EWB Day in Dedougou

Dear friends,

March 6th is Engineers Without Borders Day (EWB Day). Student members will get out in the streets and organize a big information campaign throughout their hometown. The aim is to get people to realize that national choices affect people’s lives everywhere. Hence EWB members talk about fair trade, agricultural subsidies and public scrutiny in the administration of the national aid budget.

Alanna and I were in Dédougou last weekend. We told a few people what Canadians will be doing in just a few days... They got pretty excited, and we filmed their reaction. Check it out for yourself.

Joke aside (It was a mask festival, dummy) ; knowing that Canadian students are rallying against international injustices is very important for EWB overseas staff (a least it is for Alanna and I). We often have the feeling that the work we do here won’t go far without a more responsible attitude of global citizens such as Canada. We even feel that Canadians should become a role model in this quest. They’ve done it before and many times on other cases!

Two concrete examples: PAMER assists entrepreneurs in their enterprise creation and in the expansion of their activities. The Bobo office follows the progress of their portfolio of beneficiaries through a database.

One of my first activities here has been to organize and implement a census campaign of the reasons for failure of micro enterprises in our portfolio. In fact, while our office had a good idea of the net gains of active micro enterprises, we had no information on those who had stopped their activity. Knowing why would have great interest in fine tuning our activities!

Amongst the most numerous failures were dyers and weavers of traditional cloths (The pattern on my blog is that of a traditional Faso Danfani). The reason all of them gave: competition from imported second hand clothes (they come from our donations, and are sold at unbeatable prices on local markets here) and the arrival of China, Ghana or Ivory Coast made cloths which are cheaper, albeit of lower quality. (I added a photo of a proud weaver on my french blog)

Amongst failures were also tomato paste makers. Unanimously, they mentioned that the activity was not profitable. Meanwhile, on our trip to Dédougou, we visited a vegetable growers union.

Veggie growers group in Di, north of Dedougou. Did you notice the second hand shirts?

In the field around Di, north of Dedougou (Upper west Burkina)

They cultivate 7 irrigated hectares of tomatoes and produce several hundred tons of fresh tomato a year. Lately, they lost a portion of their crop, which rot in the sun, for lack of a buyer. Yet, in Bobo, if I want to buy tomato paste, I have only one choice, and it comes from Italy.

The one choice of canned tomato paste, held for you by my friend Aime

If you want to know how many euros or dollars one kilo of your national tomatoes receives in the form of subventions, please, ask your local MP. Remember that they are also the ones carrying your voice to government. If your country’s behavior isn’t aligned with your values, they should know. People here are not poor for no reason.