Knowledge-sharing and sustainability: Pastoral Development in Senegal

Small projects made in small places can make the difference, just by acting and introducing knowledge in a community. A group of researchers situated in the Canary Island of Tenerife, which form part of ICIA (Instituto Canario de Investigación Agraria) have carried out the technical direction of a pastoral project in Senegal, specifically in the region of St. Louis, where we can find the Peul ethnic group who have a ranching tradition.

Senegalese women

Good projects such as this should be praised and supported. This is a community with a clear competence: they are farmers (belonging to a cattle cooperative) and they know how to develop this work. Why not giving them the right tools to create a competitive advantage from it?

This is the main objective of the project: to provide them with the hardware to produce their own supplies of meat and milk. Senegal is a country characterized by its dryness, poor fodder, and poor production of milk and meat and, on the social side, discrimination of women in this sector. The project’s task was to fight against all these problems and the approach they had was through a pilot farm.

In this pilot farm they taught the Senegalese in livestock management issues and management of forage that could withstand high temperatures and sufficient nutrients for the production of milk and meat. They also introduced a Canarian goat, which comes for the island of Fuerteventura. It  is a very dry island, and this specie of goat is used to shortage of food and water. Unlike the Senegalese goat, it´s a great producer of milk, and therefore seemed to be the best species to introduce in the area.

Goat of Fuerteventura ("Cabra Majorera") introduced in Senegal

The Senegalese are used to producing milk for their daily consumption, but what can they do with their surplus? Conservation of milk for future consumption is still unimaginable in Senegal, which is why they need another way to cope with that surplus. In the village of Richard Toll, the ICIA team created a small dairy plant where all this surplus of milk can be taken and transformed into different products, creating a connection between the farmers.

The community also faced the problem of the less productive breeds of goat, as it is difficult for them to access water and livestock food. Added to these problems are low rainfall and lack of training in this area.

This is where the role of women came in.  Women became the centre of this activity, as they were the ones responsible for the transformation of milk and also the financial accounting of the dairy plant. They formed an association of 50 women, which specialized in the production of a type of yogurt called Lait Caillé.  As there were other products that they could produce with the milk, the  team assisted with the transference of this knowledge. They taught them, for example, how to produce cheese.

Senegalese women learning how to make cheese

This new role that women began to have in society gave them status and a control over an issue where men were not present. Also, they had a new responsibility, not only about learning how to maintain the dairy plant but also about the development of their community; transferring information to other areas and looking for the engagement and participation of their society.

Overall it seems as a great project and has been received with enthusiasm by the community with new learning, new tools and new knowledge. However, we should ask ourselves:  is it the correct knowledge?

The problem with projects led by richer countries is that they are difficult to continue because of lack of funding which can provoke incomplete implementation of knowledge in the community. A time is stated for the development of the project (in this case 3 years), but small details are not taken into account, for example: are there any difficulties in the process? Do we have new information from the community, which can help us understand what they really need?  Are they able to develop the activity by themselves? Is there remote monitoring of the project?

Researchers devoted to this type of project try to develop them and try to transfer the knowledge, but if institutions decide when a project ends, there is little that they can do to ensure that knowledge-transfer is sustainable. This is where countries that give this type of service to Southern countries should question themselves: is it better to give non-donor countries an incomplete piece of the pie or should donor countries give them the whole pie?

In order to try and address these issues, the G-20 developing group, through the Seoul Multi-Year Action Plan, is trying to implement better ways of knowledge-sharing to deliver tools, information and technology to those countries that demand it. They believe that triangular cooperation could create equilibrium in the way this demand is achieved, as there would be a participation of three main agents: the donor countries, middle-income countries and low-income countries. Through this cooperation strategy, a win-win-win horizontal partnership could be achieved.

Cooperation should be the tool used to move into other stages, to improve bidirectional knowledge, to motivate parts to ensure the best accomplishment, a way of motivating to achieve the goal and also to ensure long-term knowledge, where both parts are constantly enriching their know-how and their capacity of performance. Sharing will drive us to the best equal and sustainable development.

Sources:

• Proyecto Para El Incremento De La Seguridad Alimentaria En El Norte De Senegal (Comunidades Ganaderas Rurales Del Departamento De Dagana) (2011-2013) PROYECTO CONCEDIDO AECID CORDINATED BY TECHNICAL DIRECTION ICIA
• Scaling Up Knowledge sharing for Development- A Working Paper for the G-20 Development Working Group, Pillar 9 (23 p.p.) http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/Data/wbi/wbicms/files/drupal-acquia/wbi/4%20G-20%20DWG%20Report%20on%20Knowledge%20Sharing.pdf

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