Reflections on NYTimes story of Niger farmers' regreening success

On February 11 the New York Times published a story on the amazing success of rural farmers in Niger at reversing desertification by a simple but ingeniously implemented strategy : planting and taking good care of lots of trees.

Within hours news services had picked up the story and re-circulated it around the world many times over. It was analyzed from all sorts of angles : farming perspectives, the environmental side, socio-economic angles and many others. There seems little doubt that even after the initial impact and the quick reactions, there will continue to be many reflections on the self-help efforts of the farmers.

There are no major new technical insights provided by the farmers. Part of what amazed and inspired so many people across the globe is the fact that the farmers, with no outside intervention or assistance, have used commonly available knowledge to dramatically reverse a massive problem that threatened their livelihoods:desertification. The conventional wisdom has long been that this is too big and complex a problem to be addressed simply at the local level.

A summary of the article:

Two decades ago farmers in Niger began to notice the disappearance of trees and the loss of top soil to wind erosion. This was compounded by severe drought in the 1970s and 80s, coupled with a population explosion. The desert seemed determined to swallow everything.

Farmers decided they would no longer clear the tree saplings from their fields before planting their crops, as they had done for generations. Instead they would protect and nurture them, carefully plowing around them when sowing millet, sorghum, peanuts and beans.

The result has been at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, say researchers, achieved largely without the large-scale tree-planting or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification. The success in growing new trees suggests that the harm to much of the Sahel may not have been permanent, but a temporary loss of fertility. The evidence, scientists say, demonstrates how relatively small changes in human behavior can transform the regional ecology, restoring its biodiversity and productivity.

The improvement in the care of trees fortunately took place at the same time that rainfall began to improve after the punishing droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. Another important change is that government authorities began to allow farmers to benefit from their nurturing of the trees. They were permitted to sell branches, pods , fruit and bark. Because these sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them.

Previously when the trees were regarded as state property the farmers had little immediate, personal incentive for preserving them. Logging for firewood with no regard to the environmental consequences was common.

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For some this story is so positive because of what it says is achievable by ordinary people working together to overcome a common threat. For others this will mainly be a story about the importance of property rights. Still others have pointed out that this success has been achieved without the involvement of any external-to-the community funding or bureaucracy.

From just one African's perspective, this story is a welcome counter to the endless stream of Africa-negative stories that one is bombarded with, the prestigious and influential New York Times itself being one of the worst culprits. Africa's many serious problems are usually written about from the perspective of not merely informing about their existence and their gravity, but also from the angle of how the Africans are seemingly helplessley looking on or waiting for saviors other than themselves. Africa's reality is reduced to its problems, an endless, regularly updated tale of doom and gloom. Virtually any mention of Africa in the mainstream international media is bound to be about some form of misery, leaving a uni-dimensional, demoralizing image of African existence in an uninformed reader's mind.

For these reasons it would not be difficult to understand why this rare-for-the New York Times type of story would be welcomed by African readers. The fact of Africa is that all over the continent are ordinary people heroically grappling with immense problems outside the glare of the media, but doing so with grace and able to laugh, love as well as cry while doing so, rather like ordinary people anywhere else! You certainly would not guess this from the stories about Africa the world media very carefully picks, and the "it's all disease, poverty, corruption, hunger and death" angles from which they usually lovingly do so.

Perhaps the massive and positive reaction to this story from all quarters of the world is an encouraging sign that news consumers everywhere are as weary as Africans are of the Afro-pessimism usually relentlessly peddled by the likes of the New York Times. Perhaps apart from all the developmental dogma that is going to be questioned from now on by the example of the farmers in Niger, readers were just astonished to find the venerable New York Times at least temporarily putting aside its "the sky is going to fall any minute" approach to Africa.

Chido Makunike

African Agriculture