Madd in Senegal

Community enforces its own rules to protect and tap natural resources

Souleymane Bayo (center), secretary of the Animation and Discussion Unit for the local convention of Tomboronkoto, instructs madd harvester Cheikh Omar Keita (right) on how best to harvest madd. Also pictured here is Mamadou Dione, vice president of the rural council responsible for drafting the convention. Photo by Djiby Ka, Wula Nafaa/USAID

Saba senegalensis, a popular, tart fruit called madd, has become a rallying point in southern Senegal. Nestled along Senegal’s lush Niokolo Koba National Park, the rural community of Tomboronkoto is home to 7,000 people and countless species of profitable plants, trees, and fruit, like madd. With USAID support, harvesters, environmentalists, and local authorities wrote up regulations and acted together to put an end to poor harvesting techniques and to bushfires that destroy the vines.

“I have harvested madd for 10 years during which time we have faced many difficulties,” said Souleymane Bayo, a harvester from the village of Badou. “Production used to be low and prices highly variable. Certain people cut the vines or completely chopped down the supporting trees in order to harvest the fruit. So production was falling from one year to the next.”

And since the harvesters were poorly organized, itinerant traders called banabanas fixed unfair prices, leading to poor income for the people whose lives depend on the fruit. Madd leaves and bark are also used for cooking and to treat burns and diarrhea. At a social level, harvesters and herders have squabbled about who has access to the forest foliage.

USAID’s Wula Nafaa (meaning “benefits of the bush” in the local Bambara language) program stepped in at the community’s request in 2004 to help tackle these challenges. Bringing together all parties involved in a participatory set of meetings, Wula Nafaa advised the regional council and others as they drafted a local convention. This management tool contains rules to fix dates for harvesting and the techniques to be used as well as preventative measures to protect against bushfires and livestock damage. For example, the eight-page convention finalized in August 2004 prohibits cutting down madd vines and a number of other forest species that can provide long-term benefits for villagers. Anyone caught slashing madd foliage will face a fine of about $10 per vine or tree. Just a handful of such fines would equal the monthly salary of peasant farmers in this region.

With the rules in place for protecting the forest products, USAID/Wula Nafaa worked with harvesters to better market the produce, and help obtain higher prices. Harvesters are now organized into networks that demand realistic prices and organize marketing activities aimed at large cities such as Dakar. They have essentially eliminated the hold of the banabanas, enabling them to demand fair prices. And a fund set up with revenue from harvest licenses supports efforts to regenerate forest resources, for example, through planting or erecting fences to keep out grazing livestock. The results speak for themselves.

“Up to 2003, I earned 60,000 FCFA ($115), the equivalent of 48 sacks sold at 1,250 FCFA ($2.4) per sack, a level far too low to maintain my large family with seven children,” said Bayo, who is now a member of the Animation and Discussion Unit for Tomboronkoto’s local convention. “Now the situation has changed since the local convention was applied to allow better management and increased profits from our products.”

In 2005, Bayo harvested and sold 128 sacks at double the price, earning him 320,000 FCFA ($615). He spent about third of his profits to buy mattresses for his two wives, malaria medicine and three insecticide-treated mosquito nets. “The rest has served to provide food for my family.”

Largely through a 67% increase in prices reached through better negotiation skills and improved organization, the Madd Producer Group in Tomboronkoto saw their combined revenue nearly triple, from 735,000 FCFA in 2004 (about $1,400) to over 2 million FCFA in 2005 ($4,000). Similar results are seen in nearby Kedougou and Velingara, where 30 producer groups and 23 family businesses increased their revenue from 11.7 million FCFA (over $22,000) to over 28 million FCFA (over $54,000).

Tomboronkoto is the seventh community where USAID has worked alongside residents and authorities to draft local conventions on resource use. “It boils down to access,” said Peter Trenchard of USAID/Senegal. “The people living in and around the forests and their local authorities should make the rules about who harvests and profits from these natural resources. If managed well, the forests will then bring even greater benefits now, and to future generations.”