Office du Niger
The Office du Niger ( ON ) is the largest irrigation project in the western Sahel in Mali . The project was started in 1932 with the aim of cultivating cotton for the French textile industry in the southwestern Niger Inland Delta (also known as the dead delta (delta mort) ) between Ségou and the Mauritanian border . The project was under the direction of the French engineer Émile Bélime in French Sudan (later after the colonial era: Mali).
Project idea
The dead arms of the Fala de Boky Wéré district were to be channeled northwards by means of gravitational irrigation (pressure-free irrigation over a free slope) . The planning was based on an irrigation area of approximately 1 million hectares , which should be reserved for cotton and rice cultivation purposes. For this purpose, the construction of a weir was necessary to increase the Niger water level . This was south of Markala built from 1934, due to the war , however, only 1,947 completed. The labor shortage was resolved by the forced recruitment of Mossi from Burkina Faso and local Minianka farmers and Bambara .
failure
The project stagnated again and again because of considerable development obstacles. The distance from the seaport in Dakar, Senegal, at 1,500 kilometers, was too great for equipment such as machines and spare parts to be brought in quickly. The train connection over the Dakar – Niger line was inefficient, and sometimes hardly functional. In the 1960s, production losses had to be accepted because the geo-ecological potential of the region was simply ignored. The rice-growing areas became weed , the soil became impoverished , the water management was inadequate and the motivation of the farmers was low, since many of them were in debt and therefore had to sell to the state at low producer prices. The political system was unable to provide incentives. Modibo Keïta , the first President of Mali after independence in 1960, nationalized the project. Under Moussa Traoré , the leadership style became exploitative and command economic. The actually irrigated areas had a size of around 34,000 hectares in 1969, after the size of the cultivated areas fluctuated around 50,000 hectares in previous years. Other (colonial) irrigation areas fell into disrepair because the farmers withdrew into subsistence farming or opened up their own market niches, such as onion cultivation that was irrigated during the dry season. From 1970 cotton was given up in favor of rice cultivation.
The project today
After the CFA franc devalued in 1994 and rice became competitive in the domestic market, conditions for the Office du Niger project improved. Within 14 years, the production volume of rice has increased fivefold since 1989 to 500,000 tons. The increase in production was mainly due to Dutch development aid programs, but also to German ones. Around 60,000 hectares of cultivation area are currently being irrigated. With Chinese participation, parts of the project area were diverted to grow sugar cane . A quarter of Mali's sugar needs can be met with it. The areas are now divided into smaller parcels and are tailored to family needs. The livelihood of the farmers leads to a higher standard of living than in other rural areas. The infrastructure for maintenance measures and advice is available. There is also a drinking water supply and there is electricity. The rights of use for the parcels are contractually agreed with the state, subject to conditions, and are even inheritable.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mali-Nord program, fields of work
- ↑ Thomas Kringe, pp. 139–141.
- ↑ Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Institute for Urban and Cultural Research, Everything for the Cat? - Lessons learned from development policy: the case study Mali (p. 7) pdf
- ↑ kfw development bank (OECD funding area), Mali: Office du Niger II, Sector N'Débougou, Irrigation N'Débougou II pdf
- ↑ Sub-Saharan Africa
literature
- Thomas Krings , Sahelländer, WBG-Länderkunden , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2006, ISBN 3-534-11860-X
- Jean-Pierre Blanck, Jean Tricard, L'Office du Niger, mirage du développement au Mali? In: Annales de geographie. 1989, t. 98, n ° 549. p. 567-587.
- Monica M. van Beusekom, Colonization Indigène: French Rural Development Ideology at the Office du Niger, 1920-1940, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1997), p. 299-323
- Pierre Bonneval, Marcel Kuper, Jean-Philippe Tonneau, L'Office du Niger, grenier à riz du Mali. Succès économique, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement, Paris, Karthala, 2002, 251 p.
- JF Belieres, L. Barret, ZC Sama, M. Kuper, Organization et rôle de la profession agricole dans le développement des systèmes irrigués - quelques enseignements tirés du cas de l'Office du Niger au Mali. In L'avenir de l'agriculture irriguée en Méditerranée. New arrangements institutionnels pour une gestion de la demande en eau. Actes du séminaire Wademed , Cahors, 6-7 November 2006. Cirad, Montpellier, France.
- Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: La Problematic d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel , Stuttgart / Paris, Steiner / L'Harmattan 1984, 394 p.
- Emil Schreyger, Office du Niger: A large agro-industrial company in Mali. In: International Africa Forum. 1983, No. 1., p. 83-89.
- Emil Schreyger, "The Office du Niger - a colonial project in transition." In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). 1982, No. 127, p. 80/81.