Irrigation Development Helps UGAS Channel Income into Rural Guinea

Thirty kilometers west of Soumbalako District, in the southern foothills of Guinea’s Fouta Djallon Mountains, mountain streams gather together to form the Bafing River, the primary tributary of west Africa’s great Senegal River. Like many African water systems, the Bafing-Senegal watershed does not offer many opportunities for riverside agriculture because its channels normally run through steep gorges bounded by gravelly, laterite soils. A study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) has estimated that only 5,000 hectares (50 square kilometers) of the Bafing’s banks are readily adaptable for cultivation.

As it crosses into Soumbalako, however, the Bafing backs up behind a bottleneck of hills that trim its flow and precipitate rich sediments on to its banks. These sediments have accumulated over time into fertile loams that cover 250 hectares and stand out against the thin red soils of central Guinea.

In the 1960s, the Government of Sekou Touré implemented an ambitious land reclamation project around Soumbalako that drained marshes and oxbows and graded the valley floor so that it could be harnessed to produce tomatoes for the domestic market and the Soviet Bloc. The project installed pumps to draw water from the river, laid out irrigation trenches, and recruited local families as workers for a huge new collective farm.

Strict government price controls gave the farmers little incentive to invest in the farm's success, however, and the project was barely operating when Guinea’s 25-year experiment with centralized economic planning ended in the early 1980s.

In 1988, 18 local farmers began restoring eight hectares of land on the farm, and the success of their efforts to grow vegetables and rice for sale in the neighboring town of Mamou drew more local residents back to the farm’s overgrown fields.

By 1994, 15 groups in Soumbalako had gained status as producers’ associations under economic and political reforms implemented by Guinea’s new government. These groups joined in 1999 to form an agricultural cooperative, the Union of Agricultural Groups of Soumbalako (UGAS).

With support from ADF, UGAS now helps 21 groups of farmers, representing more than 600 local families, tap the productive potential of irrigated vegetable production. ADF monies have given UGAS the resources to:

·        Conduct land surveys across 250 hectares,

·       Construct 2,000 linear meters of concrete-lined canals,

·      Purchase and install seven diesel-fueled pumping stations,

·       Acquire seed and fertilizer for participating farmers,

·  Buy hundreds of small tools to clear and level land and maintain dikes, and

·     Purchase two large flat-bed trucks to transport vegetables  to markets in the suburbs of Conakry.

UGAS’s growth has dramatically expanded individual farmers’ annual earnings while returning substantial profits to the cooperative itself. UGAS has reinvested a portion of its earnings in the purchase of air-conditioned storage containers that allow it to produce and market its own seed potatoes, and the cooperative has added three new groups, representing 85 local farming families.

The success of the UGAS project has made a difference in the lives of many members. Hassan Camara, 45, joined UGAS in the late 1990s when he saw his neighbors buying new farm tools and sending their children to school. Camara now sends his children to school and has built a five-room concrete house.

“My village decided to join the Union when we saw the progress they were making,” Camara says. “Our fathers and mothers used to tend lowland gardens, raising rice in small plots in the old marshlands. With the equipment the Union has installed, everyone can work a large plot of land. We raise enough to feed ourselves and all sell the rest for a good price. It has changed our lives.”

Maria Sadjokonde, 55, has earned enough money to feed and clothe her seven children, build her own house, buy sheep and goats, and provide her daughters with marriage gifts. As one of four wives in a polygynous marriage, the income she makes helps her meet her children’s needs and help the children of her husband's other wives.

 “Before I grew millet, fonio and rice just to feed myself and my children,” Sadjokonde says. “Now I can take care of my children so that one day they can take care of me. How can one compare the difference?”