Burkina/Environment: Journalists discover the interventions of the LOGMe project

The Lands of Opportunity in the Sahel (LOGMe) project organized a press caravan, from April to September 2023, in the Center-East and Center-South regions allowing journalists to discover the results of its interventions in terms of landscape restoration and the creation of income-generating opportunities for the benefit of beneficiary communities.

Initially planned to take place from November 21 to 27, 2022, the press caravan bringing together those responsible for the LOGMe project and journalists from the national audiovisual and written press began in April 2023 with a visit to sites in municipalities in the two regions of intervention of the project, namely the Centre-East and the Centre-South and closed on September 1, 2023 in Ouagadougou with a workshop decided in place of the last field trip planned in Bittou in the Centre-region. south.

“It was by taking into account the security context in certain intervention areas of the LOGMe project that the caravan was finally reorganized in several stages,” indicated the LOGME project manager within the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Nature (IUCN), Bassourou Boyla.

IUCN is in fact the implementation structure of the LOGMe project in Burkina Faso alongside other partners such as the African Council for Sustainable Development (ASUDEC) and the Permanent Secretariat of the National Council for Sustainable Development (SP-CNDD). ).

During the month of April 2023, the first outing of the LOGMe project team and journalists concerned three of the seven municipalities of intervention: Zabré, Ziou and Tiébélé. At this stage, the caravan participated in the reception of work on market gardens which were associated with activities to restore freshwater ecosystems, notably the Ziou micro-dam.

The team then traveled through the communes of Zoaga, Zabré, Tiébélé, Gogo and Gon-Boussougou in which it observed post-harvest management projects such as storage stores, climate-smart villages operating with sources of renewable energies such as solar street lights in public places, markets, schools, health centers and honey and shea processing units as well as bio-digesters.

The practice of Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANN) on innovation sites for the production of medicinal plants, family groves and beekeeping stations as well as value chain development centers such as honey, karate and néré have made also the object of visiting the caravan.

The exchange workshop between the caravan team and beneficiaries of the LOGMe project in the Bittou commune, in Ouagadougou, on September 1, 2023 served as the last field trip.

At the different stages of the caravan, the journalists spoke with the beneficiaries who, as a whole, expressed their “satisfaction” and their “joy” with regard to the interventions of the LOGMe project.

The head of the IUCN-Burkina program, Doctor Jacques Somda, noted that in three years of implementation and one year from the official closure of the LOGMe project, “the results are very satisfactory”.

“We can even say that we underestimated our capacity for transformation by setting targets which today, before the end of the project, have been exceeded,” maintained Mr. Somda.

“In view of the reports from year 3 of the implementation of the project, personally we are satisfied,” also confided the regional coordinator of the LOGMe project, Félicité Vodounhessi.

In addition to Burkina Faso, the LOGMe project is being implemented in Niger and Ghana with, ultimately, the ambition to restore a total of around 20,000 hectares of land to impact the livelihoods of 300,000 beneficiaries.

For Ms. Vodounhessi, Burkina Faso presents itself as the best student of the trio because in “the three countries where the project is implemented, the overall physical execution rate is 75% and Burkina Faso has an execution rate of 79% alone.”

The regional coordinator of the LOGMe project puts, in part, this success of Burkina Faso down to “the commitment of stakeholders such as local authorities and technical services who really invested in the activity and who also helped to make engage the beneficiaries”.

She adds that the LOGMe project was also able to carry out its program of activities even in intervention areas with security challenges thanks to its local relays who sometimes replaced the project field team to continue certain activities.

“It is the participatory approach that the project had from its arrival which also explains all the successes and results obtained. We were approached as a technical service to support its execution in certain areas and we really liked it,” said the head of the departmental service in charge of the Environment of Bittou, Nian Ouena.

For the representative of the SP-CNDD, Lazard Tagnabou and the LOMGe project manager at ASUDEC, Mélanie Dabiré, the appropriation of the project by the beneficiaries and the choice of interventions based on their expressions of needs are other elements which contribute to the results collected.

In the report on the implementation of the LOGMe project in the two regions of intervention in Burkina Faso, the LOGMe project manager at IUCN, Bassourou Boyla, indicated that as of July 31, 2023, the data show, among other things, the restoration of 1,071 hectares of agricultural land for the benefit of 653 households, the provision of 17,560 kg of improved agricultural seeds for the benefit of 5,224 women and young people, the strengthening of the health of 6,614 hectares of land in forest and freshwater ecosystems by the supply of 36,539 plants and 321 kilograms of forest and fodder seeds between 2021 and 2023.

There were, he added, educational seminars, training and provision of materials to associations and cooperative societies of women and young people in the soya, shea, honey and fodder value chains, holding a non-timber forest products fair…

“To come back to the overall impact, as of today we estimate the number of beneficiaries to be around 95,000 people with a majority of women, i.e. 57% of women who have been affected,” informed Mr. Boyla.

Funded by the Italian Ministry of Environment and Energy Security through the Global Mechanism of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the LOGMe project aims to make a significant and sustainable contribution to the restoration landscapes in the Sahel while creating income-generating opportunities for local communities.

According to the regional coordinator of the LOGMe project, Félicité Vodounhessi, it was initially planned for a duration of three years but given the difficulties encountered in starting field activities due to the Covid 19 pandemic imposing various restrictions, the project had benefited from a one-year extension.

Source: Burkina Information Agency