In Mali, the route of the Great Green Wall covers nearly 890km (550 miles), passing through the regions of Kayes and Koulikoro. The project is structured around 29 blocks, each one comprising a farm of approximately eight hectares of land developed for agriculture, tree planting and ranching. In total, there are expected to be 29 blocks in Mali that will involve 12,500 families. In 2015, the Malian state also began to invest CFA4bn ($7.2m/£5.6m) in planting acacia, training farmers in harvesting techniques and managing rural cooperatives in villages where gum arabic is grown.
Gum arabic farming still brings its challenges. The young plants are regularly destroyed by straying domestic animals, specifically when nomadic herders move between Mali and Mauritania. In addition, because of the region’s geology, the traditional shallow wells used by most of the villages in the area produce salt water that is unsuitable for irrigating the acacia trees, or any other kind of agriculture, says Sitafa Traoré, a forestry engineer working in the gum arabic trade in the Kayes region of western Mali. “It was therefore necessary to make deep boreholes with machines to find fresh water in order to maintain the young plants,” Traoré says.
But despite this, the gum arabic sector has already started to change the face of some Malian villages. National gum arabic exports have been growing rapidly, reaching nearly 2,500 tonnes in 2015 and 6,000 tonnes in 2016. Those involved in the trade, like Traoré, remain optimistic. In a region experiencing both climate and political instability, a trade that has been tested over centuries could help to bring security in more ways than one.
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