men in her community do larger-scale agricultural work or have jobs in the nearby town, it is women who tend to the gardens and raise the animals that keep families fed.

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/19/01/2017/Armed-with-apps-and-crops,-women-lead-battle-to-save-Senegal%E2%80%99s-shrinking-farmland

USAID/Engility/Stéphane Tourné

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