[ 2013-10-27 ]

The Sahel: New Push to Transform Agriculture
with More Support for Pastoralism and Irrigation

WASHINGTON, October 27, 2013 On the eve of two
major agriculture summits in Mauritania and
Senegal, the World Bank is urging African
countries and communities in the Sahel and the
international development community to help
protect and expand pastoralism on behalf of the
more than 80 million people living in The Sahel
who rely on it as a major source of food and
livelihoods. The Bank is also calling for more
large-scale irrigation to help the region to move
towards embracing climate smart agriculture that
can manage competing demands for land, water, and
other natural resources, in a region that has long
suffered from drought, hunger, and low economic
growth. In background papers released in
preparation for the two summits, the Bank says
that more than 50 percent of the meat and the milk
which people consume in West African coastal
countries come originally from the Sahel.

The two summits on improving pastoralism and
boosting irrigation in the Sahel, which are being
organized by the World Bank and its development
partners, will be held in Nouakchott and Dakar
respectively on October 29 and October 31, 2013.
High-level participants will include President
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania, President
Idriss Déby of Chad, as well as regional
Ministers of Agriculture, Rural and Community
Development, senior business leaders, and
representatives of producer organizations and
civil society.

African agriculture employs a massive 65-70
percent of the continents labor force and
typically accounts for 30-40 percent of GDP. It
represents the single most important industry in
the region, and therefore its transformation and
growth is vital to reduce poverty in a region like
The Sahel and avoid humanitarian crises that have
all too frequently plague the region, says
Makhtar Diop, World Banks Vice President for
Africa Region, who will open the Pastoralism Forum
in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital on October
29th.

Addressing the challenge of agriculture in the
Sahel is an opportunity to redress past economic
imbalances and position the region to become a
player in addressing the global increase in food
demand. Diop says boosting investment in the
Sahel will help to significantly improve living
standards for people and reduce the frequency and
severity of food crises

According to the Bank, Africa is home to some 50
million pastoralists with some 16 million of them
living in The Sahel and in extreme poverty. The
vulnerability of pastoral communities to drought,
flooding, and other disasters remains unduly high
in Sahelian countries and is made worse by their
historic social exclusion and increasing
competition for access to water and grazing lands
for their herds and crops.

Given that The Sahel will continue to be one of
the worlds regions most seriously affected by
climate change, drought and other weather extremes
are likely to increase the pressures on
pastoralism to survive as a way of life and
livelihoods. We urgently need to mobilize more
investment to support pastoral systems in the arid
lands of The Sahel in order to reduce the
vulnerability of communities to poverty and hunger
while building up their resilience to weather
adversity, and promoting more social cohesion and
security in the wider region to prevent new
conflicts from arising,says Jamal Saghir, the
World Banks Director for Sustainable Development
in Africa.

Saghir says that a regional approach to boosting
pastoralism is essential since many issues such as
trade, trans-boundary animal diseases, policy
harmonization, early warning and rapid response
systems, conflict, and peace building measures,
all involve a cross-border dimension.

More irrigated land also vital for transforming
agriculture

In addition to promoting and expanding
pastoralism, irrigating more land is also vital to
produce more food, create jobs, reduce poverty,
and improve the lives of people throughout The
Sahel. .

Although the region is blessed with some of
Africas largest aquifers, for the most part they
are under-used and many countries lack the
scientific data and infrastructure to tap into and
manage these water reserves sustainably. On top of
that, only 20 percent of the irrigation potential
inSahelian countries is currently developed, and
many existing irrigation systems need to be
repaired.

The Niger, Senegal, Lake Chad, and Volta River
basins have tremendous undeveloped irrigation,
fisheries, transport and hydroelectric potential.
So my colleagues and I in the World Bank want to
improve this situation so that the famers and
families of the Sahel can take advantage of rising
demand for food, meat and dairy products. More
water in The Sahel means more development in the
form of food, more jobs, more money and
opportunity, especially for young people, and
women in particular as farmers and traders,says
World Bank Africa Vice President Diop.

The High Level Forum on Irrigation, which will be
held on October 31stin Dakar, Senegal, will build
on the Ouagadougou Call for Action and highlight
success stories and strategies that could be
scaled up or replicated, like the Great Green
Wall, or inclusive agribusiness projects based on
irrigation development in Senegal and Burkina
Faso.

High-level participants at the Dakar irrigation
summit will include President Macky Sall of
Senegal, Government Ministers from Sahelian
countries, business leaders, and representatives
of water user associations and civil society.

Source - World Bank

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