Environment • In Focus

In a village nursery, a farmer waters seedlings for eventual replanting ― where they can grow into trees. (Sheila McKinnon photo)

Slowing desertification and meeting a variety of basic human needs, tree planting has been a Senegalese national priority for decades. And for decades, Africare has helped address that priority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trees Bring New Life to
Rural Senegal

  • Most Senegalese people live in rural areas and depend on wood for fuel.
  • Wood is also the material from which furniture, dwellings and many tools are made.
  • Trees play an even more vital role in improving the farm environment. They stabilize the soil and enhance its ability to retain water; and certain species, through the nourishment they provide, increase the land's ability to produce food.

Slowing desertification and meeting a variety of basic human needs, tree planting has been a Senegalese national priority for decades. And for decades, Africare has helped address that priority.

During the late 1980s, for example, Africare carried out reforestation work in the regions of Louga and Thies ― where village women and children walked miles each day to fetch ever-scarcer wood from trees located farther and farther away from their homes. Africare helped strengthen regional nurseries, which supplied seedlings to outlying villages. In 1987 alone, 148,000 eucalyptus, prosopis, acacia, cashew and leucaena seedlings were distributed to 140 villages and planted on 198 hectares (495 acres) of land. Some 35,000 villagers benefited from that assistance, which included training in the cultivation and long-term management of their new woodlots.

 

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(Updated, Dec. 17, 2007)