Strengthening Rural Women’s Livelihood for a Sustainable Economic Development in the Eastern Region of Senegal

About the Project

This Missing Middle Initiative (MMI) pilot project in Tambacounda and Kedougou regions in east Senegal supports two producer organizations, l’Association des producteurs de la vallée du fleuve Gambie (APROVAG) and Yacare Niani Wulli (YNW), to strengthen rural people’s livelihoods for sustainable economic development. The project will increase governance, production, and management capacities of smallholder producers; improve women’s participation and bargaining power in key decision-making in rural areas; reinforce rural entrepreneurship initiatives initiated by women and the youth; increase commercial contracts between the POs and the private sector that benefits each actor and integrate POs’ economic activities in the food value chain; and strengthened financing capacities of smallholder producers through the POs. 

Bananas are in great demand in Senegal’s cities and provide an income-generating opportunity for smallholder farmers. But, they require a lot of water to grow, so the drought and dry periods farmers regularly face can seriously stress the plants unless irrigation is readily available. When ample healthy banana crops grow, farmers lack disease-free planting materials to harvest them. This project aims to create more-sustainable banana production, thus boosting incomes and livelihoods, through support to producer organizations. In 2020, the project received additional funding for medium- to long-term responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, used to procure and distribute inputs to banana producers who had suffered losses caused by the restrictive measures during the peak of the pandemic period 2020 and to strengthen producer organizations’ management information systems and develop their business models for productive investment to improve producer marketing capacity.