Dienabou Barry

Women in Rural Development: The Case Study of the Office du Niger in Mali 1960 to 2010

Dienabou Barry

a Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in History

Approved Dissertation Committee

Professor Dr. Marc Frey

Professor of History, Universitat der Bundeswehr München

Professor Dr. Corinna Unger

Professor of History, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Professor Dr. Julia Tischler

Professor of History, University of Basel, Switzerland

Date of Defense: 27th November, 2020 Department of Social Sciences & Humanities

Statutory Declaration

Family Name, Given/First Name BARRY, DIENABOU

Matriculation number 20331535

What kind of thesis are you submitting? PhD Thesis Bachelor-, Master- or PhD-Thesis

English: Declaration of Authorship I hereby declare that the thesis submitted was created and written solely by myself without any external support. Any sources, direct or indirect, are marked as such. I am aware of the fact that the contents of the thesis in digital form may be revised with regard to usage of unauthorized aid as well as whether the whole or parts of it may be identified as plagiarism. I do agree my work to be entered into a database for it to be compared with existing sources, where it will remain in order to enable further comparisons with future theses. This does not grant any rights of reproduction and usage, however. The thesis has been written independently and has not been submitted at any other University for the conferral of a PhD degree; neither has the thesis been previously published in full.

German: Erklärung der Autorenschaft (Urheberschaft) Ich erkläre hiermit, dass die vorliegende Arbeit ohne fremde Hilfe ausschließlich von mir erstellt und geschrieben worden ist. Jedwede verwendeten Quellen, direkter oder indirekter Art, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht worden. Mir ist die Tatsache bewusst, dass der Inhalt der Thesis in digi taler Form geprüft werden kann im Hinblick darauf, ob es sich ganz oder in Teilen um ein Plagia t handelt. Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass meine Arbeit in einer Datenbankeingegeben werdenk ann, um mit bereits bestehenden Quellen verglichen zu werden und dort auchverbleibt, um mit z ukünftigen Arbeiten verglichen werden zu können. Dies berechtigt jedochnicht zur Verwendung oder Vervielfältigung.

Diese Arbeit wurde in der vorliegenden Form weder einer anderen Prüfungsbehörde vorgelegtno ch wurde das Gesamtdokument bisher veröffentlicht.

02.09.2020 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Date, Signature

Abstract

Women in Rural Development:

The Case Study of the Office du Niger in Mali 1960 to 2010

by DIENABOU BARRY

The Office du Niger [hereafter, ON] in Mali was created by the French colonial authorities in 1932 with the goal of establishing a textile industry and producing rice for the local population. When the former colony of Soudan became independent in 1960, the ON came under the authority of the new Malian state and was nationalized. In the following years, the new Malian authorities made this enterprise in the heart of the Malian development process with an emphasis on achieving food self-sufficiency and increasing food exports. In the context of decolonization and the Cold War, the Malian government has followed the socialist model of development. Specially, its new statesman, Modibo Keita formulated a resolution which was approved in September 1960. According to this resolution, new economic structures were supposed to be established to build a socialist economy by investing into Mali’s people, both men and women as the basis and main driver of the nation’s development. Since then, the ON absorbed a large share of public investment, and collective work at the village level was promoted. Farmers, men as well as women, became organized in agricultural associations in order to increase productivity and to raise the living standard of dwellers. Over times, political changes occurring in Bamako as well as decision-making in the level of the ON management level did influence the functioning of the irrigation scheme, not to mention the international community.

This study investigates the historical evolution of women’s situation in the ON and the role they have played in the rural development process initiated through the lens of the irrigation scheme from 1960 to 2010. By analyzing the historical situation of women and their role, this research project came down to asking whether during the study period there a possible change of their position over time was, or whether they remained in the background. This study key results reveal how during the entire period between 1960 and 1970, women farmers situation in the ON villages did not change in terms of rural development policy, because they were simply seen as family members, mothers and wives as well as simple observers of the development process that was underway in their communities. Rural development policy in force at the time did not

iii

Abstract

consider women's interests and concerns. Changes in women’s socioeconomic situation and role in the ON started to occur only from the first half of the 1980s with the international community influence through the structural adjustment reforms. By using archival documents, in-depth interviews and secondary literature, this study entend to show when and how these changes occurred and what all this tell us about women in rural development in the Office du Niger.

Acknowledgement

I thank God for the courage and the many blessings upon my journey to take me far into completing my Doctor of Philosophy degree.

I am very grateful to the Volkswagen Foundation which funded the research project and made possible this dissertation.

I am also very thankful to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) which provided me stipend for the short period of six months from January to June 2020 within the framework of the STIBET III stipend program. This stipend greatly helped me completing the dissertation.

I cannot even begin to thank professors Dr. Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger for trusting me to perform this work as a PhD candidate by providing supervisory roles in carrying out this research, they teached me the spirit of independence and initiative in intellectual development and construction. Their time, comments as well as suggestions and advices accompanied me throughout the realization of this work. I want these two professors, who believed in my intellectual and human capacities, find here all my gratitude. I want to thank Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler for accepting to be an external for my Dissertation Committee although; it is of considerable inconvenience for her to travel from Switzerland especially in this context of many restrictions due to Corona virus crisis.

Thanks to Dr. Svenja Frischholz and Bianca Maria Bergmann who put me in very good working conditions at Jacobs University Bremen and helped this research project get successful.

Many thanks to Mr. Emil Schreyger, who from the start of this research project received me at his home in Zurich, Switzerland for a long interview, that revolved round his knowledge about the Office du Niger. His advices and encouragements were extremely helpful, may he find here all my gratitude.

I am very thankful to Professor Cheikh Ibrahima Niang, specialist on Social Anthropology and Environment Sciences and all members of the SAHARA Program (Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance for West Africa Program) specially Oumy Touré. My stay among the professor's group helped me understand the qualitative research approach and all the assets a young historian like me can gain by integrating in her research a socio-anthropological approach.

Acknowledgement

Also, many thanks to Professors Boubacar Barry (University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar), Babacar Fall (University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar), Ousseynou Faye (University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar), Isaie Dougnon (University of Fordham, United States and University of Bamako, Mali), Vittorio Morabito, and Amidu Magasa (University of Bamako) who were kind enough to bring me their suggestions and advice for a good process of this thesis.

I am incredibly grateful to Mr. Seiba Diallo, at that time head of the ON's documentation services. Mr. Diallo opened the doors of the ON's archives to me whenever I felt the need. I could access these archives even on Saturdays and Sundays, on days when these archives were closed to the public. This situation was possible due to the permission I got from Seiba Diallo, who gave me the keys to the premises through his assistant.

I sincerely thank Mr. Yacouba Coulibaly who opened the doors of the Nyeta-Conseil research institute (Ségou, Mali) to me and made a very large number of documents available to me, not to mention the facilities he provided me during my field visits.

I am thankful to the staff of Jacobs University Library, Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen, German Overseas Institute in Hamburg, Archives in Savigny-Le-Temple and Courneuve Aubervilliers at Paris, National Archives of Senegal at Dakar, National Archives of Mali at Bamako, and Office du Niger Archives at Ségou.

I thank all my colleagues at Jacobs University Bremen, Aliya Tonkobayeva, Verena Kröss and Karen Bugow for being such interesting and wonderful colleagues who have facilitated my participation in this large project on the International History of Rural Development due to their listening and sharing spirit; Patience Bonsu for her support from the beginning up to the end of this dissertation writing; Maty Sané for her kind advices and suggestions and Dr. Sabur Olarotimi Badmos for very fruitful advices, and the last tunings of this dissertation thesis. These lovely people have been the family away from my home. All of whom, suffered, my inappropriate jokes and emotional outbursts with so much of tolerance, that I am unable express my gratitude towards them even if they might not understand the necessity in doing so.

I am very thankful to Jacobs University community for teaching me how to accept and respect diverse nationalities and cultures from different countries. As a university that prides itself with its diversity, and views diversity as a key pillar in its educational strategy, it remains the healthy

Acknowledgement

international environment of Jacobs University which gave me conversational confidence and a feeling of not being special or unique than other communities all over the world. I am very thankful to my African friends in Senegal, in other countries in Europe, in University of Bremen and in Jacobs University as well, for support and long-lasting memories throughout my stay in Germany.

I want to thank Dr. Tobias Wolffhardt and his family, his wife Kristin and his daughter Lucia, for their support since the beginning of this research project. Whenever I needed it, they opened the door of their house for me, reserving me one of the best welcomes. My first discussions with Dr. Tobias allowed me to better understand the challenges of a doctoral thesis and suddenly to better organize myself in evidence for the good progress of the writing of this dissertation.

I am also indebted to the Baby family in Ségou. This family welcomed me and supports me during my stay in Ségou and in the Office du Niger zone.

Additionally, a tribute must be paid to these women and men, from Ségou to the Office du Niger productions zones, whose patient and interesting answers to many of the questions raised by the topic provided the basis of this dissertation. Their readiness and wish to trust information regarding their personal affairs to a stranger with nothing to offer in return has always deeply impressed and touched me. I want just to say to these lovely people that their valued contribution is highly appreciated. Thank you very much!

Last but not the least, I thank my family, my lovely mother, and my siblings for their understanding and valued support in various ways. Thanks very much also to my overly sweet son, Mamadou Lamine Drame for the many times you had to miss your mammy, especially when you needed her to be beside you. I had to be absent very often to finish writing this thesis. I am wishing you a life filled with love, joy and the peace of God. May the Lord bless and favor you anytime as you go about your life to be a blessing.

vii

Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my beloved father, Abdoulaye Barry, who passed away just after I graduated from the high school. My dad worked extremely hard to raise my five siblings and me in this turbulent life. Dearly father, you understood the need for higher education, and you did enormous personal sacrifice for us become the individuals we are today. Dad, I am sure that you are immensely proud of the achievement of this monumental academic goal and I hope that I have fulfilled your dream to see me one day having an especially important university degree. Today, I wish that you could still be alive to share with me the celebration and the success of my graduation with a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

viii

Table of Content

Statutory Declaration…………………………………………………………...………………..i

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..ii

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………...... iv

Dedication…...………………………………………………………………………………….vii

Table of Content……………………………………………………………………………….viii

List of Tables………………………………………………………………………….………..xv

Glossary of Bambara Terms………………………………………………………………….xvi

List of Abbreviations...………………………………………………………………………xviii

Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………..…..1

1.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..….1

1.2 Historical background to the study area……………………………………………………...5

1.3 Literature Review …………………………………………………………………………...11

1.3.1 Women and rural development in Sub-Saharan Africa……………..…………….11

1.3.2 Women's specific situation in Mali and in the Office du Niger during the post-

independence period………………………………………………………………...... 14

1.3.3 The Office du Niger at the heart of food security and development in Mali……...15

1.3.4 Farmers’ living and working conditions in the Office du Niger during the post-

independence period………………………………………………………………….....17

1.4 Methodology……………………………………………………………………………….. 19

Table of Content

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in the Office du Niger, 1960s-1970s…………….….23

2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...……...23

2.2 Structure and function of family in the Office du Niger…………………………………..26

2.2.1 Structure and importance of family……………………………………………...28

2.2.2Importance of women in the family……………………………………………...32

2.2.3 A divided world within the family………………………………………………36

2.3 Women and marriage in the Office du Niger during the first two decades of the post- independence period…………………………………………………………………………..40

2.3.1 Marriage and the choice of the spouse………………………………………….42

2.3.2 Dowry for girls………………………………………………………………….46

2.3.3 Polygamy………………………………………………………………………..49

2.4 Women social situation in the Office du Niger…………………………………….……..53

2.4.1 Women's situation in the household………………………………………….…54

2.4.2 Women’s situation in the village/public sphere………………………………...56

2.5 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..58

Chapter 3: Women in the Office du Niger: Survival Strategies in the Context of Economic

Hardship, 1960s-1970s………………………………………………………………………60

3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….60

Table of Content

3.2 The prevailing socio-economic situation in the Office du Niger……………………….66

3.2.1 Food problem in the Office du Niger…………………………………………67

3.2.2 “The rice takers” ....…………………………………………………………..71

3.3 Women's survival strategies within the context of an emerging cash economy……….76

3.3.1 Female work in the rice and cotton cultivation fields………………………..78

3.3.1.1 Women's incomes from farming…………………………………………...80

3.3.2 Growing millet to cope with rice shortage…………………………………...82

3.3.3 Cultivating vegetables and condiments………………………………………84

3.3.4 Women hand-hulling…………………………………………………………88

3.3.5 Women’s contribution to the household's expenditures……………………..90

3.4 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..93

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development in the Dutch Partner Program in the Office du

Niger, 1978-1997…………………………………………………………………………96

4.1 Introduction….………………………………………………………………………..96

4.2 The beginning of the Dutch partner program in the Office du Niger…………………98

4.3 Responsibility transfer to women farmers…………………………………………...109

4.3.1 Introduction of threshing and winnowing machines to women…….……...111

Table of Content

4.3.2 Malo woro mazin: Women’s hulling machine…………………………….118

4.3.2.1 Management of hulling machines………………………………………120

4.3.2.2 The price of hulling service…………………………………………….123

4.3.3 Local production of equipment to accompany the intro. of technology…123

4.3.4 Women’s economic interest groups establishment………………………126

4.3.4.1 Women's self-help associations………………………………………...128

4.3.4.2 Organizing women into economic interest groups……………………..131

4.3.5 The way forward: introducing training and literacy to promote women’s farming

skills……………………………………………………………………………133

4.3.5.1 Women farmers’ training………………………………………………135

4.3.5.2 Functional literacy for women farmer…………………………………137

4.4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………140

Chapter 5: Women’s entry into extension services in the Office du Niger: the “Mousso ladilibaka”, 1983-2010………………………………………………………………...142

5.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...142

5.2 The beginning of female extension officers’ work in the Office du Niger……….. 146

5.2.1 Gender differences in access to extension services and the need to hiring women as

extension officers………………………………………………………………147

5.2.2 The “Mousso ladilibaka” (female extension officers) …………………..153

xii

Table of Content

5.3 Actions of female extension officers in the women empowerment process……… 156

5.3.1The role of the female agricultural extension work approach in facilitating local

development…………………………………………………………………….157

5.3.2 Testing and the extension program around hulling machines…………….162 5.3.3 Rice transplanting technique spreading…………………………………..167

5.3.4 Supporting women in improving their vegetable gardening productivity..171

5.3.5 Culinary demonstrations, and education about hygiene and well-being…176

5.4 Female extension work’s impact on women farmers…...... 179

5.4.1 A technical and economic success………………………………………..180

5.4.2 More stymieing social and institutional dynamics………………………..183

5.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………….…………………….187

Chapter 6: Development in the Office du Niger within the context of privatization and structural adjustment programs, 1990-201…………………………………………..189

6.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………189

6.2 International donors acting for the Office du Niger restructuring program…………197

6.2.1Donors and their main arguments about the Office du Niger restructuring program...... 198

6.2.2 The new Office du Niger and the zone’s decentralization………………..203

6.3 Privatization in the Office du Niger…………………………………………………207

xiii

Table of Content

6.3.1The Niono Works Center………………………………………….……….208

6.3.2 The Agricultural Equipment Assembly Workshop………….…………….209

6.3.3 The Village Development Fund……………………………………………211

6.4 The ON restructuring program’s impact (gender roles and relations) ………………214

6.4.1 Promoting women’s vegetable gardening in the Office du Niger…………216

6.4.2 Actions to improve women's access to land and credit……………………221

6.4.3 Actions to improve women’s income……………………………………...227

6.4.4 Institutional impediments to emancipatory aspect………………………... 233 6.4.5 Technology and the market around the hulling machines…………………234

6.4.6 Legal issues about land tenure…………………………………………….236

6.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..241

Conclusion………………………...……………………………………………………243

Sources consulted………………………………………………………………………255

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………260

xiv

List of Tables

Table 1: Paddy rice production during the 1970s

Table 2: General summary of the threshing activity in the ON with the Ricefan threshers, 1982- 1989

Table 3: Production of agricultural equipment by AAMA, 1983-1989

Table 4: Number of trained néo-alphabètes in the Office du Niger, 1987-90

Table 5: Office du Niger irrigated lands rehabilitation's situation

Table 6: Evolution of areas (ha)/zone―areas cultivated by women/business figures

Table 7: Name of the most common vegetables in the Office du Niger

Table 8: Evolution of the number of female farm managers in the Office du Niger

Table 9: Women and credit: granted loans during three agricultural campaigns (USD)

Table 10: Women and incomes from vegetable gardening, 1995/96 season

Table 11: Women and incomes from transplanting rice seedlings during three seasons (USD)

Glossary of Bambara Terms

Fa Father Ma Mother Sou House WoloFa Biological father WoloBa Biological mother Cé Boy Mogotigui Girl Mousso Woman Toh Main dish prepared from millet Fourou Marriage Mogotiguiya Virginity Mousso Women Koniobomino A gift received by a bride from her mother Sinaya Polygamy Moussokilin tiguiya Monogamy Malominéna The guards and military corps supposed to secure rice production in the fields Malo White rice used by local people for lunch or dinner Wari Money Malo sénné Rice cultivation Cori sénné Cotton cultivation Farafini jaba Shallot, a highly esteemed product often cultivated by women Nio sénné Millet cultivation Nako Vegetable gardening Foronto Red pepper Guan Okra Tomati Tomato Layi Garlic Sougou Market

xvi

Glossary of Bambara Terms

Thioiiry Hand-hulling Namugu Powder made from baobab leaves, mainly used for the sauce accompanying the toh Néré Tree seeds used to make the spice soumbala Soumbala Spice made from néré seeds Sougoumo The small gifts women brought back from the market for children Malo gosi mazin Threshing machine Malo woro mazin Women’s hulling machine Sabaly Name of one women's economic group, meaning forgiveness Yérédémé Name of one women's economic group, meaning self-help Mousso ladilibaka Female agricultural extension officers Malo tourou Rice transplanting Kunawolo Name of one women's economic group, meaning to be saved with dignity

xvii

List of Abbreviations

ARPON Improvement of Peasant Rice Cultivation in the Office du Niger AAMA Assembly Workshop of Agricultural Materials ACA Agricultural Cooperative Association AMEFF Archives of French Ministry of Economy and Finances AMAEF Archives of French Ministry of Foreign Affairs ANM National Archives of Mali ANS National Archives of Senegal AUW Agricultural University of Wageningen BMD Malian Development Bank BNDA National Bank for Agricultural Development CNRA National Committee for Agricultural Research CFA Agricultural Training Center CCCE Central Economic Co-operation Fund CEC Saving and Credit Unions CRMD Delta Mutual Funds CRM Molodo Mechanized Management Center CILCS Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel CAFON Blacksmith Artisanal Cooperative of the Office du Niger DPR Rural Promotion Division DEF Basic Studies Diploma DMA Agricultural Machinery Division DVA Agricultural Extension Division DADR Directorate of Equipment and Rural Development EPIC Public Industrial and Commercial Establishment F&D Women and Development FDV Village Development Fund FED European Community GIE Economic Interest Group IMF International Monetary Fund

xviii

List of Abbreviations

IMT Irrigation Management Transfer ILO International Labor Organization IMRAD Malian Research Institute on Agriculture and Development IRAM Institute for Research and Applications of Development Methods IER Institute of Rural Economy KFW Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau MCNL Military Committee for National Liberation MDG Millennium Development Goals MCA Millennium Challenge Account NGO Non Governmental Organization ON Office du Niger OPAM Malian Agricultural Products Office POP Peasants Organisation Promotion UDPM Democratic Union of the Malian People UC Cooperative Unit UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNFM Malian National Union of Women UDPM Democratic Union of the Malian People US-RDA Soudanese Union of African Democratic Rally URDOC Research-Development Unit and Observatory of Change SSA Sub Saharan Africa WB World Bank WID Women in Development WBGA World Bank Group Archives WCUNDW World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women WUA Water Users Associations

xix

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Introduction

This dissertation investigates the historical analysis of the evolution of women’s situation in the ON and the role they have played in the rural development process initiated through the lens of the ON from 1960 to 2010. The study argues, first, that women were very active in the economy of their local communities in the ON. Second, it shows that despite this economic role played by women, during the first two decades of the postcolonial years, they did not receive the kind of attention that would allow them to participate fully in the political, economic, and social life in the ON villages. Third, this study also argues that, women’s situation in the ON began to change only in the second half of the 1980s due to the influence of the international community, through such vectors as the structural adjustment program, and also due to the democratization process initiated in Mali during the 1990s by the regime of Alpha Oumar Konare. In the zone, the structural adjustment reforms had the effect of drawing more consideration to women farmers’ interests, and helped them receive more support from local policy makers. This situation differs from the account of many scholars which blame structural adjustment for excluding women from development opportunities. Women have always played an important role in their communities ‘development, undertaking a wide range of activities relating to food production and cash cropping, processing and marketing. The growing role women occupied in the agricultural economy is best expressed by the International Labor Organization (ILO), which in 1980 described rural women in Sub- Saharan Africa (SSA) as providing “the majority of the agricultural labor force”1. As observed by Stella O. Odebode, in many parts of Africa, it is estimated that women contribute about 70 percent of the labour in food processing and preservation2. However, women's contribution to family and national economies has risen to global awareness only since the International Women's Year in 1975, and the United Nations Decade for Women, 1976-19853. The Decade's primary focus for developing countries was on the "integration of women in development," an

1 International Labor Organization, Women in rural development. Critical issues, (Genova: ILO, 1980). 2 Odebode, O. Stella, “Gender Issues in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development in Nigeria”, in Rural Development-Contemporary Issues and Practices, ed. Rashid Solagberu Adisa (University of Ibadan, Ibadan: Intech open, 2012), 145. 3 Margaret Snyder, “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 20. Also see Ruth Pearson, “The rise and rise of gender and development”, in A Radical history of development studies. Individuals, institutions and ideologies, ed. Uma Kothari (Garfield Road: Claremont 7700, 2005); and Karen Garner, Women and Gender in International History. Theory and Practice, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).

Chapter 1: Introduction

approach that is also known as “gender main-streaming4.This "integration" is accomplished by including a "women's component" in programs that have previously been directed mainly to men, or through the overall adaptation of projects to include women5.

Despite, growing recognition of women’s contribution to their local economy, and their greater involvement in development projects, some countries in SSA, like Mali, continue to experience difficulties in their national development process. Such difficulties could be explained by the fact that this "integration of women in development," was more rhetorical than substantive, as some scholars have observed. According to Marilee Karl, rural development projects for the improvement of agriculture are almost exclusively aimed at men6. Margaret Snyder has opined that this focus increased difficulties in national economies, in general, as a result of the non-involvement in development programs and agencies of one important category of human resources: women. She further noted that this disregard for women would seriously hamper efforts to end hunger and reduce poverty7. After several decades of independence, Mali remains a latecomer regarding the main economic and social development indicators.

Mali is characterized by a low level of industrial and economic development that suppresses its population’s living conditions, and despite the existence of the large irrigation project that is the ON, hunger and poverty remain great problems. According to the World Bank, today extreme poverty in Mali is around 47 percent8. Due to its very low, albeit steadily rising, Human Development Index (HDI), Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world9. Within this set of circumstances, in Mali the flow of resources to combat hunger is still targeted mainly at men, even when it is intended to be gender neutral10, and even if women remain very present in the agricultural economic process. Because of the influence that women exercise as agents of production and reproduction, it is today widely recognized and accepted that actions undertaken

4 Margaret Snyder, “Women: The key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 20. 5 Ibid., p.20. 6 Marilee Karl, “Dans le développement rural”, in Femmes et développement outils pour l’organisation et l’action, ed. ISIS, Genève, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988), 96. 7 Margaret Snyder, “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 19. 8 World Bank Group, Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015. Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity, (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2015), 2. 9 Moussa Djiré, Investissements agricoles et acquisitions foncières au Mali: Tendances et études de cas, (Londres/Bamako: IIED/GERSDA, 2012), 11. 10 Margaret Snyder, “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 19.

Chapter 1: Introduction

to further development and improve quality of life must take account of women’s living and working conditions if they are to be successful. Considering what has been shown in terms of women's contribution in the agricultural labor force in SSA countries11, incorporating women into rural development research stand to contribute greatly to obtaining a better grasp of their role in local development projects. In the ON, investigating the dynamic of socio-economic change with regard to women’s situation and role in an area dominated by male-oriented agricultural policies will be a very important task.

Proceeding from that standpoint, the reasons for choosing to analyze women in Mali’s ON in this research project are threefold. First, women serve as a significant case study because women’s work was and still is the motor of national economies, especially in developing countries such as Mali 12. It is recognized today that strategies to end hunger and alleviate poverty, if they are to be successful, must include women who are increasingly responsible for food security, especially in rural areas. As observed by Laura A. Twagira, in the ON women were responsible for providing food to their households throughout the year, with Bambara women regularly preparing the main dish toh from pounded and cooked millet13. Second, the ON serve as a good choice for this study because of its role in the Malian government’s everlasting dream of achieving national food self-sufficiency and improving the living conditions of the population, men as well as women14. Third, an overview of various documents and articles on the ON and women in rural development has revealed that very little has been done on the history of rural development in the ON in general and on women and rural development in the ON in particular. This study therefore adds to the scant existing literature on the topic, which is important because rural development and women are still politically meaningful in the

11 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 218; Margaret Snyder, “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 4; Donald R. Mickelwait et al., Women in Rural Development, (Washington: Westview Press, 1976), 34; Marie A. Savane, “Women and rural development in Africa”, in: Women in rural development. Critical issues, ed. ILO, (Geneva: ILO, 1980), 27. 12 Joycelin Massiah, Women in Developing Economies: Making Visible the Invisible, (University of Virginia: Berg Publishers, 1993), 13. 13 Laura A. Twagira “Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali) : Technology, Environment, and Food C.A 1900-1985”, (PhD Diss., Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, May 2013), 62. 14 Pierre Bonneval, et al., L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mali. Succès économiques, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement, (Paris: Cirad, Karthala, 2002), 98.

Chapter 1: Introduction

contemporary Malian development process, and they are linked to each other given that most of the population are still living in the rural area, women in particular15.

The question then is, what was the situation of women in the ON in Mali between 1960 and 2010 and what does it reveal about their role in the rural development process? The following sub-questions will be considered in an attempt to find an answer to the main research question: 1) How did women in the ON live? 2) Were the ON women included in the development process through the development policies adopted over time by different Malian governments? 3) Did women take up new positions in the official economy during the period of the structural adjustment program, or did they remain in the background? 4) What were their contribution to and role in the rural economy over time in the Office du Niger?

The primary purpose of this study is to analyze the historical evolution of women’s situation in the ON and the role they have played in the rural development process initiated through the lens of the ON irrigation scheme from 1960, when this colonial economic complex was nationalized, to 2010 a date marked by the materialization of an agro-business promotion policy in the ON zone. This focus provides an overview of a precarious modern and competitive agricultural sector which disadvantaged smallholder farms, especially those of women farmers, by making land leases less more secure while also promoting agro-industries and private investment. It also shows that improvement of the ON women’s situation is a long-running process, which has experienced and will continue going to experience many difficulties. In pursuing a more comprehensive understanding of this subject, this dissertation will make four additional contributions: 1) an investigation into the postcolonial historical conditions under which women worked and lived; 2) an exploration of the ways development policies adopted by different Malian governments over time dealt with women through the lens of the ON local development process; 3) analysis of new positions and opportunities in the official economy from which women benefitted during the period of structural adjustment program; and 4) identifying changes in women's contributions to and role in the rural economy of the ON.

15 Institut National de la Statistique, 4éme Recensement de la Population et de l’Habitat du Mali, (Bamako: Institut National de la Statistique, 2009), 20.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.2 Historical background to the study area This study was carried out in the Office du Niger zone located in the Northern region of Mali, about 330 km north-east of Bamako16. At the beginning of the research in 2015, the zone was comprised of seven production zones, namely Niono, Molodo, Macina, Kouroumari, N'Débougou, Kolongo, and M'Béwani. The ON zone is located in the Ségou region about 240 km from Bamako, the capital of Mali, a western African country. Located in the center of Mali, the Ségou region has an area about 64 841 mater square, approximately 5% of the country’s territory, making it17, the smallest region in the country. It is crossed by the Niger River, south of that, its tributary the Bani. North of the Niger River are the fala, branches of the Niger River. These are known as the backwaters of Molodo (a dead arm of the Niger River) and Boky Wéré (a secondary branch of the Niger). Ségou is bounded to the south by the Sikasso region, to the southeast by Burkina Faso, to the east by the regions of Mopti and Timbuktu, to the north by Mauritania, and to the west by the Koulikoro region. Currently, the Ségou region counts 1,864,561 inhabitants, including 916,348 men and 930,213 women, who represent over than 50 % of the population. Ségou is the headquarters of the Office du Niger, an extensive irrigation system begun in 1932 by French colonial officials 18. Since May 19, 1961, it has been the property of the Malian state in the form of an “Industrial and Commercial Public Enterprise” (EPIC). The region is considered agriculturally important because of the contribution of the ON irrigated lands to the country’s production and productivity. Administratively, the ON zone is mainly located in the circles of Niono and Macina, only the M'Béwani production zone is located in the Ségou circle. In the early 2000s, the ON has a population about 437,905 inhabitants, more than 50% of whom were women. This population resided in 253 villages and is divided into 28,573 concessions, or "families" according to the ON

16 M. A. Diuk Wasser et al., “Patterns of irrigated rice growth and malaria vector breeding in Mali using multi- temporal ERS-2 synthetic aperture radar”, International Journal of Remote Sensing 27, no. 3-4, (February 2006):537. 17 Office du Niger Archives [hereafter, AON], unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la Zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de Synthése, Octobre 2005, p.14. 18 AON, 33, Office du Niger, Direction Générale, Présentation de l’Office du Niger, janvier 1993, “n.p.”; AON, 33/2, Organisation de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.1; Vittorio Morabito, “Compte-Rendu Sommaire d’une Mission d’Etude á l’Office du Niger (Rép. Du Mali) sur la Mise en Valeur de Périmètres Irrigués pour le Développement des Pays d’Afrique “, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’ Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Anno 27, no. 3, (Septembre 1972): 465.

Chapter 1: Introduction

management’ terminology19. In the ON zone each village is generally inhabited by an ethnic group. However, there are many ethnic groups from one village to another: Bambaras, Mossis, Miniankas, Bobos, Peulhs, and Dogons to name a few20. Located in the western part of the central delta of the Niger River, the ON is an agro-industrial enterprise of prime importance due to its immense irrigated area. It is, indeed, a large hydro-agricultural development which, by mobilizing the water resources of the Niger River using a diversion dam at Marakala, is today able to irrigate more than 60, 000 hectares of land with total water control 21 . The main development works were carried out between 1934 and 1947, during which period the Marakala Dam was constructed, and major canals and other infrastructures were put in place to irrigate 25,000 hectares22. The Marakala dam aims to raise water level of the Niger upstream to a minimum depth of 5.50 meters in order to supply water during the dry season to the two fala. During the raining season, the barriers responsible for diverting water flow are lowered flat, while during the dry season they are raised to between 45 and 80 degrees23. After the construction of this hydraulic infrastructure, the development of cropland began in the center of Kokry in the Macina production zone, followed by Niono. After the independence of Mali, the ON was entrusted to the new state through the convention relative á l’Office du Niger signed between Malian authorities and French government. In its first article, the convention provides that, the ON, public establishment of the French state, equipped with the moral personality and financial autonomy, is transformed into establishment of the Republic of Mali and would be accountable to the ministry of rural economy24. In 1964, the ON included 33,000 settlers distributed in the

19 AON, unnumbered document, Astou Diop Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la Zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de Synthése, Octobre 2005, p.16. 20 AON, 0149, Projet Caisses Villages d’Epargne et de Crédit Autogérées, Zone Office du Niger, Niono, Juillet 1997, p.2; Jean-Yves Marchal, “L’Office du Niger: îlo de prospérité paysanne ou pôle de production agricole?”, Canadian Journal of African Studies 8, no. 1 (1974): 79. 21 AON, 33, Office du Niger, Direction Générale, Présentation de l’Office du Niger, janvier 1993, “n.p.” 22 AON, 33, Office du Niger, Direction Générale, Présentation de l’Office du Niger, janvier 1993, “n.p.” 23 AON, unnumbered document, 1, L’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.2. 24 Archives of the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance, [here after AMEFF], B-0073230, Jean Baptiste Doumeng, president of the INTERAGRA corporation, to Monsieur Penne, the French minister of economy and finance, 27.04.1977, "Demande concernant deux entreprises d'Etat maliennes, la Somiex et l'Office du Niger" , 1977, p.42.

Chapter 1: Introduction

110 villages: on the one hand in sector in family exploitation and on the other hand in sector exploited in the form of salaried in direct control directed by a special service25. The main activity in the ON is agriculture, which make up 85% of the economy, a percentage comparable to the national rate. Historically cotton and rice were the two major farming systems practised in the ON irrigated lands. Sugar cane was introduced in 1965, while technical problems pertaining to drainage and, maintenance of waterways, as well as parasitism, led to the definitive abandonment of cotton cultivation in 1970 following a period of gradual decline26. The abandonment of cotton cultivation placed all the ON management’s hopes of profitability on rice and sugar cane. Irrigated rice cultivation in the region expanded beginning with the ON restructuration program during the 1980s. Other crops include millet, peanuts (groundnuts), cassava, beans, and vegetables. Formerly an activity for women, practiced mainly in the cold season on small areas to meet the needs of the family, vegetable gardening was recognized by the ON management as an economic sector in the first half of the 1980s.

This activity is carried out today by men (on rice plots) and women (on rice plots and on land dedicated to this practice) 27 .The boom in vegetable gardening is explained by the combination of several favorable factors including the relative opening up of the Niono production zone, the increase in population, and access to credit and land for women. In 2004, the land area used for vegetable gardening was estimated to be more than 4,000 hectares. Development programs (extension or rehabilitation) designated plots intended for vegetable gardening. For example, the Improvement of Peasant Rice Cultivation in the Office du Niger (ARPON) project allocated land to women's groups, while the Retail project established a standard allocation of 2 hectares per worker. In addition, in the off-season, rice plots were loaned to women and vegetable gardening activities were carried out in the extension areas of the villages. However, all of these developments also serve to indicate the limited availability of the land for women's vegetable gardening in the ON zone.

25 Vittorio Morabito, “Compte-Rendu Sommaire d’une Mission d’Etude á l’Office du Niger (Rép. Du Mali) sur la Mise en Valeur de Périmètres Irrigués pour le Développement des Pays d’Afrique “, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’ Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Anno 27, no. 3, (Septembre 1972): 471. 26AON, 33, Office du Niger, Direction Générale, Présentation de l’Office du Niger, janvier 1993, “n.p.”; AON, unnumbered document, Réné Dumont, Quelques Observations sur l’Agriculture du Mali Faites au Cours d’une Rapide Traversée du Pays en Janvier 1970, “Document XY, not dated, p.9. 27 AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la Zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de Synthése, Octobre 2005, p.35.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The selection of this study area can be explained by the following rationales. First of all, the ON irrigated area began as a dream and establishment of the French colonial administration. The ON’s establishment dates back to the aftermath of World War I, when public debates focused on the reconstruction of France’s war-torn economy.28 During this colonial epoch, the Niger valley seemed to the French administration to be the hydrological region likely to offer the conditions must suitable for making up the metropolis’ cotton deficit, due notably to the considerable amount of water that could be drawn from this large river. Inspired by the successful British effort to control the flow of the Nile with a dam at Asyut, the French took the decision to build a dam at Sansanding, known today as the Marakala Dam. Numerous scholars have highlighted the role played by women during work on this dam. One such scholar, Amidu Magasa, cites among other things the role of women in carrying water as well as food which they prepared in the villages before bringing it to men at the building site. In June 1947, the consortium formed by the National Company of Public Works, the Meunier-Gogez establishment and the Batignolles Construction Society, completed the dam 29 . The whole exploitation of the irrigated lands in the ON was based on this dam. Women thus contributed to the productivity of the ON from the very beginning through their contribution to the building of the dam, and then through their role in agricultural activities after its completion. One must also remember that when men migrated to the ON lands it was because they were certain to find their suitable land for agriculture30, and that most of them were accompanied by their children and wives. The available data provide much information about women’s work on their husbands’ cotton and rice fields.

Second, historically, the ON zone was a settlement area which experienced over time the arrival of people from surrounding regions but subsequently people from much more distant regions. As observed by Julia Tischler, rather than working through plantations, the Office du Niger pursued a policy of colonisation indigène, meaning that peasant families were–in most

28 Marc Frey, “Doctrines and Practices of Agrarian Development: The Case of the Office du Niger in Mali”, in Rural Development in the Twentieth Century: International Perspectives, ed. Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2017), 17. 29 Vittorio Morabito, “L’Office du Niger au Mali, d’hier á aujourd’hui”, Journal des Africanistes 47, fascicule 1, (1977): 59. 30 AON, 33/4, Le Nil des Noirs, “Document XY, not dated, p. 22.

Chapter 1: Introduction

cases forcibly–settled at the scheme to cultivate their own plots under close supervision31. During the postcolonial period, the agricultural population in the colonat was growing particularly quickly during certain agricultural campaigns, such as those in 1968-1969 and 1971-1972. This increase in population in the area was linked to the peripatetic nature of traditional cultures in the neighboring regions32. These populations of different ethnicities had neither common projects nor close links with the settlement environment. Members of the same ethnic group and the same village of origin reproduced their original social structures. Thus, they had no strong ties to the land, especially since they could be displaced or expelled from the ON irrigated land by the administration without any recourse. It should be noted that, the Bella constitute a recent settlement. The Bella arrived from the north of the country during the drought that struck Mali in 1974. In the context of migration into the ON irrigated lands, women followed their husbands into the zone on a massive scale, which explains their number and their sizeable role in the agricultural system of the area. During the post-indepence period in this male-based farming system, women worked beside men to cultivate as much rice as was needed. The majority of this rice was expected to be sold to the ON management while the remainder was for the farmers’ own consumption. This historical situation leads to many questions as to how women’s social positions were historically shaped and affected in terms of their contribution in men's rice and cotton fields as members of the family workforce, and their socioeconomic contribution to this gender bias based-agricultural society. Thus, this historical setting makes the area a valid focus for investigating women’s situation and also their role in agriculture and in the whole local development process.

Third, more evidence coming out of this research project indicates that the ON irrigated lands began to experience a new rural development policy after the French colonial administration withdrew. In 1959 the Sudanese Republic enjoyed a regime of internal autonomy and united with Senegal to form the Mali Federation, which would burst on August 20, 1960. On September 22, 1960 the Sudanese Republic cut all ties with France and proclaimed its

31 Julia Tischler, Agriculture, p. 126. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. European University Institute, on 03 Dec 2019. 32 AON, 73/2, Commission Nationale de Planification de l’Economie Rurale. Huitiéme groupe: Zone Office du Niger. Situation du Développement de la Zone. Etude de Potentialités, “Document XY, not dated, p. 5.

Chapter 1: Introduction

independence under the name of Republic of Mali33. The ON enterprise then came under the authority of the new independent state. In order to develop a socialist economy and decolonize its economy in the aftermath of independence, the Malian government led by Modibo Keita undertook the “Five―Year Plan 1961-1965” which resulted in new sovereign state’s first “Rural Development Strategy”. During the first two political regimes in postcolonial Mali, rural development policy pursued in the ON irrigated lands seemed to be affected by the same symptoms. Women in the ON villages were seen as participants in the electoral life of the national party only in order to increase its vote share. While data show that they contributed significantly in the agricultural sector because they were largely responsible for cash crops, production of foodstuffs and gardening, the Office du Niger village women faced limited access to prime resources such as land, water, credit, inputs, and fertilizers. Moreover, these women lacked an inexisting access to extension services. Thus, investigating this time period will provide information which will allow us to see how women in the ON interacted with rural development policies in Mali over time. Additionally, the ON zone area is the area where the international community’s influence was most strongly felt in the country. The historical developments which led to the ON becoming an irrigation zone also made it a locus for intervention and influence by various international donors. Financial and technical support were delivered by international development partners like the Dutch, the French, the German, the World Bank, to name a few. For instance, the rehabilitation of the irrigation system was bankrolled coordinately by the World Bank, Dutch, French, and West and Germans, to name just a few34. This progress was being felt around the world with regard to development in general, and to rural development in particular which surely connected to what was happening in development programs in the ON. According to Aly Tounkara, from the Beijing Conference held in 1995, the Malian government and the ON management in agreement with their partners undertook to promote women’s empowerment in many priority fields, which included: education and training, economic promotion, health,

33 The National Archives of Senegal [hereafter ANS], unnumbered document, Généralités Mali-Généralités et Aperçu Historique-Le Mali, p.7. 34 Marc Frey, “Doctrines and Practices of Agrarian Development: The Case of the Office du Niger in Mali”, in Rural Development in the Twentieth Century: International Perspectives, ed. Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger, (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2017), 32.

Chapter 1: Introduction

violence, decision―making, and fundamental rights35. According to the same author, patriarchal order is disputed by development actors and women's association, while women’s involvement in development program remains very present in several debates. An in-depth analysis of the international community’s influence throughout the ON will show the extent to which local development policies can be dependent on development aid policies. Finally, the ON irrigated lands provide specific environmental and climatic conditions. Compared to other zones in Mali, the ON zone has an appropriate environment for enduring agricultural activities because of the irrigation possibilities provided by the building of the Marakala Dam on the Niger River36. Located in a country frequently hit by drought, the ON consistently outperforms most other zones in terms of agricultural production and productivity. For example, during the drought period of 1972 to 1974, paddy production in the ON actually steadily increased 37. The famine which hit Mali as a result of the drought highlighted the importance of the ON. To face the famine, Mali was forced to import grain and resort to international aid, but reliance on such measures would have been greater if the ON and its dam did not exist. This assessment is confirmed by the increasing yield from agricultural activities, as the zone accounts for nearly 90% of rice purchased for the national food security granary. Additionally, over 85% of the yield obtained in the area is produced by smallholders, including women. This situation provided a significant prospect for this study, which depended mainly on data from women, by enabling an in-depth investigation of the situation and role of women farmers involved in this irrigated farming system.

Although the ON irrigated lands in Mali comprises of seven production zones, due to space and time limitations, this study covers only four productions zones: Niono, Molodo N'Débougou, and M'Béwani. Villages in the M'Béwani production zone were included in the Niono production zone until the second half of the 1990s. This study begins referring to these villages as part of the M'Béwani production zone only after the recognition of M'Béwani as its own production zone in 1997, which corresponds to how collected data has been collated by the ON. Moreover, although research for this study mainly concentrated on the four abovementioned

35 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: Harmattan, 2015), 162. 36 ANS, unnumbered document, Généralités Mali-Généralités et Aperçu Historique-Le Mali, p.36. 37 AON, H7, Djédi Diarra, Partant de la Production de l’Office du Niger pendant les années de Sécheresse Montrer l’Importance d’un Barrage dans l’Economie d’un Pays Sahélien, Mémoire de 4éme année, promotion 1971-1975, p.5.

Chapter 1: Introduction

production zones, various examples from other zones in the ON are considered where necessary, in order to make the analysis more representative of the whole irrigation scheme.

1.3 Literature Review This section reviews some of the relevant literature related to this research project. To do this, literature with similar themes has been grouped together and then subject to a review. These grouped themes include: women and rural development history in Sub-Saharan Africa; history of women's specific situation in Mali and in the Office du Niger during the postindependence period; food security and development; and history of farmers’ living and working conditions. These main research themes provided important elements for analysis in this study.

1.3.1 Women and rural development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since farming is the main occupation of the rural dwellers in this region 38 , the contribution made by women in farm production, for instance, is one means by which to measure their contributions to the rural development process. Scholars concentrating on rural development studies have tried to connect this issue with women and agriculture, recognizing that women are frequently responsible for the production of food for direct consumption by rural families. This recognition led to the demand to specifically include women in development projects by considering their roles in different stages of local development. Since then, women’s contribution to the rural economy in general, and to the household in particular, have been variously classified by differents scholars. Boserup was the first to focus on the relationship between women’s roles and economic development, documenting the ties between certain land use patterns and agricultural techniques, and the sexual division of labor. Boserup has characterized the Sub-Saharan Africa system as the female farming system par excellence. According to her, women were found to do around 70 per cent, in one case nearly 80 per cent, of the total work. 39 Also, according to Boserup, in this context African women who spend a great deal of time in the field cannot spend much time cleaning the house and looking after the children. However, besides the fact that Boserup’s work does not recognize that women have

38 Eugene C. Okorji, “Women and Rural Development: Strategies for Sustaining Women’s Contribution in Rural Households of Anambra State, Nigeria”, Women and International Development, Working Paper, no. 166, (June 1988): 4. 39 Ester Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970), 22.

Chapter 1: Introduction

been integrated the rural modernization programs, her analysis also does not discuss the sex- based division of labor within intensive agriculture.

A focus on the interaction between the production systems, and the political and social systems was underlined by Judy Bryson in: “Women and Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Development”40. In well-defined social structures favorable to men, she shows how the latter control access to land. According to Bryson, in a social context the division of labor is dominated by men who provide land, contribute some input into the food production process and provide assistance in clearing the land, while women cultivate smaller fields more intensively in order to provide a substantial portion of their own and their children’s livelihood. Following Judy Bryson, another work that discusses the view of women’s role in rural development is by the International Labor Office,41 whose Rural Development and Women in Africa contains discussions by several authors, each of whom shares findings on the problems facing a particular society regarding the participation of women in rural development. These authors, like Boserup and Bryson above, delve into women’s participation in developing countries in general and in African rural areas in particular in the 1980s to the 1990s with much emphasis on women’s responsibility for the provisioning of certain basic household needs, the performance of a number of tasks necessary to their families’ survival, and often subsistence agriculture, all subjects which in their view, concern women all over Africa.

Lucy Creevey, in her Women Farmers in Africa, Rural Development in Mali and the Sahel,42 published in 1986, provides clear explications of rural women’s roles in their local economies though the development projects of the 1970s and 1980s in Mali and all around the Sahel. She shows first that rural women in the Sahel perform essential roles in agriculture even if they have been neglected by policy makers concerned with agricultural development. Second, she defends to defend the idea that, the success of any program depends completely on whether local women fully participate in the program and are sufficiently trained to carry out the responsibilities which the new program entails.

40 Judy C. Bryson, “Women and Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Development”, in African Women in The Development Process, ed. Nelson Nici (Frank Cass, 1981), 29-46. 41 International Labour Office, Rural women and development, (Geneva: ILO, 1984), 157. 42 Lucy E. Creevey, Women Farmers in Africa: Rural Development in Mali and the Sahel, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 212.

Chapter 1: Introduction

By way of summarizing, all the above literature on women and rural development in Sub- Saharan Africa, one may conclude that women played a significant role in rural development. This literature classifies women’s activities into cultivation, harvesting, distribution, and alimentation. In the view of the authors discussed above, women’s predominance in cultivation of food crops is a fact. Beginning with the ground-breaking work of Ester Boserup, the authors have given painstaking attention to documenting what women do, what the significance of this is to them individually and to society as a whole, and what has been done to assist them (or what has not been done) and why. By becoming familiar with this body of work on women and rural development within the sub-region, constitutes a significant help in shedding light on women's situation and role in the ON in Mali.

1.3.2 Women's specific situation in Mali and in the Office du Niger during the post- independence period This section focuses on works pertaining to women’s situation in Mali and in the Office du Niger. The first of these is the Malian historian Bintou Sanankoua’s book Femmes du Mali, published in 2005. It studies the situation of women in Mali linking it to the major stages of the country’s history, such as independence, the droughts and military regime of Moussa Traoré, and the democratization period. While recognizing the significant presence of women in the agricultural and informal sectors, she nonetheless believes that they were marginalized during the two decades that followed the independence of Mali. The second piece of literature in this category is by Danielle Bazin Tardieu, published in 1975 and entitled, Femmes du Mali. Statut, image an reactions au changement. The author, who is Haitian and worked for ten years in Africa, conducted an investigation in Mali from 1963 to 1968 in order to achieve an overall picture of the situation of women in this country. Although mainly concerned with showing how women participated in wage labor in cities, the book also tries to chart the changing position and role of women in the context of Mali's development process from 1960.

Another book that discusses the situation of Malian women is that of Aly Tounkara. His Femmes et discriminations au Mali published in 2015, is likewise a discussion about the complex interplay between culture, religion, and modernity which shape the conditions of women. Tounkara first analyzes the socioeconomic conditions of Malian women, which remain deeply influenced by cultural and religious practices, and then explores the policy of women’s

Chapter 1: Introduction

emancipation undertaken by local authorities under the influence of international institutions and NGOs, which reflects the perpetual mutation of Malian society. Meanwhile, Laura Ann Twagira, in her thesis titled: “Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali): Technology, Environment, and Food C.A 1900-1985”43, examines how women in the ON integrated the colonial and post-colonial irrigation project into an existing system of food production. This author first analyses the division of labor between men and women who live and work in the ON. Second, she shows how women were responsible for providing their households with a filling and diverse diet throughout the year.

Sanankoua, Bazin-Tardieu and Tounkara share at least two things in common: they all recognize both the precarious status of women in Mali during the first decades of the postcolonial period, and the changes that started in the country on behalf of these women since the 1980s and 1990s. Otherwise Twagira’s work is the only one of the three to focus exclusively on a general overview of women’s contributions in the daily life of their households in the ON. Except for saying that there were some social exchanges between the towns outside the ON and the ON towns within which women were a means of exchange through marriage, she does not touch upon women’s influence in the public sphere. Her work alone cannot facilitate an understanding, for example, of the status of women in the ON villages, and the change over time in their socio-economic situation. This current study takes a different approach. In order to achieve a better, larger, and more complete history of women’s situation and role in the ON, it is necessary to take into account their position in the whole society, not only in the household realm, but also in the public sphere and the socioeconomic domain.

1.3.3 The Office du Niger at the heart of food security and development in Mali

During the 1960s and 1970s one attend, in Sub Saharan Africa, to a drastic change in the policy of states vis-à-vis their populations feeding44, while food issue became at the heart of debates. In this context, several countries launched accelerated food production programs to reverse the long decline in food production per capita and to reduce the dependence on food

43 Laura A. Twagira “Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali) : Technology, Environment, and Food C.A 1900-1985”, (PhD Diss., Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, May 2013), 347. 44 Maxime Haubert et al., Politiques alimentaires et structures sociales en Afrique Noire, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985), 13.

Chapter 1: Introduction

imports. Paralleling the attempts of Latin American countries to pursue import-substitution industrialization in the 1950s and 1960s, many African nations were finding that “food import- substitution” programs cannot compensate for the long-term neglect of the agricultural sector and overcome the many infrastructural and technical constraints on food and agricultural production45. For example, in the 1970s when Mali launched its “operation food self-sufficiency” the government acknowledged that the historical priority on cotton production was a critical factor in the decline of food production. Within this situation, Malian authorities made the ON the major element of the country’s food self-sufficiency policy46. The government abandoned cotton and made rice the only ON irrigation scheme crop47. Furthermore, in the country, the government interest in rice production further when a drought caused famine in the entire Sahel in 1972–7348.

The first work about Malian food self-sufficiency policy through the Office du Niger, considered here is by Emil Schreyger, L’Office du Niger au Mali, la problématique d’une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, published in 1984. Schreyger's careful documentation of the aims and results of the numerous plans elaborated for the ON in order to achieve food self- sufficiency since 1960 reinforces a disturbing sense of the continuity of errors and problems inherent in the project since its inception in the colonial period. According to the author, the post-independence development programs seemed to ignore the perennial challenges of the scheme: the efforts to expand production in order to supply more food to the population and pay for the upkeep of the massive installations are constantly thwarted by the lack of improved management policy. In L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mal, Succes économiques, culturelles et politiques de dévelopment, published in 2002, Pierre Bonneval, Marcel Kuper and Jean Philippe Tonneau chronicle the enterprise's ever-changing record of success, its recurring internal difficulties, and the new challenges facing the Malian government in its goal to extend its production into the regional markets. According to these authors, in the postcolonial period,

45 Eicher K. Carl, and Doyle C. Baker, “Research on Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Survey”, Food Security International Development Papers 54071, no. xi, (1982): 1. 46AMEFF, République Francaise, Ministère des Relations Extérieures-Coopération et Développement-Dossiers- Evaluation de l’Office du Niger-Mali-Conclusions. 47 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), xviii. 48 Ibid., p.12.

Chapter 1: Introduction

the policy of food self-sufficiency through rice substituted the French metropole colonial era policy of growing cotton.

Also, Bonneval et al. recognizes the increase of vegetable cultivation throughout the zone from 1,700 to 4, 000 hectares between 1994 and 2000. A good policy of access to land, credit and training for farmers especially women explains the fact that many of the ON village women have been the main actors in the gardens, and that vegetables became a cash crop like rice and sugar cane. Vegetable gardens allow farmers, especially women, to earn significant cash income, even when they lack the means to produce more rice crops. However, in their view, despite the setting up of training and advice centers, the Malian government faced great challenges to its prospects of extending the ON production in the regional market. The major challenge remains the transformation of an area with exceptional natural conditions into a real development area. According to these authors, this involves the resolution of the land tenure issue, the transfer of responsibilities to users, and management of environmental impacts49.

1.3.4 Farmers’ living and working conditions in the Office du Niger during the post- independence period In his book entitled Papa-commandant a jete un grand filet devant nous, les exploités des rives du niger 1902-1962, Amidu Magasa shows, the arduous work undertaken by Malians and other Africans present in the ON since the building of the Marakala Dam during the 1940s until the adoption of cotton and rice during the post-independence period. In her 2002 book, Negotiating Development, African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, Monica Van Beusekom meanwhile presents the ON as a formative experience in the history of the ideology of rural development, and shows the coercive labor practices and forced resettlement to which the ON farmers were subjected. According to Van Beusekom, in the ON development process the contributions of local farmers were highly significant and led to critical reformulations of project priorities, including a change in the targeted crop from cotton to rice50. A Malian writer, Cheibane Coulibaly of Bamako’s Mande Bukari University published in 1985 a work entitled, Intérêts de classes politique alimentaire et sujétion des producteurs: le cas de

49 Pierre Bonneval et al., L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mali. Succès économiques, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement, (Paris: Cirad, Karthala, 2002), 216-217. 50 Monica Van Beusekom, Negotiating Development. African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920-1960, (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), 107.

Chapter 1: Introduction

l’Office du Niger au Mali. While recognizing that the ON has contributed significantly to the Malian “food self-sufficiency” process, he nonetheless believes that farmers there have suffered at the hand of the state’s paramilitary and military structures. According to Coulibaly, the existence of these structures of control determined, the farmers’ political non-engagement as well as their strategies, especially forms of resistance, Coulibaly does not, however, elaborate upon these forms of resistance, which are, currently, essentially economic in nature.

Another paper that discusses farmers’ living conditions in the ON is Isaie Dougnon’s Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana, published in 2007. Dougnon compares farmers in the ON to the people of African descent in United States during the slavery era, in that these farmers had no freedom and no choice in their agricultural activities within the ON 51 . Following Isaie Dougnon, Klaartje Vandersypen has carefully and minutely detailed the connections between water management in the Office du Niger, international donors, and the mainstreaming of farmers’ concerns in local decision-making within the context of the Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) 52 . Vandersypen shows how farmers’ involvement in the irrigation system’s maintenance as well the delegation of responsibility to them allowed the improvement of their working and living conditions in the villages. With a firm emphasis on the ON’s rehabilitation during the 1980s, Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer’s Making a Large Irrigation Scheme Work. A case study from Mali, published in 2005, draws a detailed picture of the reforms undertaken by the Malian government with the collaboration of the World Bank and other international donors. Aw and Diemer’s analysis of the changes to farmers’ living conditions focuses on the willingness of the Malian government to empower farmers by allowing the Joint Management Committee to shift power to them, partly with the help of donor supported briefings and training for farmers on out- sourcing maintenance, legal procedures, and technical work.

Many works have focused on farmers’ living conditions in the ON zone. Among the six works, this study refers to, the first two have limited their analyses to the colonial period. These

51 Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980), (Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007), 144. 52 Klaartje Vandersypen, “Improvement of collective water management in the Office du Niger irrigation scheme (Mali): Development of decision support tools”, (PhD. diss., Faculteit Bio-ingenieurswetenschappen van de K.U. Leuven, 2007).

Chapter 1: Introduction

are the works by Magasa and Van Beusekom, both of which emphaze the coercive labor practices dealt with by farmers in the Office du Niger during the colonial epoch. According to these authors, in addition to these coercive working conditions, other reasons such as lack of basic supplies, hefty exactions, and harsh discipline explain the failure of the ON as a commercial enterprise. However, it should be noted that according to Van Beusekom, farmers were not victims of an imposed colonial development, because they were involved in negotiating policy and praxis. The remaining four authors all highlighted ON farmers’ conditions during the postcolonial period. While, Cheibane Coulibaly and Isaie Dougnon evoke the very difficult living and working conditions of farmers in the course of denouncing the village associations and the economic police which served, according to them, only as a means for the ON management to control farmers, Vandersypen, Djibril Aw, and Geert Diemer see these village associations and the Joint Committee as tools that enabled farmers to defend their interests vis-à-vis the ON management and that insured their access to credit and brought income opportunities.

In summation, considering together all of the literature on the various themes, one may conclude that the situation of the ON irrigated lands has a lot to tell in terms of women and rural development. The many different themes in this literature review show the interest many scholars have in the Office du Niger in Mali, but it also reveals the gaps in the history of the situation of women in the development process initiated through this irrigation scheme. By analyzing, contesting, and possibly comparing different themes of development policies over time in Mali and in the ON, including the women's promotion policy, the international donors' intervention in the zone, and how women positioned themselves towards these policies, this dissertation addresses these gaps and thus contributes new knowledge in the field of women and rural development.

1.4 Methodology

The World Bank group archival documents revealed significant information, sometimes contesting ideas, and debates regarding the ON land rehabilitation process, as well as the company's financial and socio-economic policy during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to the WB group archives, this study used data obtained from the archives of the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance (AMEFF) located 30 kilometers from Paris in Savigny-le-Temple, and the

Chapter 1: Introduction

archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AMAEF) in Courneuve-Aubervilliers, in Paris. Examples of the documents consulted in these archives are boxed manuscripts containing information relating to the budgetary, financial, and monetary situation in Mali between 1940 and 1971, and to the transfer and conventions relating to the ON. These files also include one mission realized by Jean-Loup Amselle et al. in 1985 under the direction of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and Development branch, ―which established a record of farmers’ conditions, and the ON's debts and productivity, and gives some observations on the ON’s politico-economic situation in the 1980s. Other archival sources include documents pertaining specifically to the Office du Niger, a box containing information on Malian debts, various documents pertaining to Malian economic activities (1959-1986), mission reports of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) filed by Albert François, Étienne Sacerdoti, Louise Schenits, and Pierre Marcinink, as well as the correspondence of several IMF representatives in Mali during the 1980s.

The National Archives of Senegal had some material relevant to the ON for the colonial period, but not to the post-independence period, while the National Archives of Mali contained many materials relevant to both the colonial and post-independence period. The first phase of research in the Malian national archives took place from September to December 2016. This clearance also allowed the researcher to conduct interviews both at the ON premises in Ségou and in the villages. The second phase in the Malian archives was carried out during the second field work trip which took place from February to April 2017. Access to the archives during this second visit was permitted due to the first research clearance. The objective of the first visit to Mali's national archives was to determine the availability of and study information about Malian women and their social and economic situation, while during the second archival visit; the researcher was looking for information on women farmers in the ON.

Materials found during both phases in these archives provided information on Bambara customs pertaining to family organization, marriage, divorce, status of women, labor division, guardianship, and emancipation. Like in the National Archives of Mali, work in the ON archives took place in two phases. The first phase took place from October to November 2016, while the second one was from February to April 2017. The main materials examined at in the ON archives yielded significant information on the Office du Niger from its establishment up to the

Chapter 1: Introduction

2000s. Many other files found in the ON archives are related to the farmers' cooperatives in the villages, especially those of women’s economic groups, the ON restructuration program, literacy and agricultural credit for male and female farmers, and vegetable gardening activities.

In addition, this research project used participant observation, in-depth-interviews and focus groups as data collection instruments. Two participant observations were conducted in both the M’Béwani and N’Débougou production zones. The primary aims of these sessions were to exchange information with farmers on harvesting and difficulties encountered during agricultural campaigns; to share cultivation coping strategies in the case of declining yields; and to get more details on the respect of the agricultural calendar and the farmers's commitments, necessary preconditions for increasing their productivity. Secondly, the participant observations were held to disseminate information about sexually transmitted diseases, healthy behavior and the rudiments of hygiene to educate mothers in the care of their children the health center in N'Débougou. Participating in these observations allowed the researchers integrate issues and topics related to women farmers' health conditions and their children into in-depth interviews and focus group discussions53.

Focus groups created a setting that allowed women farmers to share what a group of women who identify as belonging to the same society and share a similar socioeconomic position think about agriculture, land and water access and supply, agricultural credit saving, technology, and sociocultural patterns such as marriage, polygamy, and so on. From group discussions emerged significant data about issues (marriage, polygamy, female status in the private and public spheres, women’s contribution to the household expenditures, to name a few) that the researcher would perhaps not have acquired through individual discussions. Finally, in-depth interviews allowed the researcher to gather very significant information regarding the historical relationships between women farmers and men and between them and the ON management, which facilitated on understanding of the division of labor and resources between men and women. Data relating to female agricultural activities from the colonial period up to the first two postcolonial decades, the difference in time spent and work done in fields by men and women,

53 During in-depth interviews some female extension agents revealed some women’s health concerns. Many female extension agents did help these women understand how certain STIs manifest and how they could get access to care. These extension workers also helped women understand and adopt behaviors that were likely to keep their children healthy.

Chapter 1: Introduction

methods of farming, and kinds of agricultural technology used were also revealed using this research method.

The study is structured as follows. The current chapter serves as a general introduction to the dissertation, the historical background to the study, the nature of the study area; the review of literature, and the methods used in data collection. The second chapter will focus on the place occupied by women in the Office du Niger society during the 1960s-1970s. The third chapter, will provide a discussion about women’s socio-economic situation during the decades 1960 and 1970 by exploring the provisions situation in the zone, and the paddy collection methods; women's challenging agricultural and postharvest activities, such as rice and cotton cultivation, vegetable gardening, and hand hulling; and their impact on their everyday monetary income, as well as the increasing trend of women’s contribution to the household expenditures. The Dutch intervention in the ON in the late 1970s will be explained in the fourth chapter. Chapter five will comprise an analysis and a discussion about the work done by the ON's female extension workers in a context more specifically marked by the structural adjustment reforms. After that, chapter six will demonstrate the results of the 1990s international donors (World Bank, Dutch, French, German, etc.) intervention in the Office du Niger to support the enterprise in continuing its development process with better involvement of women. Finally, the conclusion will present the different findings raised by this study and outline some recommendations for improving women's situation in the ON zone. The dissertation as a whole offers an excellent overview of events, factors, and historic features about women in the ON, and the way all this is linked to the change over time in their everyday life and working conditions.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

2.0 Women and Family Life in the Office du Niger, 1960s - 1970s

2.1 Introduction

This chapter is an attempt to establish the place occupied by women in the ON society during the 1960s-1970s. It will allow see whether the situation of women changed in this period, as the Malian government tried out several agricultural and rural policies which differed from the colonial ones. To determine this, one must first look at the society of which they were an integral part and investigate the historic and social forces that shaped this society. In the ON, like elsewhere in the country, women’s life was made up of various elements. As argued by Ethel Albert, each society has its own calculus of values by which it establishes its active norms, the norms to be respected verbally but understood to be neither practical nor practised, and the rules of punishment which are to be taken seriously54. It will not be possible to understand the situation of women over time in the ON villages without, for instance, knowing the norms of the social structure, and the reasons or values given to rationalize or to make accept the difference between men and women. This chapter should help take stock of continuities which remained a strong influence on the role of women in the ON during the 1960s and 1970s, despite regime changes and differing ideological preferences of those ruling in Bamako. It seems that these political changes did not have much of an impact on women’ socio-economic situation in the ON during this specific period.

The very important economic role played by women in the ON did not, however, give them a privileged position either in the household, in the public sphere or in the village where they lived and worked. As elsewhere in rural Mali, it was men who had the say and the decision- making power. Therefore, I can oppose Denise Paulme's thesis about the status of women in tropical Africa. This author has argued that because of her contribution to meeting household needs, the wife's status is higher 55 . In the ON villages, despite the fact that woman was economically productive, she enjoyed a low level of involvement in social life and had duties only towards her husband to whom she had to submit 56 . Aly Tounkara who has done an

54 Ethel M. Albert, “Women of Burundi: A Study of Social Values”, in Women of Tropical Africa, ed. Denise Paulme (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 182. 55 Denise Paulme, Women of Tropical Africa, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 4. 56 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de le Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.2.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 interesting study on women and forms of discrimination in Mali, asserts that the woman of the traditional society seemed at first to be a aggrieved woman in her rights, completely left out of decision making by the weight of social structures which left her no opportinuty of in full bloom57.

This author's narrative is clear: there were within the society some structures or institutions that contributed to the distinction or inequality between men and women. The first post-independence political institution I can take as an example for illustrative purposes is the 1962 marriage code built on the Jacquinot Decree of 195158. The Malian marriage code of 1962 stipulates in title 1, chapter 8, article 32, that the husband should guarantee protection to his wife, while the woman must obey her husband. The spouses owe each other respect, fidelity, succour and assistance59. This part of the Malian marriage code made the woman an eternal minor and dependent on the man, thus all her acts and actions are subject to the authorization of the husband who has the power to, abuse this right. Moreover, this provision also raised contradictions with regard to the country's constitution and highlights the problem of the young sovereign state's reputation with regard to its national and international commitments to fight for the defense of human rights and the equal rights for its citizens60.

The Constitution of 2 June 1974, promulgated by Decree No. 03PG-RM of 1 July 1974, provides in Article 1 paragraph 5 equality of all citizens without distinction as to race, sex, religion or faith. In spite of these minimal rights guaranteed by this Constitution, laws and regulations that discriminated against women remained during the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, the aforementioned marriage code of 1962 stipulated that a married woman could not travel outside the country or, obtain a visa without the consent of her husband61. Given such laws, it is not surprising that the recruitment rate of women in the country’s public service was

57 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 165. 58 Emily S. Burrill, States of marriage: gender, justice, and rights in colonial Mali, (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2015), “n.p.” 59 The National Archives of Mali, [hereafter ANM], Journal Officiel de la République du Mali, No 62-17 A.N.- R.M.-Loi Portant Code sur le Mariage et la Tutelle en République du Mali, février 1962, p.4. 60 ANM, unnumbered document, La Femme Face á ses Droits Civiques, Novembre 1967, p.1. In this document produced by the Women's Social Commission of the Sudanese Union, the ruling party, it is clearly written that in Mali the constitution is designed so that all citizens can benefit fully from all their civil rights. And that no discrimination is tolerated. 61 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.28.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 very low. The situation of women in rural areas was the most critical. In the ON it was not easy for them to be involved in new responsibilities (i.e. the administrative services of the ON, the management of hullers or threshers). One will see in the fourth chapter that some women, because of illiteracy, were even obliged to take on young men for the management of their postharvest materials.

In addition to these structures there were some social customs and values that helped during the 1960s-1970s to make accept the difference between man and woman. Many, for instance, were the perceived deficits which justified the exclusion of women from the decision- making in society: the woman’s lack of a spirit of constancy, her untrustworthiness trust her, her attachment to details situate the expense of the big picture, and so forth,62 not to mention the education that the young girl received from her mother.This background made the struggle for equal rights between men and women an unfinished battle in the contemporary world despite the fact that women were central to family and society. Every change, whether social, technological, political or economic affects them. Conversely, every change in women’s rights, duties and attitudes affects society, not least because they influence children during their crucial formative years63.

In the traditional Malian society, children were regarded as wealth because they perpetuated the family and the lineage. This put the woman in a special position of respect. In fact, one of the things that was expected of a married woman was to have children64. The primacy of this function for women beautifully illustrates their place in Malian society in general and in the ON in particular. For instance, this society depended heavily on agricultural, and the more children a man had, the better and the more produce to be reaped. During the colonial economy this was one of the practical reasons why men took multiple wives. But despite her reproductive capacity, a woman in so markedly patriarchal and patrilineal a society as that of the ON, was by definition socially inferior to man. Political power, inheritance of lands, and of course, the right to independent action outside the walls of the house, were traditionally accorded

62 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.38. 63 ANS, bi I/8⁰ 5642, Margarita Dobert, Civic and Political Participation of Women in French Speaking West Africa”, (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1970), 1. 64 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.40.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 to men only. According to one ON official, from independence until the end of the 1970s the woman was considered merely a member of the family while the land was registered solely in the name of the head of the household. For this official, this discrimination was in line with the values of traditional Malian society, in which men were supposed to decide everything65.

The relatively high income level of rice-growing farmers (compared, for example, to that which prevailed in the ON farmer’s villages of origin) and the high value of women as a family work force stimulated marriage and polygamy in the zone. The profits made possible by irrigated agriculture encouraged many male heads of household to increase the number of their wives instead of providing dowries to their young sons, as custom would have dictated. One will see that some of the interviewees described polygamy as a factor which made women in the ON villages even more dependent on their husbands, while interviewees saw only the positive effects of this social phenomenon. However, it must be acknowledged that marriage, with its corollary the dowry (the price of the woman), and polygamy (which was the sign of the private appropriation of the woman), had a great influence on the social life of women. These were factors that greatly contributed to reinforcing the woman's dependence on her husband but also on the community in which she belonged. The questions to be investigated then become: What importance was attached culturally to family and women? Did women have the same standing as men? If not, what were the reasons or values given to rationalize the difference? Did the symbolic importance of women as mothers make up for their lack of significance ? What was women’s social situation in both the family and the village sphere? These are questions which this chapter considers. They are important because they allow to trace women’s situation over time in the ON, from the 1960s to 1970s. In other words, they allow to see how the more ‘traditional’ situation of women changed―or did not change along with the economic and political structures in the ON.

2.2 Structure and function of family in the Office du Niger

It is appropriate here to explain the reasons which led us to further deepen our reflexion on the Bambara ethnic group in Mali in general and in the ON in particular. It must be remembered that the Bambara have constituted, since the post-independence period, the majority ethnic group of the ON population and that the Bambara language has come to be spoken in all

65 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 the villages, from Kokry to Macina, from Niono and N'Débougou. Rémy Madier a delegate of the farmers service of the ON, following a tour of the villages of the zone shortly after the independence of Mali, concluded: “from an ethnic point of view, while the Mossis, Samoghos and Miniankas once predominated, it is now the Bambara, originating from the Niger Valley and from the irrigated lands which constitute the most important fraction (48%) of the colonat. The Miniankas are 23% and the Mossis only 17% 66.

In Malian societies in general and in the ON in particular, due to the social modernisation process undertaken during the postindependence period, the family was a prominent nexus in the social life of populations. Scholars and scientists have attempted various formulations of ‘modernisation’. Perhaps one of the most succinct yet complete is that feurnished by Samuel P. Huntington. A modern society, he argues, is characterized by the tremendous accumulation of knowledge about humanity's environment and by the diffusion of this knowledge through society by means of literacy, mass communication, and education67. What is striking in these societies, however, was the considerable importance that was attached to respect for elders and ancestors. These communities were characterized by the prevalence of collectivism or communalism as opposed to individuality. In this context, substantial cultural importance was attributed to fertility, lineage continuation, tight patriarchal traditions, and there was a high rate of polygamy. These were the prominent features that characterized most traditional societies in the country, included the Bambara one.

According to Bambara custom, the family is a patriarchal community made up of individuals from a common ancestor and living together under the authority of a common chief68. However, despite the notion of family has long been undermined by some researchers preferring to use instead of the word ‘family’, terms such as, ‘group’, ‘community’ and ‘society’ 69 . This amalgam of terminology surrounding the term "family" has led Bréhima Beridogo to say that "whatever the term adopted, the designated social group presents itself as a group of people linked by a certain number of characteristics: community of residence, economic

66 AON, 132/1, Rémy Madier, Note sur l’Etat du Colonat, Novembre 1960, “n.p.” 67 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics”, Comparative Politics, no.3 (April 1971): 287. 68 ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.3. 69 Philippe Bocquier, and Tiéman Diarra, Population et Sociéte au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 121.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 cooperation, common consumption of goods produced, solidarity of members facing the outside, and so on. 70 " Beridogo describes the various forms of family in Mali: the nuclear family (composed of a couple and their unmarried children), the polygamous or composite family, and the so-called extended family (characterized by the presence of a plurality of a mutually independent marriages in a defined family entity)71. In the Malian tradition, we mostly find composite families whose practice of polygamy was commonplace as well as extended families72. As Aly Tounkara said, ethnic groups or societies in Mali have specificities73. Malian societies are marked by perpetual mutations, each of which reserves a place for the family. It seems imperative to contextualize the structures of the family in society. To do this, the researcher will try to grasp the different ways that the family is apprehended among the Bambara, i.e. the images that defined the structures and the place of the family in this society. Thus, in the traditional Bambara society how do one conceive of the family structure? How important was the woman, and what formed the basis of male domination within the family?

2.2.1 Structure and importance of family

It is imperative to highlight that family size discussions in Mali, like the other Sub- Saharan African countries, “took place in a setting dominated by the extended family.” As a matter of fact, a family was not made up only of a married couple and their children but also included brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, grandparents, and so forth74. As argued by Florence Abena Dolphyne, the nuclear family as understood in Western societies is a new concept in African societies. The author further noted that family in the African sense is the extended family. If it is a patrilineal society where descent is traced through one’s father, then it includes all the paternal relations―paternal uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces and so on ; if it is a matrilineal society where lineage is through the mother, then it includes all maternal relations75. In Bambara society (fetishist or Muslim), which is patrilineal, the family always consisted in a general sense of the descendants of a common ancestor united under one roof (Fa and sou,

70 Ibid., p.121. 71 Philippe Bocquier, and Tiéman Diarra, Population et Sociéte au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 122. 72 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, Etudes africaines, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 22. 73 Ibid., p.25. 74 ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.4. 75 Florence A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective, (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 3.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 literally the father and the house)76. Most of my interviewees told me that all members of the family lived in the same large family home, and that in this large compound also lived relatives of the husband, and of the wives (i.e. the different co-wives)77.

It must be mentioned that the kinship system was not limited to the bond of consanguinuity but also, by extension, to the bond of alliance that united several people. The Bambaras call “brother” not only their own brothers but also their cousins, and they even give this name to all men of the same generation and the same village. By the word “father” they designate not only their forebear, but also their uncles. Thus, in conversation they would say “Fa” (father) instinctively to designate their father and their uncle. If they wanted to specifically reference their own father they would say “WoloFa”, “literally” the father who begat me”. They would also instinctively say “Ma” (mother) to designate their mother and their aunts, but when they referred specifically their own mother they would say "WoloBa", “literally” the mother who begat me"78. These examples demonstrate that the extended family dominated society. John C. Caldwell and Pat Caldwell illustrate the fact that the concept of the wider family has molded the African family: the old patriarch regarded all his descendants and his wives as a single family and did not easily tolerate distinctions being made among them79.

It could also happen that other people joined the family household at a given time of the year, such as during the periods of agricultural work (the times of sowing and reaping). During these times a very large number of women and men came to look for work that brought them money and especially agricultural products such as rice. However, it must be recognized that this immigration was temporary, because it lasted only as long as the period of field work. Once the

76 ANM, 1D207: Enquête sur l’organisation de la famille, les fiancailles et le mariage. Cercle de Ségou. 1910, “n.p.” 77 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016; Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Diénéba Sangharé in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 78 ANM, 1D192, Coutumes Bambara dans le Cercle de Goumbou. 1909, “n.p.” 79 John C. Caldwell and Pat Caldwell, “The Cultural Context of High Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa”, Population and Development Review 13, no. 3, (1987): 419.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 work finished, these people returned to their villages of origin until the next campaign80. This shows that the extended family had a strong influence in the ON villages. The main reason is related to the role of the extended family as security, as Göran Therborn81 demonstrated in his work, but the importance of family as the first place of expression of human solidarity in society also mattered. Aly Tounkara has added that it was this family solidarity that protected the individual against natural hazards (famine, drought, etc.)82.

The organization of the family is based on patriarchy, because all authority is concentrated in the hands of the father to the exclusion of the mother, or let's say that family was within a social structure in which the subjugation of women is institutionalized 83 . This patriarchal family had a chief: the oldest of the family who enjoyed widespread powers with respect to each of its members.84 It should also be noted that within such a family there was an internal hierarchy was organized according to the general principles of the society: a cé (son) was subordinate to the fathers, the youngest was subordinate to the eldests, and, of course, a mousso (woman) was subordinate to a man (first of all her father, then her husband)85. Sooner or later the daughters leave the father’s property to go to live with their husbands. Until this point in her life a woman was, like her brothers, under her father’s authority. After marriage she must obey her husband, who throughout the duration of the marriage; had authority over her. As argued by Maximin Samaké et al., a woman must submit to her husband, and it is not up to her to make decisions in family matters86. Moreover, the head of the family was the progenitor of his subordinates. Whatever their age, they cannot do anything without his consent.

80 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016. 81 Gӧran Therborn, “African Families in a Global Context”, Research report nordiskaafrikainstitutet, no.131, (April 2006): 13. 82 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 37. 83 ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.3; Ida Magli and Ginevra Conti Odorisio, Matriarcat et/ou pouvoir des femmes?, Paris: Des femmes, 1983), 57. 84 ANM, 1D207, Enquête sur l’Organisation de la Famille, les Fiancailles et le Mariage. Cercle de Ségou. 1910, “n.p.” 85 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.34. 86 Modibo Samaké, et al., La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali, (Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980), 51; ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.9.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

No family member, especially women, had lands or agricultural inputs in their name, except as the head of the family granted. He distributed the lands and agricultural inputs among his brothers, sons, parallel cousins, and wives. Customarily (i.e. not by contract), the entirety of the landholdings belonged to the head of the family, and all the members worked on behalf of the family. Political and economic changes resulting from colonial influence (the policy of defending human rights policy defense extolled at the time by the French administration) were gradually eliminating the feudal characteristics of the social system, but, the principles governing access to lands have remained unchanged until the post-independence era. The land was registered in the name of the head of the family, to whom the ON management distributed the seeds and fertilizers. It was he who in turn distributed these resources to the various members of his family, such as his brothers, his sons old enough to take care of a field, and his wives87.

One of the reasons advanced by some interviewees to explain the fact that the land belonged to the head of the family and especially the fact that women were not allowed to have land in their name during the 1960s-1970s, was the desire to maintain order and cohesion within the family. In Bambara society, all the members of the family lived in the same big concession, from grandfather to grandson, through the uncles, the sons-in-law, the daughters-in-law and the girls. If by chance the head of the family made the mistake of granting a field to one of his wives, it was obvious that the wives of the other brothers and perhaps his daughters-in-law would also ask for their share. Everyone would follow the same example and finally there would be no one to work for the family field. This scenario that could lead directly to the disruption of the family. It was to prevent just such a situation, that heads of families totally refused that women obtained land in their own names88.

Moreover, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that in a society deriving its resources from agriculture, the prosperity of a family depends closely on the number of able-bodies it can call. In Bambara society, to the economic constraints of a life dependent on agricultural production was added the necessity of fulfilling multiple social obligations absolutely necessary if one wanted to maintain the family’s social rank. These social obligations included welcoming visitors, and trips on certain occasions (funerals, marriages, courtesy visits, and business with the

87 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016. 88 Interview by author with Salimata Coulibaly, and Nafissatou Coulibaly in Kando, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 administration, to name a few)89. Obviously the nuclear family (reduced to father, mother and children) could not meet such needs. Conversery, the patriarchal family made it possible to gather a sufficient number of people to both meet its needs and ensure its prosperity. For instance, in agriculture the distinguishing feature of the family is working together on the same lands. All the members of the family (brothers, sisters-in-law, children, and wives of the head of the family to name a few) should cultivate the family's field, which was under the authority of the head of the family. Within this family work force, the wives especially those of the head of the family, occupied a significant place.

The women in the ON villages had as their first duty the cultivation of their husband’s fields, which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. During the two or three weeks preceding the beginning of the agricultural calendar, a woman left the house each day a little after sunrise, pregnant or with a baby on her back and another child trailing behind her. With her husband and other men from the family, she had to prepare the soil and sow the seed. She also had to, during the harvest period, be present in the field with men, and finally she was supposed to deal with postharvest activities such as winnowing, gleaning and threshing. The possibility of having a family workforce certainly was one of the reasons why such a society (one with an agricultural majority) would invest great importance in the family, especially to the extended family which could at any time have people ready to fulfill agricultural duties as well as the other obligations mentioned above. Beridogo even went so far as to note that no ethnic group in Mali has an indigenous term expressing the concept of the nuclear family” or “had a term expressing the concept of the nuclear family prior to acquiring one from an outside source 90.However, this assertion by Beridogo does not mean that the nuclear family never existed in these societies, though I agree with Aly Tounkara that the notion of a restricted or nuclear family is a recent import due to contact with other, exogenous cultures91.

2.2.2 Importance of women in the family

When a woman entered her husband’s family, she was expected to let go of her ties to her birth family and to orient herself fully in terms of her new family’s perspective. So, women were

89 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.34. 90 Philipp Bocquier, and Tiéman Diarra, Population et Sociéte au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 122. 91 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 22.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 expected to contribute in one way or another to the production process through their maternal and domestic role92. She must also help, in her rightful place, this family to continue the line of its ancestors. All that is expected of a woman besides her share of material work is that she bends to the customs of her husband's family, that she becomes not, for this family, source of boredom and problems, by the indiscreet display of her defects and vices93. She therefore needed to know the habits and customs and to adopt them without any reluctance. In most families, it was not unusual that an old woman of the family was asked to teach the married woman these customs94. Women are those who give birth to children. In the eyes of a Bambara, this was the primary purpose of marriage95. I had start with the woman since this is what has been discussed thus far, and then transition to the man, who has thus far been defined less explicitly in terms of offspring.

This is not only the most essential duty of women (who are made to be mothers), but also of men (who must ensure the perpetuation of the lineage begun by his ancestors). Having many children represented happiness for both men and women in the family. Motherhood was so important that women were considered only if they were mothers and grandmothers of many children and grandchildren. Men loved to have children, but not more than women, for whom doing so earned the respect and great esteem of her in-laws. In this context we can join Ethel Albert, who has done a study of the social values of women in Burundi, in saying that only very rarely did women go into the bush to look for abortifacient medicines 96 . Having children provided the head of the family with an agricultural work force, but for the woman the children were a supplementary link (and it was often the strongest) with her husband's family.

The importance of children meant failure to conceive was a very serious matter. A woman who was infertile, or who had had only one children and never again conceived, believed that she had been cursed by a malicious person or was the victim of witchcraft. In this situation, a

92 L’Image de la Femme Chez les Romancières de l’Afrique Noire Francophone, (Suisse: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 1986), 232. 93 ANS, bi III/8⁰ 552, R. P. Marchal, La Condition de la Femme Indigéne-Etude sur le Probléme de l’évolution des coutumes familiales dans quelques tribus de l’Afrique Occidentale Française. Observations sur le même sujet relativement á l’Algérie, (Août 1930), p.8. 94 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.39. 95 ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.4. According to Bambara custom, while marriage did not take place from caste to caste, but in the same caste, its main purpose was the procreation of children. 96 Ethel M. Albert, “Women of Burundi: A Study of Social Values, in Women of Tropical Africa, ed. Denise Paulme (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 207.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

Bambara would do everything possible to stop this anomaly. Indeed, he would consult all those who were deemed capable of carrying out a diagnosis on the question (soothsayers, marabouts, wizards, nurses) in order to find out the remedies (rites with trees, a certain fetish, gris-gris, medicines of all kinds, to cite a few)97. If, despite all these efforts, the woman remained infertile the solutions presented themselves differently according to the case. On the one hand, the woman remained in the family of her husband even if infertile so long as only she possessed estimable qualities (hardworking, honest, esteemed and loved by her husband). She would be comforted by being giving the child of one of the other women in the family, and her husband will take another woman to secure his descendants. On the other hand if she did not possess good qualities there would be a divorce98.It must be noted that the case of a man being unable to impregnate his wives was not much discussed. In Sub-Saharan African societies in general, when the spouses cannot conceive, the reasons are always sought on the side of the woman and not on the side of the man. In Malian society childless households were viewed very negatively and the woman was very often discriminated unjustly99. Male infertility was essentially seen as a taboo subject or even as an impossibility. Nevertheless, in most societies if the man is really infertile, he will spend all his means to heal himself in silence until he succeeds. If he did not succeed, in many cases, the man will remain unmarried until the end of his days, even if sometimes he did get married.

Like the Burundians among whom Ethel Albert noted that beauty did not count heavily, the Bambara considered this physical quality secondary and of only relative importance when choosing a woman for marriage, although a man was not displeased if his wife was attractive with roundness of form, and light skin. On the other hand, a great deal of importance was attached to the productive qualities of the woman: good health, strength, vigor and skill were important given the work expected from a good wife. Love of work was a highly desirable characteristic and was indeed indispensable in anyone who would be the wife of a farmer in the context of the ON villages. Daily, women must prepare meals, watch and instruct their children and pick up around the house and yard. In the very early morning the pot of millet for lunch must

97 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.40. 98 Ibid., p.40. 99 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.57.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 be set on the three-stone hearth to cook the toh, the Malian main dish. After that it was also necessary to prepare the sauce that was to accompany this toh, which was either based on okra or baobab leaf powder. If there was no child old enough to send when the need arose, a woman must herself return at some intervals to the house from the fields to add firewood to the fire. By eleven o'clock in the morning most women were already finished preparing the meal. It was necessary to prepare the meal early in order to reach the fields as soon as possible and attend to the agricultural work100.

Also each day, they needed draw water from the well (it happened that throughout the village there was only one well), and cut firewood and carry it back to the house on their head. This firewood that the women sought in the bush was not intended for sale, because the bush was not very far from the villages and practically all the women went to seek it for their own daily needs. Korotimy remembers very well how during the 1960s she and 6 other friends went from their village, at B2 Banisraela, to look for firewood. As they were 7 women, they decided to look for the wood in turn for each of them. They preferred to proceed in this way because according to her doing so made it easier to acquire a sufficient quantity of firewood for each of them101.

There was also the agricultural work that women provided in the fields of their husbands, i.e. the family field. Maximin Samaké et al. who conducted one of the first studies on the situation of rural women in Mali in the late 1970s, argue that in addition to the household work the woman performed, also she took part in field work alongside the man during sowing and harvesting102. From fields of cotton to rice fields to millet, women participated with men in the work from the planting to harvesting, in addition to the comings and goings that they made between the house and the fields to bring meal to men. Thus, to the dependence of society on women, for reproduction (giving birth to children) is added a dependence of men for their feeding. Women were in agricultural societies dedicated to the preparation of food, the processing of agricultural products to make them edible. Under these conditions, agricultural

100 Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Aminata Tangara in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016. For some details about the work African women in general did daily in the household, see Catherine Desjeux et al., Africaines, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1983). 101 Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017. 102 Modibo Samaké, et al., La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali, (Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980), 45.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 output would be futile if not put in the hands of the women who prepared it to complete the metabolic maintenance cycle of life103.

One see here that the social division of labor assigned to women near total responsibility for anything that was related to food, small children and the house. Moreover, these different tasks often represented heavy work, especially when the woman was alone at home, though in a polygamous household the division of labor among women decreased the workload of each. In all this it seemed that, although the woman worked hard, she had a tendency to resign herself to her fate, because she was prepared very early to accept her condition and was convinced that she was only fulfilling her duties as wife and mother104. Florence Abena Dolphyne who did an interesting study about the emancipation of African women, argued that every African women grows up knowing that it is the woman who cooks the meals and generally sees to it that the house is clean and well-kept, and that everything is in its proper place105. As for Margarita Dobert, she added that woman did not feel oppressed, but knew that she had her due place, and that men and women complemented each other in a world that was divided, but not in conflict106.

2.2.3 A divided world within the family

Distinctions between the sexes began at birth and increased with maturity. The introduction to separate economic and social responsibilities occurred in early childhood. Children, like any other family members, must work and must obey the instructions and commands of their relatives, especially the father. Cé (boys) were in the charge of their father and mogotigui (girls) of their mothers107. When she was four or five years old a little girl was already old enough to accompany her mother to the field and follow her about the house. At six, she knew how to sweep the yard, use the pestle to grind millet or rice, and carry on her head a sizeable basket of rice or a large gourd of water from the well or canal. In the field, a girl also

103 Claude Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers et capitaux, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991), 121. 104 Modibo Samaké, et al., La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali, (Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980), 51. 105 Florence A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective, (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 5. 106 ANS, bi I/8⁰ 5642, Margarita Dobert, “Civic and Political Participation of Women in French Speaking West Africa”, (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1970), 17-19. 107 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 113.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 took care of her mother's baby while she was sowing or harvesting rice, cotton, or millet108. At the same age, her brother at least began his apprenticeship with his father by following him very often into the field.

Within the family and at a very early age, the education that the children received was different depending on whether they were boys or girls. Mothers taught girls how to become wives and mothers in the future. It was up to the mother to teach her daughter how to take care of her husband and her husband's parents one day. Because fourou (marriage) in the villages of the ON, like elsewhere across rural Mali, was not limited to two spouses, a young bride, lived with a number of people to whom she was supposed to show respect, kindness, devotion and loyalty. They also taught their daughters how to maintain a home, for instance working in the kitchen, and managing the household, to name just two examples.109 Boys were learned how to become men tomorrow. Very early on, they were taught by their father how to do agricultural work (i.e. clearing field, participate in seeding by helping their father pull the oxen, etc.). This was one of the reasons why in Bambara society, the education of boys was provided by the father rather than the mother.

Such education helped to inculcate the division and separation of responsibilities between men and women from a very young age. Aly Tounkara went further by asserting that due to such an education, the girl understood that she could not be inducted into the initiatory societies open to boys. If she was curious and understood the words and ritual gestures through the boys, they would send her directly to the place of the women110. Moreover, the education that the girls received seemed more demanding than that for the boys because the girls had to know a lot in order to be in their turn exemplary wives, daughters-in-law and mothers. Even though almost all the family members lived in the same large house, men and women had different sets of friends,

108 Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016. Also, see ANS, bi I/8⁰ 5642, Margarita Dobert, “Civic and Political Participation of Women in French Speaking West Africa”, (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1970). Here the author describes how, at the stage of their very early age, girls and boys in some part of French West Africa were educated according different patterns and features. 109 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016. 110 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 113.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 performed different types of work in the house, ate on different sides on the home, and lived in different rooms 111. Unlike what happened in Burundi in the past where brothers and sisters slept together in the same bed and were covered by the same mat,112 in the ON villages brothers and sisters slept in separate rooms. It could also happen that some girls slept in their mothers' room, especially on the days when she was not supposed to receive her husband.

In addition, especially in a polygamous family, each wife had her own room, her own kitchen utensils, and her own field. That was certainly what drove Margarita Dobert to assert that the very institution of polygamy promoted this division into two worlds, because the more wives a man had, the weaker was his link with each one113. In addition to Dobert's thesis, I learnt from my field visits that women who lived in a polygamous family provided mutual help and companionship.114 I will discuss polygamy in greater detail in another section. The separation between men and women within the family was taken so seriously that most of the time contact between a father and his daughter was not very frequent. Very often, if a father wished some information about his daughter, or if he wished to say something to her, he had to ask his wife to speak to her for him. Likewise, if a young girl was to be punished it was usually the mother who would beat her, and very rarely the father. The explanation offered for these taboos to separating father from mature daughter was the necessity of preventing incest in the family115. Was it, however, merely a matter of preventing incest? Or were the two worlds, one male and one female, always separated in order to better assert male domination? Chantal Rondeau after surveying her collection of studies on the Senufos, the Myniankas and the Dogons of Mali,

111 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016; Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Diénéba Sangharé in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 112 Ethel M. Albert, “Women of Burundi: A Study of Social Values, in Women of Tropical Africa, ed. Denise Paulme (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 195. 113 ANS, bi I/8⁰ 5642, Margarita Dobert, “Civic and Political Participation of Women in French Speaking West Africa”, (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1970), 14. 114 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017; Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017. 115 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 concluded :"that this distinction between the places and things of women and men did not give women more power over the whole of society, because men most often take the decisions without women116". It was a way of preventing women from participating in men's assemblies while favoring the hierarchy among women (older women became the superiors of younger women, and senior wives, in a polygamous family, became the superiors of the juniors ones).

Another aspect of the separation between man and woman in the family was that they owned property separately and kept their individual earnings. The woman had the right to cultivate her personal garden, to sell or not to sell what she produced and to keep what she earned for herself117. Admittedly, customs and values pertaining to the economic rights and responsibilities of women were quite varied, but whatever the extent of these rights, it seems that everywhere was recognized the principle of absolute respect for their personal property. What belonged to a man could be used in case of need for the whole family, but what belonged to a woman (a person who was not part of the family's framework) should always be at her personal disposal. This is what led Claude Meillassoux to say, in his book on African economic systems, that the direct exploitation of woman in the domestic community was often tempered by the fact that she was allowed to cultivate a lopin or a garden of which all or part of the product belonged to her118. This state of affairs held true, even though as argued by Maximin et al. it sometimes happened that women gave money to their husbands for the purchase of colas and various other small things119. However, I will see that being able to dispose of their personal property did not prevent these women from contributing significantly to the survival of their families. This topic will be discussed in one of the sections of the next chapter.

As one saw above, in this general atmosphere, the mother was also in charge of preparing her daughter in early childhood to organize her life around small economic activities by, for instance, involving her in agricultural activities as soon as she reached the age of 4 or 5 years. This was supposed to prepare the girl to undertake her own economic activities when she went to

116 Chantal Rondeau, Les Paysannes du Mali. Espaces de Liberté et Changements, (Paris: Editions Karthala, 1994), 322. 117 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.39; Modibo Samaké, et al., La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali, (Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980), 46. 118 Claude Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers et capitaux, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991), 119. 119 Modibo Samaké, et al., La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali, (Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980), 46.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 join her conjugal house, an important responsibility, because in Bambara society the woman usually had to contribute a lot to the well-being of her family. In most cases what the husband produced was never enough to feed the family. It was therefore necessary for the wife, or mother to always contribute something from the little she had, in order to make things easier and more manageable120. Most importantly, women were not only producers but distributers of goods, not only wives but mothers. Etienne Balenghien said of them : “women by their specific activities participated in the edification of the family”121. They had to submit to the service of their husbands family, and they also had to respect the chiefs, and submit to their will. The secrets of married life were jealously guarded and handed down from one generation to another, that is to say thru mother to daughter.

2.3 Women and marriage in the Office du Niger during the first two decades of the post- independence period

Marriage can be perceived from different angles, as an institution, as a partnership between an husband and his wife, and also as a social nexus. As observed by Stéphanie Lagoutte marriage concerns not only the spouses but also their two families. Because, once marriage has been initiated, a social pact is formed that binds these two families together through the mobilisation of the community122. However, in the context of a patriarchal family, marriage could only be understood as the addition of a new person (the woman) to an already existing family. Therefore, it must be noted that this new person was expected to become part of the already constituted family and to respect its rules and guidelines123. In Bambara society it was the dowry which symbolized, concretized and reinforced the dependence of the newlyweds, especially that of the woman, in the reality of their conjugal life. This custom became so important that in everyone's eyes it was one of the main elements of marriage, and by extension the very basis of the status of the married woman. The contraction of marriage was dominated by

120 Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017; Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017. 121 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Etienne Balenghien, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.39. 122 Stéphanie Lagoutte, Dissolution of Marriage, Legal Pluralism and Women’s Rights in Francophone West Africa, (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for Human Rights, 2014), 30.

123 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Etienne Balenghien, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.35.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 arranged marriages whereby parents usually indulged in the selection of marriage partners for their children. This was most common for daughters. As observed by Marie-Denise Riss, who analyzed, in general, life of African rural women, it is generally the father of the girl who looks for the latter a husband worthy of her and her family124. In most cases this was done without the consent of the children, especially girls. The 1962 marriage code indeed stipulated in article10 that there is no marriage when there is no consent, and that this consent be formulated orally and in person before a Civil Registry officer by each of the future spouses125. These provisions nevertheless do not imply that the involvement of parents in the marriage of their children had been halted. Aly Tounkara has asserted that in matrimonial transactions the girl played a very small role. Whether she agreed or not with her parents’ choice, she was morally obliged to accept their decision, often against her will126.

Across Mali, a high value was accorded to marriage. This could be seen in the practice of early marriages and polygamy, which in most cases constituted a prime feature of the society127. In the ON villages, most of the married women were in polygamous marriages that were made up of two to four wives, in accordance with Islam128. These marriages were characterized by their early nature; most of the women got married quite young (15 or 16 years)129. The reasons offered for polygamy were numerous. One of the reasons that circulated among the local societies was the need for a man to have the maximum number of possible arms for rural work, and to increase him chances having more children. In the case of the ON, one of the oldest large development schemes130, it was not surprising that such a reason was promoted by men desirous of having several women and promoting the practice of polygamy in society. In the zone, since the colonial era the practice of polygamy was closely linked to the agricultural production that a

124 Marie-Denise Riss, Femmes Africaines en Milieu Rural. Les Sénégalaises du Sine Saloum, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989), 39. 125 ANM, Journal Officiel de la République du Mali, No 62-17 A.N.-R.M. Loi Portant Code sur le Mariage et la Tutelle en République du mali, février 1962, p.2. 126 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 43. 127 Ibid., p.144; See also Philippe Bocquier, and Tiéman Diarra, Population et Sociéte au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 121. 128 ANS, 1G31, Colonie du Soudan Français-Coutumier Indigéne-VIII Coutume Somono et Bozo-Note Spéciale sur la Pêche, “Document XY, not dated”, p13. 129 Modibo Samaké, et al., La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali, (Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980), 43; ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Etienne Balenghien, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.26. 130 Marc Frey, “Doctrines and Practices of Agrarian Development: The Case of the Office du Niger in Mali”, in Rural Development in the Twentieth Century: International Perspectives, ed. Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2017), 1.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 family could afford at the end of a campaign. According to Bauzil, the former deputy director of the ON during the colonial era, the average productivity of a household was significantly increased by polygamy, which is to say that a man with three women would have on average as many children as three monogamous men131.

2.3.1 Marriage and the choice of the spouse

Within a family organized according to a patrilineal framework as described above, a boy was considered by his father as a future successor. The daughter, on the contrary, who is supposed to leave her family of origin at the time of her marriage, was considered as destined for the edification of another's house. Denise Paulme has argued that a girl very soon learns that she will have to leave the house, and often the village, where she was born, and go to live among strangers132. According to Kadia Sougouba, a 65 year old woman living at the village of Siengo, and a mother of six children (boys and girls), it was because of this that in the ON villages the education (which was one of the tasks of the woman in her household) given to the cé (the boys) was different from that given to the mogotigui (the girls).The priority of the girl was to be able to maintain a household later, even though it was also necessary to prepare her daughter to do agricultural work, such as rice growing, and vegetable gardening133.

Marriage was an important step in the live of the future spouses, as it marked the beginning of a new life for both husband and wife that only death or divorce could break apart ; the woman was tied by the bonds of marriage to her husband for life, except in the case of divorce. Ba Lamine told us that, in Bambara society the fourou (marriage) is sacred. The woman and the man form the household, and once a woman is married to a man the family became the basis of both partners, especially when the woman bore many children. From this moment, she will never return to her parents' house again. Only death will bring her out from her husband's

131 AON, 0129, M. Bauzil, Les Méthodes de Colonisation Indigéne de l’Office du Niger, 1935, P.40. According to this same author, the ON native women were prolific. Many were women who, in their lifetime, had more than five children. Even though one must recognize that many were also the deaths. Infant mortality, the burden of Africa at the colonial era, reached an impressive rate of 50%. 132 Denise Paulme, Women of Tropical Africa, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 6. 133 Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 house, barring divorce, of course134. Even so, it is not to be forgotten that if the wife became seriously angry, she would sometimes leave and stay at her father's for a while.

Indeed, it can happen that spouses fight and in such situations the neighbour-women gave advice to the wife and the men did so to the husband. Both were encouraged to keep calm. If the dispute was sifficiently serious, however, the wife could go back at her father's house. Margarita Dobert said about this that when a wife decided to leave her domicile temporarily and went back home, her husband could not oppose this action nor consider the marriage ended. All he could do and usually did was to send emissaries with promises and gifts to entice his wife to return135. The wife told her mother her reasons for having left. If she was wrong, if she had deserved the beating or if she had refused to do work which a woman was obliged to do, her mother must correct her and ask her to return voluntarily to her husband. If, however, it was the husband who was in the wrong, in most cases, his mistake would probably cost him a handsome new length of cloth or some jewellery before his wife would consent to go back to him136. It follows from the foregoing that a girl was only ever temporarily in her family of origin, but was to be, barring divorce, a permanent addition to the family of her husband, though she might temporarily abandon the conjugal home.

Despite the physical and social distance between father and daughter within the family, as mentioned previously, they were jointly interested in the earliest possible marriage for her. The father was looking forward to a visit from a man who was looking for a wife for his son, while the daughter was impatient to find a husband and leave her father’s house. The impatience of the girl could be explained by the fact that certain social values created the belief that a woman could only integrate into society through a man ; the father, or the husband. In the word of a Bambara proverb : mousso koni danbe ye cè de ye―“it is the man who makes the dignity of the woman”137. Aly Tounkara went further by arguing that the girl hoped to get married early because the marriage not only allowed her to find a place in society and then create her own family, but also to undertake income-generating activities even if these activities did not provide

134 Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 135 ANS, bi I/8⁰ 5642, Margarita Dobert, “Civic and Political Participation of Women in French Speaking West Africa”, (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1970), 15. 136 Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 137 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Etienne Balenghien, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.30.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 her with a financial guarantee because in most cases the bulk of the income generated by her work was destined for family consumption138.

Throughout the ON villages, there were somehow two types of marriages that a man could opt for. Sometimes, the young fiancé's family asked the young fiancée's parents to lend them their daughter for the agricultural season. In this case, the young girl upon arriving at the house of her future husband, was supposed to do all that a married woman must do. She prepared food, took care of her husband and her parents-in-law, and shared the same room and the same bed as her future husband. It was as if the young man and the girl were already husband and wife. At the end of the growing season, the young girl had escorted by one of his friends to her parents' house with a good part of the crop139.Very often one or two months later, the marriage celebration was celebrated. This was the first type of marriage. It was not celebrated as a wedding where the girl who was to be bride was a virgin. For instance, the young fiancée was never going to receive gifts of virginity from her father-in-law because she was no longer a virgin, besides which the marriage rarely went beyond a day in lenght.

The other type of marriage was celebrated after the required procedures were undertaken between the family of the young boy and that of the girl. Aly Tounkara has asserted that when the choice of the two partners is made a number of procedures were to be undertaken by the two concerned families in order to seal the marriage: exchange of gifts, and mutual respect. According to the same author, these procedures showed that marriage was a social fact and a lever of socialization for the whole community140, because its procedure highlight the fact that marriage was primary a union between two families rather than between two individuals. Moreover, in this second type of marriage, the ceremony clothed of all its value, especially if the young bride was virgin.

Virginity constituted a variable that was pivotal for marriage. Often a mother warned her daughter that she must absolutely remain virgin until her marriage.141 Non-virginity in a young bride was synonymous with disrespect and dishonor, not only for the girl but also for the whole

138 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 42. 139 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 140 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 132. 141 Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 family. In relation to the first type of marriage we described above, the loss of the fiancée’s virginity was not viewed negatively by society, because it was obvious that she had not lost her virginity with another man and long before marriage procedures were started. This phenomenon was perceived as a mere anticipation of what was expected to happen on the wedding night, and it was certain that the young fiancée was destined to marry the boy, that is to say her fiancé. In this sense, it seems to us that this type of marriage did not undermine the value and importance that Malian societies had always given to virginity. Virginity still held a very important place in the social values. Denise Paulme has argued in her book that almost everywhere a large measure of pre-marital sexual freedom is permitted to girls―provided they use it with discretion. In the ON, the society attached great importance to mogotiguiya (virginity), sighed an old woman, Aminata Tangara, who was telling me her life story. The two positions do not necessarily contradict each other: virginity can be important morally, but exactly for that reason there will be strategies to behave around it. In general, in many cases the girl could have a boyfriend about whom the whole family and even the entire village knew, but he was to be limited to being only her companion, confidant, and protector, no more than that.

It was a man’s relatives, especially his father, who looked for a wife for him, neither the young man nor his mother could choose a girl to marry142. This obviously contrasts with how Florence Abena Dolphyne described traditional marriage in Ghana, where a young man decided to choose a particular woman for his wife, told his parents about it, and it then became the parents’ responsibility and that of elders of the extended family to ask for the woman’s hand from her parents143. In Mali, moreover, neither the girl nor the boy needed to be formally advised of their father's decisions, regarding marriage144. The girl, for instance, could guess that she was engaged by the arrival of cola from the family asking for her. Nevertheless a father would probably tell his son and a mother would tell her daughter. Furthermore, it was obviously those who concluded the marriage, i.e. those who were supposed to pay or receive the dowry, who

142 ANS, bi III/8⁰ 552, R. P. Marchal, La Condition de la Femme Indigéne-Etude sur le Probléme de l’évolution des coutumes familiales dans quelques tribus de l’Afrique Occidentale Française. Observations sur le même sujet relativement á l’Algérie, (Août 1930), p.18; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 143 Florence A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective, (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 2. 144 ANS, 1G31, Colonie du Soudan Français-Coutumier Indigéne-VIII Coutume Somono et Bozo-Note Spéciale sur la Pêche, “Document XY, not dated”, p16.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 decided the choice of spouse. Indeed, the procedures for children's marriages were carried out by the uncle or father of the young girl and by the father’s representative for the young boy145.

After the young man’s fiancée was chosen, the marriage procedures also took place largely without the two main concerned persons. According to Göran Therborn the parental generation concluded marriages without much involvement of their children, particularly not of their daughters146. Moreover, this way of doing things gave marriage a dimension that went well beyond the family. Aly Tounkara asserts that marriage therefore involved not just two individuals or two families, but two lines, two clans or even two villages147. Marriage procedures involved a whole arsenal of protocols between the two parties148. In the ON Bambara society the representative of the father of the young boy was supposed to pay three visits to the family of the girl to be married. During the second visit, the uncle of the young girl made it clear to the representative that they had accepted their request, while during the third visit the relatives of the two parties discussed payment of the dowry149.

The role played by the parents, especially the father, in the choice of a young man’s bride and in the procedures for realizing the marriage was a perfectly justified tradition from a point of view of those involved. In the eyes of the society, it was normal that the family group, represented by the voices of those who were responsible, decided the convenience of this or that marriage. However, it should not be concluded that the authority of the elders was essentially directed against the flourishing of young people. Relatives felt responsible for the happiness of their children. They also felt that at the age of their marriage the future spouses (and especially the girl who was most often only 15 or 16 years old) had not yet acquired sufficient experience to settle an issue that involved their entire future. Did not custom offer a reasonable solution? Was

145 Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; See also Philippe Bocquier, and Tiéman Diarra, Population et Sociéte au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 124. 146 Gӧran Therborn, “African Families in a Global Context”, Research report nordiskaafrikainstitutet, no.131, (April 2006): 29. 147 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 132. 148 ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.4. 149 Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; Interview by author with Aminata Tangara in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. On the first day of the meeting with girl's parents, the representative of the young boy’s father brought with them 10 cola nuts which they gave to the young girl’s uncle. Just after this visit, the girl's parents began to investigate about the young man and his parents. These inquiries concerned the situation of the boy's family, his age, his profession, and his marital status.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 not the use of the experience of parents and seniors the best way to achieve the best possible decision in a field as delicate as marriage?

2.3.2 Dowry for girls

Despite endless variation in ethnic customs, all traditional Malian marriages were sealed by payment of the dowry whose composition and terms of payment were fixed by the agreement of the two heads of families150. Conclusion of the discussions on the payment of this dowry meant that the procedures for the marriage were finalized and that from that moment the young girl became the legitimate fiancée of the young boy while waiting for the religious celebration of the wedding. However, it is not to be forgotten that neither the girl nor her mother were involved in this discussion about the payment of the dowry. Not only was she not associated with the negotiations, but the girl was also forced to accept the amount her relatives gave her. The dowry legitimated the marriage by the transference of money (sometimes 4 cowries which was the equivalent of 10 000 Malian francs), from the family of the groom to that of the bride151. The amount of this dowry varied greatly according to the place and the social and economic status of the man who wanted to marry a woman. It was in order to regularize the price of the dowry that the legislature had addressed the issue two years after the independence of the country. Moreover by the ties of marriage a young woman was sent from her father's household, where she worked for her mother to her husband's household, where she worked for her husband and for her mother-in-law. The help that every young girl brought to the social group of which she was a part was from the day of her marriage provided to the family of her husband.

It was these economic implications that led Malian customs in general, and Bambara ones in particular, require that from the groom’s family to pay a dowry to the bride152. According to Florence Abena Dolphyne, the dowry given by a prospective husband to his would-be bride was generally much higher in patrilineal societies. The author argues that this is because the woman’s family is seen as losing her services, for example, on the farm, and she is also going to have

150ANS, 1G30/104, Soudan Francais-Droit Privé-Coutumes Bambara Cercle de Bamako-D’aprés M. Ortoli, administrateur adjoint des colonies, 1935, p.8. 151 Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. The 1962 code of the marriage wanted, by reducing the dowry to 20 000 Malian franc for the girl and 10 000 franc for the already married woman, to remove its value of bargaining thus preserving its quite symbolic value. 152 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.36; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 children for the man’s family to ensure its continuity, so in a sense, the man has to compensate her family adequately for these services that she would be performing for him153. Anna K. H. Weinrich further argued that the dowry paid the husband's family a right on his wife's work and the children she gave birth to154. Thus in this sense, the dowry was conceived as economic compensation to the girl's parents, who have had to feed her, to educate her from her childhood and who agreed to deprive themselves of her services when she had grown up. In the eyes of such a society it would be unfair to deny parents compensation. As an economic transaction, the issue of the dowry was the responsibility of those who were in charge of managing the heritage of the economic unit that formed the patriarchal Bambara family, i.e. the elders and especially the head of the family. It is therefore not surprising that the girl and her mother were not involved in the dowry discussions, as we have mentioned previously.

It was only after payment of the dowry that a woman became involved in her daughter’s marriage process. After receiving the dowry, the men gave it to the mother in the presence of the young girl’s aunts,155 partly because the girl was closer to her mother than to her father and especially because the dowry was to be used for the purchase of the koniobomino, literally the trousseau of the young bride. The women knew best the little things necessary for this trousseau. What the trousseau was composed of varied from one family to another, but it could contain among other things pots, bowls, cups, containers, loincloths, and so forth. It is worth mentioning that the dowry could cover only part of the girl's trousseau, which was why the mother always contributed to her daughter's koniobomino 156 . One 70 year old woman, Mariam Touré, remembers that the little money the women earned from the small commerce of agricultural products such as rice, cotton or millet, they used to buy little by little those objects mentioned above, which they kept carefully until the day their girl’s marriage. Because the dowry was insufficient and there was not enough money, the women judged it necessary to proceed in this

153 Florence A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective, (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 8. 154 A. K. H. Weinrich, La Situation de la femme au Zimbabwe avant l’indépendance, (Paris Place de Fontenoy: UNESCO, 1981), 15. 155 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 156 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; Interview by author with Aminata Tangara in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 way so that once their daughters’ weddings arrived the brides would not have cause to complain. 157.

Unlike among Tutsi and Hutu women of Burundi, where even today the daughter's father keeps the dowry entirely for himself158, in the ON villages it had always belonged to the bride. In some cases it even happened that the dowry became a source of wealth for the bride. Mariam Touré sold the bulk of the loincloths contained in her trousseau, which the dowry had made it possible to obtain with the help of her elder brother, and used the proceeds to buy four goats in order to breed them at home. After two years the goats had reproduced, and by the third year, she had exchanged the goats for oxen and cows with Tuareg traders. Even though she did not practice vegetable gardening in her village at M'Béwani Coro, the oxen brought her a good amount of rice. During each agricultural campaign, she would rent her oxen to the rice farmers coming from the other production sectors of the ON. The rental price of an ox was one to three bags of 80 kilos, so if she rented out four oxen, she was earning approximately twelve bags of paddy rice per campaign159.

2.3.3 Polygamy

Several reasons have been offered to explain the practice of polygamy in the villages of the ON. Many interviewees who discussed the subject emphasized, among many other reasons, the fact that it was a habit. The fact that people in society are so used to polygamy meant that most of the men were tempted by this phenomenon. While discussing polygamy with a group of women in the M'Béwani production zone, a woman over 60 years old asked us who did not have a father, a mother, an uncle, an aunt, a friend, or a cousin born or living in a polygamous family160? This woman’s observation from that woman brings to light the ubiquity of the practice in the zone and in the Malian society. Some held Islam responsible for this phenomenon in society, but would that not be bad faith or ignorance of our societies? Moussothiaman tiguiya or sinaya (polygamy) was practiced in our traditional societies well before the appearance of Islam,

157 Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016. 158 Ethel M. Albert, “Women of Burundi: A Study of Social Values”, in Women of Tropical Africa, ed. Denise Paulme (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 196. 159 Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017. 160 Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 and it was not exclusively advocated by islamist groups. Polygamy was also common among animists as well as among Catholics and Protestants161, even though, as mentioned by Florence Abena Dolphyne, it would appear, that the Christian religion, with its insistence on monogamy has helped to reduce the incidence of polygamy to some extent162.

Among the other reasons advanced by the interviewees for the institution of polygamy was the economic prestige that men could derive from it. Polygamy was considered one of the most significant solutions to the problem of agricultural production, which required a lot of able bodies. Polygamy was strongly desired by the traditional Bambara man because, according to some scholars, it allowed him to have more children quicker163. The more wives and children there were to do the work in the fields and in the house and to attend the cattle, the richer a man was. Moreover, in addition to the work force that children from polygamy could constitute, the women of a polygamous family constituted an additional labor force164. That is why in the ON, one of the signs that a farmer was well off was often the number of women he had (it was not unusual to meet heads of large families with 3 or even 4 women who might be from villages within or outside the ON)165. Additionally, some people cited the failure of the woman to perform her responsibilities as wife as being one of the reasons for polygamy. For Anassa Bouaré, in most cases polygamy could be explained by the fact that the first wife had not risen to her husband's expectations, despite which, given the relationships that were born during years of marriage and of common life, he did not leave her. He preferred to take a second wife, and if the husband still did not find satisfaction with her, he could take a third. However, a man should not marry up to four women for the sole purpose of always seeking to find the ideal wife. If with three women, the man was still not satisfied, he had to resign himself and say to himself that this was what his destiny had intended166.

161 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.30; See also Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 145. 162 Florence A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective, (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 20. 163 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 141; See also Gӧran Therborn, “African Families in a Global Context”, Research report nordiskaafrikainstitutet, no.131, (April 2006): 19. 164 Ester Boserup, La Femme Face au Développement Economique, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 41. 165 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.46. 166 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

Like the variety of reasons offered to explain the practice of polygamy in the ON villages, the perception that people had of this practice was not unanimous. At first glance, polygamy was seen as a means of relieving women of the daily expenses of the household. Indeed, most of the women told me that polygamy constituted for them a way to reduce their daily expenses, because a woman who lived in a polygamous family had to cover these expenses only on those days when she was supposed to prepare family meals. During the other days when it was the turn of a co-wife to cook, the woman was not supposed to spend any money. Moreover, on those days she could take care of her own activities without having to worry about a husband whose meals had to be ready at specific times, which could be the case four or six days a week depending on the number of co-wives in the family167.

If men supported polygamy before and during the colonial period because it allowed them to have many children, then women, during the first two decades of the post-independence period, supported it as a means of financial relief. In this sense, many women in the ON zone found polygamy a convenient arrangement. They had to worry about the daily expenses only if it was their turn to prepare family meals. The other days, they went to the market place or to the fields, and they could keep all that they earned during these times. This situation allowed them to save money. This economic freedom was one of the reasons why polygamy was seen not as a hindrance or a means of subordinating women. In addition, due to polygamy women developed solidarity and mutual aid amongst themselves. In life, a person is never always in good health, nor even always present at home. During days of illness or prolonged absence or even death, it was up to the co-wives to relieve one another of the duty of taking care of the children and the husband. While Florence Abena Dolphyne pointed out that this could only happen if there was harmony in the home and respect between co-wives168, Kadia Sougouba, a married woman in a polygamous family, insisted that polygamy was a very good thing because it suited women. Like some other women I met in the villages, she did not see in this practice the fact of sharing a man,

167 Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016; Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017. 168 Florence A. Dolphyne, The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective, (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 17.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 but rather the fact of making the maximum possible profit169. However some people have pointed out the disadvantages that polygamy could bring the woman as well as her standing or status in the family.

In ON zone, marrying three or four wives was in the self-interest of most men. In addition to the daily care given to the husband, the women did a good part of the agricultural work in the family field, and at the same time they did everything in their power to satisfy the daily needs of their husbands. According to some of the interviewees, men who had several wives were the ones who worked the least, because women did most of the work in their place170. In the ON zone polygamy became for some men a game of pure self-interest, or even an abuse to which some women could stay one to two weeks without seeing their husbands in their room. In such cases, a woman could not complain to a woman who received the husband, nor could she complain to her husband, the man responsible. If a wife allowed herself to complain, she might not see him again in her room for long time. When a woman complained to her relatives, they would always tell her that the woman's place was close to her husband and that a good wife should always support her husband and not complain about him. Thus, older women in the family would tell her that divorce is bad, especially for the children when the wife had any.

Women, then, suffered in silence without showing it in broad daylight. In most polygamous families all the women lived in the same large house in their own rooms, while the husband, and the husband who was supposed to have his own room, had none. Some men had rooms next to those of their wives and that it was obvious that some women could take turn spending the night in the husband's room, but many of them would rather go around to their women's rooms than receive them in their own room. What should be remembered here is that, first, polygamous households were of two types: either it was the husband who shuttled between the women's rooms, or it was these latters who spent the night in turns in the husband's room171. Then, in the first case, also the husband was simply going around to the room of the woman who was supposed to receive him or with whom he had chosen to spend the night. In this situation,

169 Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017. 170 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017; Interview by author with Aminata Tangara in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 171 Aoua, Kéita, Femme d'Afrique: La Vie d'Aoua Kéita Racontée par Elle-Même, (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1975), 20.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 women engaged in all sorts of quarrels, battles, and rivalries that sometimes made their daily lives and those of their children very hard. As an old Bambara proverb said: foyi man jugu ka Sinaya bò, “there is nothing more terrible than polygamy”172. In the post-independence period, therefore, while awareness of the emotional strain that some individual women went through in polygamous marriages has increased considerably, the practice of polygamy still persists.

One of the main reasons for this state of affairs is that under the regime of Modibo Keita polygamy was not prohibited, but remained legal. Considered at the time as a real revolution and a blow to the customs of the country, the Malian marriage code of February 1962, though it had taken some measures to reconsider the conditions of women (the requirement of consent to marriage; fixing a marriageable age, regulation of the dowry, the prohibition of men simply repudiating a woman, hence the obligation to go to court for divorce, etc.)173, nevertheless, legalized the practice of polygamy within society even as it limited the number of the wives to four 174 . The code thus, instead of promoting moussokilin tiguiya (monogamy), had simply permitted men to marry multiple women by following the rule of the Muslim religion which limited to four the number of wives a man could have. In addition to this, the National Union of Women of Mali (UNFM), created at the end of the work of the Constitutive Congress of December 1974, and which at the time was supposed to be the legal tool of struggle for the emancipation of the woman, did not consider polygamy as a major issue. Here is how UNFM President Rokiatou Sow described the organization's position on the issue of polygamy175:

We believe that polygamy is a hindrance to social progress, to the harmonious development of the family. We have not officially denounced it because at the moment it is not one of our priorities. Also, opinions diverge on this problem and that is why we leave it at the discretion of everyone. Only, we are sure that this practice will diminish over time, because an increasingly difficult economic situation would be imposed on people.

172 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.33. 173 However, it should be noted that none of these measures were applied literally and absolutely. Experience had proved that, the conversion of mentalities was not proceeding at the same speed as the legislative textes. While at times in Bamako and some major cities, spouses met at random in the circumstances of life and decided to found a home, marriage in rural areas continued to be an arrangement of the parents while the dowry continued to revive its value of bargaining, by maintaining a very symbolic value. To name just these examples. 174 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.26. 175 Ibid., pp.23-24.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

Influenced here and there by marriage regulations that only legitimized and strengthened male domination through polygamy, which was a sign of the private appropriation of women, we will see what the social situation of the latter was in the family context, as well as in the public sphere, through the 1960s and 1970s. This will be the purpose of the following section.

2.4 Women social situation in the Office du Niger

By the social situation of woman, we understand the woman in her relations with the group in which she lived, first in the family then in the public or village sphere. The symbolic role played by women in the ON as mothers and educators of children, did not however allowe them a privileged position, either in the family or in the village level. As elsewhere in Mali, it was the man who had the say and the decision-making power. Aly Tounkara has argued that, socially, the woman seemed to play a very passive and ineffective role, and it seemed that she was carried along by a social order she did not control at all176. One must then understand the perspective of the customs and social values which reserved for the male element the activities considered central to leadership. In most cases, the woman's marriage was concluded without her knowledge and her consent, thus depriving her of free will in an act as important as marriage. Did not the education that the young girl received from her mother in very early childhood have the sole purpose of keeping the woman dependent on the male sex?

According to Aly Tounkara, the woman was conditioned by the idea that the sooner the girl married, the sooner she would have children, the more she would be honored and happy; that the less she discussed the orders of her husband and the more submissive she would be to him, the more her children would have the baraka, the blessing177. Following this logic, the idea of accepting male domination seemed to the girl quite fair and legitimate. It was not surprising to hear that a well-educated girl should not wonder about the merits of certain cultural issues or take leadership in the community178. In this context where the woman was described as very shy and somewhat reclusive, was she at all present in the decision-making related to her family? Did she have a point of view to give, in any official capacity case, in the public space?

176 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 165. 177 Ibid., 163. 178 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.37.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

2.4.1 Women's situation in the household

As I mentioned previously, the girl was in her family of origin only temporarily and after marriage she took on in a "supplementary" role in her husband's family. It was therefore not possible within these conditions to consider the woman, on either side, as an element of the "family skeleton"179. It was thus considered logical that the vocation of the woman was not to interfere in setting the direction of the family community. Rather, it was expected that she best conform to the orientation of the social group to which she was integrated by the bonds of marriage. The logic of marriage and the education the woman received from relatives, especially her mother, and sometimes in very early childhood, reinforced that her role in the conjugal house was to give birth to children, take care of them, and do household chores and agricultural work. It is not to be forgotten that in the polygamous family, relations of power meant that the men constituted the supreme power while the women constituted the executive one180. These powers were not equal, however, because women were inferior to men. Polygamy was a practice that reminded the woman of her dependence on man but also of her non-responsibility in the household. Women, whether there were two or four co-wives in the family, had to execute their husband’s orders. In this system, the execution of such orders took place on the day when the woman was supposed to cook, and it was also on this same day that the husband had to share a bed with her.

Co-wives executed their husbands’ orders in competition with one another (each woman tried to impressing her husband), with each wife doing her best in order to be the favourite, for instance by paying for fish, meat, or condiments to make better meals for her husband than the others. Aminata Tangara has added that in the ON men did not marry several wives to take care of them, but rather to be supported by them181. A women had to take good care of her husband during the day so that he in return would take good care of her at night182. It is worth mentioning that during the 1960s and 1970s this practice of polygamy contributed greatly to reinforcing the perception that woman was a mere object of man without any responsibilities in the household.

179 Ibid., p.37. 180 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de le Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.3. 181 Interview by author with Aminata Tangara in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 182 Comments from Issa Coulibaly and Ousmane Camara during interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970

Even when a visitor came to the house and made his greetings, none of the wives could tell him to enter in the absence of their husband183. Even so, for most of the women I met during my field visit, polygamy contributed to developing a mutual aid between co-wives in the same family. To them, Sinaya qua di, fouilli talla (polygamy is a good thing, there is nothing wrong in it)184.

Like polygamy, the dowry was not simply one of the formalities of marriage but a reality that would remain present throughout the life of the married woman, symbolizing and reinforcing the dependence of women in their conjugal home185. Thus, in the eyes of Bambara custom, marriage essentially consisted not only of the wife being gifted to the husband, but also of her belonging to the family who paid the dowry for her. A woman thus belonged to the whole family ; she was somehow granted by the head of the family to the one who would become her husband. Aly Tounkara has described the dowry as a cultural value that has taken on a monetary dimension, or even a sordid commercial dimension pertaining to the institution of marriage, by making woman the object rather than the subject of her existence186. It was most often in reference to the dowry paid that the woman's obligation to fulfill her role in the family would be based. It was the leitmotiv of all the discussions, and of all the reflections concerning the woman in her conjugal home: "since we have paid the dowry, it is normal that she renders us the services we would expect from her... 187"

2.4.2 Women’s situation in the village/public sphere

In the zone of the ON, meetings of family and village councils were where discussions were held about and solutions found to questions related to the village community, both economic (taxes, work in the fields, roads or village planning, etc.) and social (marriages, baptism, village feasts, relationships with other social groups). Needless to say, from the Malian community perspective in general and in the ON in particular, there are few issues that did not interest the entire community, and it was in these meetings that practically everything of

183 Comments from Ousmane Camara during interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017. 184 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017. 185 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.37. 186 Aly Tounkara, Femmes et discriminations au Mali, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), 39. 187 ANM, unnumbered document, Jamana Numéro Spéciale, Femmes Maliennes: Emancipation ou Aliénation?, Mai 1985, p.37.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 importance to the life of individuals, of families, and of villages was decided. It goes without saying, as well, that in the ON women, unlike men, were not obligated to attend such meetings. As I have already made clear, the major decisions in the ON were the work of men188.

Diénabou Touré, a 78 year old woman who lives in Molodo, recounted how one day, at a meeting of a farmers’ association held in Molodo the women who came to participate had expressed a desire to have land. She remembers that on this day many husbands had barely restrained themselves from hitting their wives in the middle of the meeting189. One can see from Diénabou Touré' s testimony how in the very early post-independence period the women of the ON villages were excluded from the public sphere and from decision-making. They could attend the meetings, of course, but they were not supposed to talk or to decide anything. In most cases, a woman would find the possibility of having the whole group take into account a matter of importance to her; by asking one of the men who was part of the meeting to bring it up. There were very few men who refused a service of this kind to a woman.

This dynamic was observed during my field visit. Indeed, during the open day organized in M'Béwani for both male and female farmers, the latter gave us the impression that they did not want to speak in public, even though the meeting was not only about fertilizer not only for rice cultivation, but also for vegetable, a sector of in which the women are the most productive in the ON. Some sources argue that more than 80% of vegetable gardening in the ON is done by women. Nevertheless, I found that women’s involvement was limited to one or two of them merely whispering in the ear of a man who was seated beside them so that the latter would report what they wanted to say to the public. Surprised and worried that the women would not speak until the end of the meeting (for a researcher who is working on women and rural development like me, to not hear a word from women was inconceivable), I asked an agricultural adviser sitting next to me why the women did not talk? He replied that, because women had been denied the right to speak in public for a long time, it had become a habit for them not to speak in public and especially in the presence of men, even nowadays when meetings were sometimes organized by female officials of the ON. It should be noted that this open day (Tuesday, October 28, 2016)

188 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de le Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.4. 189 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 was organized largely by Mariam Diarra, the person responsible for the Peasants Organisation Promotion (POP) of the M’Béwani production zone.

This practice was also the case at palavers gathered to settle a dispute, to decide a delicate question, or to judge a guilty party. A woman could sometimes speak at the request of the men to give witness or a point of view, but, she did not take part in the discussion and always left to the men the responsability of finding a solution190. Again, as acknowledged by the report about the descriptive study of the position and the socio-economic role of the women of the ON villages, the great decisions were the work of men. The same report went further by asserting that only around social activities such as marriage, baptism, and death were women able to act as organizers 191 . However, the question still needs to be answered, at what level did women participate in these activities? According to Anassa Bouaré, women (the mother of the girl or boy who is to marry, her sisters and her close friends) intervened in their children’s marriage process only in regards to the choice of the mariage celebration date, that is to say, after the negotiation and payment of the dowry. They began to intervene only at this stage of the marriage process because, according to our interlocutor, the festivities and ceremonies were seen in Bambara society and the ON villages as being more feminine than masculine192. Therefore, the situation of the woman in the village or in the public sphere simply mirrored her situation in the household. Despite their very significant role as mothers and housewives, women had no responsibility in public life. They remained very far from this domain which was largely the domain, which was largely reserved for men.

2.5 Conclusion

By the decades 1960 and 1970, in Mali in general and in the ON in particular, woman was of great importance in the family, but unlike man she was not expected to take part in the decision-making of this family. Her specific vocation was to participate in the building of the family group in those areas considered specifically feminine: giving birth to children, doing housework, farming in the family field, safeguarding of family and friendship relationships, and so forth. The marital system had an impact on women's lives and their dependence on men,

190 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017. 191 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de le Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.4. 192 Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017.

Chapter 2: Women and Family Life in Office du Niger, 1960 - 1970 especially the husband. The study of the dowry, for instance, shows that the payment of this sum formalized the fact that the woman had left the authority of her relatives to live under her husband’s authority and in-laws. Even so, the dowry was not just another way for men to keep women under their control; to some women from the ON villages it had been a source of income. The testimony of Mariam Touré in the village of M'Béwani Coro was revealed in this respect.

The primary feature of society, polygamy constituted a trick for men to grab women of childbearing age. It operated for the benefit of men because it was supposed to enable them to cope with the great labor force needs of the farming system. It seemed that the only concern of the man was to satisfy his paternal and daily needs without realizing the vice in which he kept his wives. This leads us to think that in agricultural societies such as those of the ON, women were coveted for their reproductive qualities. In addition to these matrimonial features, there were certain social behaviors and values, such as the division between men and women and the education received by young girls from a very young age, which constituted serious handicaps to the socio-economic development of women within the society. The social situation of the ON women during the 1960s-1970s was only a reflection of their social position, which they first occupied in the household, then in the village. In her household the woman occupied first and foremost the place of housewife. She played the role of restorer of the home, insurer of the continuity of the ethnic group and renewer of the labor force. However, this very significant role they played as mothers and wifes did not allowed them to play any other official role in society. The woman, despite her irreplaceable function in reproduction, did not intervene as a shaper of social organization. She disappeared behind the man: her father, her brother or her husband. Women were excluded from all that concerned the direction of the household and of the village, making them submissive background players, while the major decisions were taken by men.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

3.0 Women in the Office du Niger: Survival Strategies in the Context of Economic Hardship, 1960s-1970s

3.1 Introduction

The implementation of technical investment (rehabilitation and maintenance of irrigated land) in the ON required the mobilization of considerable funding which was beyond the reach of farmers. The new independent state of Mali to successfully coordinate this effort, considered it necessary to control the land (installation, eviction, and distribution of the plots to be cultivated). Farmers were only tenants of the plots they worked. In 1961, these amounted to 29,000 hectares for rice cultivation and 8 000 hectares for cotton193. Because the irrigation system implied a new technical and commercial environment, the ON was also responsible for upstream and downstream production; defining technical standards and overseeing their application, the supply of inputs, animal traction equipment and agricultural equipment (which it also manufactured); water management and the maintenance of irrigation systems; the granting and recovery of agricultural credit; and the processing of paddy.

Admittedly, the initial objective of the ON during the colonial period was to make settlers or small landowners, masters of their own destiny who would seek to develop their agriculture in order to enrich themselves 194. However, the system was based on the strict application by farmers of rice cultivation standards (and, until the early 1970s, of cotton cultivation as well) developed by the ON management. At the same time, other crops or activities in which farmers engaged were regarded as marginal or as impediments to the proper application of rice techniques, for which reason management prohibited them195. Thus, rice production was at the center of the ON farming system. In the ON, water was often poorly managed. This problem was linked to the history of the irrigation system, partly to its having been designed for cotton irrigation, but also to the lack of maintenance, and to unlevel terrain induced by the repeated

193 Sugar production started in Mali after independence with the first industrial complex situated in the Office du Niger. After the trials carried out in Niono and N’Galamadjan it was concluded that sugar-cane could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Mali. During 1965, 58 hectares were planted on a site, 20 km from the Marakala dam, with the possibilities of irrigation using the canal du Sahel. 194 Emile Bélime, “Problémes Nigériens”, In France Outre-mer, nο 283, (Mai 1953): 10. 195 Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984), 263; Vittorio Morabito, “L'Office du Niger au Mali, d'hier à aujourd'hui”, Journal des Africanistes 47, no. 1, (1977): 66. Vegetable gardening, practiced by over than 80% women, was long considered by the ON management as a secondary activity that caused the degradation of the water system.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies plowing. Uncontrolled water management limited the pre-irrigation potential before tillage, and therefore often required waiting for rains to plough (oxen could not work the dry alluvial soils of the zone). As a result of this delay and often limited agricultural equipment, and the undernourishment of draft animals, the ON management recommendations for double-ploughing and harrowing were little followed by farmers196. After a brief plowing (the objective of speed prevailed over that of quality), seeds were planted directly, by being buried by a harrow.

During the 1960s, the rice varieties used (D52-37, Gamniaka, Kading, BH2, DK3, and HKG98) were well adapted to the conditions of low water supply and competition with weeds197. However, they did not respond well to manure because of a yield potential limit (usually 5 t/ha). Within this context the financial situation of the ON became delicate, especially in the first half of the 1970s, while that of the farmers became critical: most of them were in debt and some could not even ensure enough yields for their own consumption. They also had no rights over either their land or their homes. The right of ownership over land, which had largely determined the settlement policy of the 1950s, was finally, in the early 1960s, settled by the Keita government which made the ON’s land the property of the Malian state. The government became the only authority empowered to allocate the land198.

During the Modibo Keita government (1960-68), the investment structures of the 1960- 1965 Five-Year Plan was strongly influenced by the political and economic environment of the time, and did not seem to prioritize rural development199. On the contrary, as far as the primary sector is concerned, actions were mainly directed towards the creation of an adequate structural and organizational framework for production, with the establishment of a large cooperative apparatus of the collectivist type, and of technical supervision. From the first year of independence, the government had clearly defined its non-capitalist orientation with a socialist perspective. In the 1960s, the new Malian socialist government followed a rural development thinking that Frank Ellis describes as a strand which believed on community development with

196 AON, 63, Observation Générale sur le Déroulement de la Campagne Agricole 1978-1979, Décembre 1979, p.10. 197 Ibid, p.10. 198 AON, 132/1, Rémy Madier, Note sur l’Etat du Colonat, Novembre 1960, “n.p.”; AON, unnumbered document, Cheibane Coulibaly, Les Colons de l’Office du Niger et la Question de l’Intensification de la Riziculture en République du Mali, 1983, p.60. 199 AON, 247/17b, De l’Evaluation et des Perspectives des Opérations de Développement Rural, “Document XY, not dated”, p.1.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies an emphasis on small-farm growth200. By 1960 the congress of Keita’s party, the Sudanese Union (US-RDA), had given an imperative mandate to the political leadership and to the government to immediately and vigorously tackle economic decolonization, to rapidly establish structures developing trade circuits within a framework of socialist planning based on African realities, and to effectively direct and control the economy of the country. The State was to play an increasingly active role, notably by setting up a national office of foreign trade and through the intensification of the cooperative sector201.

Not only did the state have the national economy in hand, the government was also pursuing a food policy. The ON became central to the national development process by absorbing about one-half of public investment202. This key decision from the government was not surprising because the ON had the potential to make Mali self-sufficient in rice, given the availability of several hundred thousand hectares that could be developed. Although the government placed the ON at the center of its food policy objectives, it was unable to focus on the zone farmers’ interests and concerns, especially those of the women who provided most of the labor required in agricultural production, either pertaining to subsistence or the market. Since the land became the property of the Republic of Mali, the farmer had only the right of culture transmissible by legacy, while he could be expelled from these lands at any time if he violated the rules of irrigation203. In addition to this, farmers could not freely choose their crops and were subjected to the exactions of the economic police. These economic police force constituted the security agents recruited by the ON management during the 1960s until the mid of 1980s whose

200 Frank Ellis and Stephen Biggs, “Evolving Themes in Rural Development 1950s-2000s”, Development Policy Review, 19, no. 4, (2001): 442. For more details on small farms as agricultural model during the 1960s, see also, Caroline Ashley and Simon Maxwell, “Rethinking Rural Development”, Development Policy Review, 19, no.4, (2001): 406-408. 201 Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984), 222. 202 Aristide R. Zolberg, “The Political Revival of Mali”, in the World Today 21, no. 4, (1965): 156. 203 Ibid., p.253. Once settled on the Office du Niger’s lands, the farmer must prove himself during 3 years during which the enterprise’s management can denounce his contract and thank him (in practice the decision has always been asked in Bamako). After these 3 years, the farmer becomes a settler and after 10 years if he gives satisfaction he receives a permit to occupy issued by the government which is the only authority that has the right to withdraw it (pronounce an eviction). But, nowadays this permit to occupy is an outdated notion.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies essential task was to inspect the vehicles and the persons in order to confiscate any rice whose exit was not authorized by the sub-officer who commanded the zone204.

It was under the military regime of Moussa Traoré (1968-1991) that the economic police were the most reinforced205. Traoré’s government, pursuing a policy of food self-sufficiency, considered it necessary to have control over both the production and marketing of rice. Thus, at the approach of each harvest the economic police were reinforced in the fields and villages to prevent the farmers from stealing rice to sell it in secret to the traders. The draconian control exerted on the product over the farmers’ work translated into a real upheaval of the surplus/self- consumption ratio206. Sometimes farmer, who was caught taking rice without the authorization of the ON management, was almost completely deprived of the amount of rice he possessed including that which was intended for his personal consumption and that of his family. By the second half of the 1970s there was a discrepancy between the objectives set by the government to achieve food self-sufficiency and the desire of farmers to improve their food situation.

The setting-up of these economic police, accompanying rice collection, was dictated to the ON management by the Malian Government due to the letter’s very great desire to commercialize the maximum amount of the production, with an ambition to self-financing on the part of the irrigation scheme authorities. Pressure was then being exerted on the ON to produce and commercialize more and more paddy, and gradually to replace the imports required (in 1978/1979 the ON covered 18.08% of national requirements),207 because rice had become an important consumer product of population. The major factor to be taken into consideration in 1962 was the dizzying increase in domestic consumption of rice. In 1960-61, the ON had been

204 AON, unnumbered document, Cheibane Coulibaly, Les Colons de l’Office du Niger et la Question de l’Intensification de la Riziculture en République du Mali, 1983, p.116; Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980), (Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007), 147. Admittedly, the sole mission of the economic police was to control only the vehicles. But the muscular control methods resulted in the fact that instead of controlling the vehicles which were coming out of the rice without any authorization, economic police agents confiscated women's rice. 205 AON, 73/1, Commission Nationale de Planification de l’Economie Nationale. Huitiéme Groupe zone Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated”, p.5; AON, unnumbered document, Cheibane Coulibaly, Les Colons de l’Office du Niger et la Question de l’Intensification de la Riziculture en République du Mali, 1983, p.40. In the early 1970s national planning document for the economy, the maintenance and strengthening of the economic police was admitted in order to minimize the parallel market in the ON zone. 206 AON, unnumbered document, Cheibane Coulibaly, Les Colons de l’Office du Niger et la Question de l’Intensification de la Riziculture en République du Mali, 1983, p.40. 207 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.2.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies able to sell on the national market only 6, 865 tonnes of rice. In 1966, however, 16, 000 tons were sold on the national market and even this quantity was far from satisfying demand, which caused the Malian Agricultural Products Office (OPAM) to envision importing rice208 .This maximum paddy harvest resulted in a worrying situation among farmers, especially women. Interviews (with the ON officials as well as male and female farmers) and the archival documents enable us to verify that the guards, as some of our interviewees called them, did not leave the ON farmers the full stock scheduled by the contracts (100 kg/mouth/year). This forced farmers to devote a large part of their income to obtaining food in a market whose prices soared during times of shortage, even though their monetary incomes were very low and one farmer out of five no longer even possessed the pair of oxen needed for cultivation.

In addition, the position of such farmers (men and women) was strongly influenced by factors outside the control of the ON: (1) the drought-related food crisis in Mali and neighboring countries; (2) self-financing needed for development operations; and (3) agricultural product prices (rice as well as cotton)209. Given that the salaries of most civil servants in the country were maintained for many years at a rather low level―given the family and social burdens they had to assume―the government of Mali permitted only minimal price increases until the end of the 1970s. This policy had significant repercussions on the purchasing power of the ON farmers despite their effort to increase the purchase price of paddy. Strongly incited to be equipped with and use certain production factors (e.g. fertilizer), the additional income they obtained was regularly absorbed by increases in the cost of the means of production.

In this situation, many farmers were evicted from the ON villages for insufficient results or excessive indebtedness. In the year 1960, debts amounting to CFAF 6 million (10, 761 84 USD) remained unrecovered in Kolongo, CFAF 11 million (19,730 04 USD) in Kourouma, and CFAF 1 million (1,793 64 USD) in Baguinéda210. Other farmers chose to simply flee back to their villages of origin. In the face of degradation of purchasing power, lack of adequate food supplies for the family, and low incomes those who stayed, especially women, tried to improve their circumstances as best as possible. To this end, they practiced activities outside the irrigated

208 AON, 72/1, Djibril Aw, Contribution á la Préparation du Plan de Redressement et de l’Assainissement de l’Economie Nationale, Mars 1966, p.3. 209 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.i. 210 AON, 132/1, Rémy Madier, Note sur l’Etat du Colonat, Novembre 1960, “n.p.”

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies areas of the ON irrigated such as rainfed millet cultivation, extensive animal husbandry, vegetable gardening around villages or mostly next to men’s fields, wage labour and so on.

The need for resources or simply an immediate monetary income was the driving purpose of everyone throughout the zone of the ON, which required women to put in place strategies of survival. In other words, they tried by the means available to them, to develop activities the objective of which was to enable them to survive and support their families at a time when there was not yet any rural development project in the zone. One will see in the next chapter that, the so-called―Dutch project― (improvement of peasant rice cultivation in the Office du Niger), ARPON, was set-up only in the early 1980s. In order to have a clearer view of this from the perspective of the women of the ON villages, some questions must be asked. What was the socio-economic situation in the Office du Niger? How, in a context of non-assistance from the state and the ON authorities (not to mention the absence of any help from the international community) were women able to put in place strategies of resistance? What activities did they practice to cope with this prevailing situation in the ON? What were women’s contributions to their households’ survival?

This chapter provides a discussion of the socio-economic situation of the ON women during the decades 1960 and 1970 by first exploring the provisions situation, and the paddy collection methods. Secondly, I discuss the women's challenging agricultural and postharvest activities such as rice and cotton cultivation, vegetable gardening, and hand hulling, and their impact on their everyday monetary income. Finally, I explore the increasing trend of female contribution to the household expenditures. Analysis in this chapter will show that, women were not officially recognized by ON management as farmers, or producers, peasants like men, but that they nevertheless played a central role in the economy of the ON. Most of the staff and officials working in ON management did not think about women, but the fact remains that women were there and did participate in their communities’ economies. Therefore, in this chapter I will describe what women really did in terms of agricultural activities in the ON during this period.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

3.2 The prevailing socio-economic situation in the Office du Niger

In 1961 the Republic of Mali nationalized the ON, following a socialist bearing which mandated the planned development of irrigated agriculture. In accordance with the legislative contracts governing the management of irrigated land in the ON―the general contract (specifications, clauses and conditions) and the annual contract of exploitation―farmers could access campaign loans for their supply of agricultural inputs and shorter terme credits for their equipment and draft animals ((oxen for plowing, carts, seeders) 211. The state was supposed to release nearly CFAF 200 million (358. 728 00 USD) of credit over three years, 2/3 in 1961, 1/3 in 1962 for farm equipment including oxen (8,000), plows (3,500), harrows (1,000), and hoes (1,000)212. Farmers could also benefit from the other services of the ON (for instance credits for mechanical threshing costs). These loans and credits were repayable to the ON in kind at harvest time. According to Article 9 of Decree No. 60 on the Organization of the Irrigated Lands of the Niger Valley, seed credits were repayable at the first harvest, whereas, reimbursement for equipment and animals could be extended over 3 years213.

In this context, from one campaign to another, farmers, over time, accumulated backlogs of unpaid credits owned to the ON management. The price to borrow an ox for plowing, for instance, was between 146,101 and 182, 636 USD. Under such debt conditions, it might be very difficult, if not impossible, for a non-equipped or poorly equipped farmer to improve their material situation with the savings achieved on rice cultivation214. On the contrary, the difficulty of paying annual debts resulted in a dynamic of indebtedness which compromised the economic course of the coming campaigns. This situation certainly led to decrease in production and productivity which in turn led to a decrease in the relative share of sales and thus in cash inflows.

In this general atmosphere it was not surprising that the relationship between farmers and the ON215 was marked by feelings of mistrust and insecurity. This already tense relationship

211 AON, 247/3, Contrat-Général. Constituer le Cahier des Charges, Clauses et Conditions et de Coutumier Applicables aux Régimes Culturaux: Riz Pérmanent ou Assolement Coton-Riz, Novembre 1979, p. 3. 212 AON, 132/1, Rémy Madier, Note sur l’Etat du Colonat, Novembre 1960, “n.p.” 213 AON, 247/11, Décret no.60 PG-RM Portant Organisation de la Gérance des Terres Irriguées de la Vallée du Niger, Juillet 1973, p.5. 214 AON, unnumbered document, Société d’Etude pour le Développement Economique et Social (SEDES), Opinions et Objectifs des Riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Avril 1988, p.45. 215 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.4.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies greatly aggravated by the multiple roles the rice filled: not just cash crop for farmers, but also their food crop, and also supposed to play an important role in the country's self-reliance and food security policy in a context of prolonged drought216. Farmers reacted by seeking to diversify their production, thus developing crops that escaped royalties and quotas demanded by the ON, while the ON management strengthened the collection of agricultural products, especially rice, thus creating serious food problems for farmers.

3.2.1 Food problem in the Office du Niger

In the ON, research was conducted on the food situation of farmers in general and of women in particular. There has never been a famine in the ON, though the possibility cannot be excluded that there were some cases of under-nourishment. When women interviewed in research undertaken by IRAM/IER (successively the Institute for Research and Applications of Development Methods, and the Institute of Rural Economy), used the word “hunger”, it carried a more general meaning: the material but also social needs of women were not met217. The report on this research clearly shows that food security did not exist for most families, yet it was precisely in hope of achieving this security that farmers had voluntarily left the areas where it was threatened to come to the ON218. Even though some women arrived with their husbands after the celebration of their marriage, most of them came to live in the ON villages because they did not find food in sufficient quantity in their village of origin. This is what an ON official who participated in a meeting in Ségou with the funders of the CILCS (Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel) said:

The ON population is growing in a continuous way. The increase observed between 1975-76 and 1977-78 is not only due to the demographic index but partly results from overcrowding phenomena. Indeed, the random feature of the traditional crops linked to the whim of rainfall has favored migration trends of populations from the bordering areas to the Office du Niger219.

216 AON, 33, Présentation de l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1993, “n.p.” 217 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.26. 218 AON, 492, Etude Diagnostic et Proposition de Structuration des Organisations Paysannes á l’Office du Niger, Novembre 1981, p.11. 219 AON, 244/1, Office du Niger Présentation, “Document XY, not dated”, p.4. See also Pierre Bonneval et al., L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mali. Succès économiques, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement, (Paris: Cirad, Karthala, 2002), 34.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

One of the reasons for the movement of people to the ON was the drought that was permanently threatening dryland populations. For this group the irrigated land of the ON constituted an ideal place for agriculture, not incidentally, for food. This official saw movement to the ON a matter of survival rather than of compulsion, as it partially had been during the colonial period.

Rokia Malé had, with her husband, left the village of Niénéba in the region of Koutiala to move to B3 Médina Coura. According to the 82-year-old woman, during the rule of Modibo Keita (thus in the 1960s) it was good to live in the ON, because, the farmers who cultivated cotton and rice always had rice and even millet to eat220. Diénéba Tangara, 79, has been living in B1 Niobougou for 60 years with her husband. They left the village of Kalanampala with a 12- year-old child to escape suffering and hunger. For them also, the hope was the irrigated lands of the ON. There, one had the chance to practice agriculture and have something to eat and feed his family. Additionally, to their great surprise, they had been given a plot of two hectares of rice, one hectare of cotton, and a house composed of two huts221.

It is bears mentioning, however, that, in the ON women farmers did not find enough food. As one woman said, "if one found food and could not keep it, it was as if one did not find it"222. Like what happened in the colonization era, during the first two postcolonial decades the Office du Niger management made (limited) provisions for tenants to produce food for their own consumption223. In addition to focusing on marketable crops, the marketing of products was the main concern of local authorities. The farmers were cultivating the rice but they did not have the right to eat set quantity of it. When producing rice, it was necessary first to subtract the quantity for the water fees, and agricultural debts, and above all the part to be marketed by the ON, before thinking of the quantity destined for the farmers’ tables. Some interviewees even told me that, in order for the farmers to eat their rice, they had to get a consumption permit from the ON management224. Only this permit allowed them to pass without difficulty the barriers set up by the economic police between fields and villages in order to prevent theft of rice.

220 Interview by author with Rokia Malé in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017. 221 Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 222 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.26. 223 Julia Tischler, Agriculture, p. 128. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. European University Institute, on 03 Dec 2019. 224 Interview by author with Youssouph Dembelé in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

Rice collection represented the greatest problem facing farmers. For reasons outlined in the introduction to this chapter, the ON collected the maximal amount of production from farmers. The ON did provide a fixed quota of two bags of rice per person per year for personal consumption as each bag of rice contained only 80 kg; this meant that the food ration left to farmers was very much lower than the 300 kg/year/mouth provided for in their contracts. Apart from these two bags, all the rest of the rice harvest had to be sold to the ON225. Farmers who failed to reach a yield of a certain size could not even benefit from the allocation of the consumption allotment226. The often very poor state of irrigated land and lack of equipment meant that many farmers failed to achieve the expected level of yield. These shortfalls explain the complaints from most of our interviewees that the amount the ON gave each family were never enough to feed people until the next agricultural campaign227.

Another factor affected the food situation of the Office du Niger farmers was the water fee, a fixed, per hectare lump sum that each farmer was required to pay in kind at the end of each harvest regardless of whether or not they had cultivated their plot that year. The water fee was 400 kg/ha, in addition to which farmers also had to pay 120 kg for threshing costs, 100 kg for the maintenance of drains and dikes (when refundable, this fee was paid in cash, not in kind), and various other fees. When the ON management made self-financing available to farmers, it was almost always in the form of an in-kind levy on production. Admittedly, I do not know the exact quotas each farmer had to market, but it seems that he was supposed to market the maximum possible portion of production. It often happened that the farmers had a good yield of paddy, but the ON bought almost the whole crop and left very little for them to eat228.

225 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. Until the 1970s, the kilo of rice was sold to the Office du Niger management at the value of 0,045 USD. In addition, it was not excluded to involve the quality of the paddy in fixing the price to the producer, because it was found that the bad conditioning of the paddy brought a high rate of waste or breakage causing losses to the Office du Niger; AON, unnumbered document, Jean Michel Yung, and Paulette Tailly Sada, Objectifs, Stratégies, Opinion des Riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Octobre 1992, p5. 226 AON, unnumbered document, Société d’Etude pour le Développement Economique et Social (SEDES), Opinions et Objectifs des Riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Avril 1988, p. 41. 227 Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017; Interview by author with Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté in Siengo, March 29, 2017; Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. 228 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté in Siengo, March 29, 2017; AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.27; AON, unnumbered

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

In the ON, another phenomenon had contributed to the farmers' provisions problem or food insecurity. Namely, while the food intake was calculated according to the number of people officially counted in the family; this number could increase on different occasions. Of course, at the time of the harvest, some families added to their work force, and whether this entailed paid of family labour, it was necessary to feed them and sometimes even to pay them in kind229. One must not forget the fact that, during this period the farmers of the ON occupied, in a sense, a position as civil servants of the country, who consequently received many relatives convinced that their wages were high. Considered privileged by their families left in the dry zone (rightly so, since they benefited from the scarce resource, water), ON household tended to receive visitors during the dry season 230 . During such visits, it was necessary to feed the guests throughout their stay, but honor and social values did permit them to leave empty-handed. Thus, social obligations greatly diminished the ON farmers’ available food stocks.

In addition, one has to assume that the seed problem affected the food situation of farmers in the ON. The research of IRAM/IER concluded that farmers sowed more than the 60 kg/ha (half of the harvest) set aside by the ON for sowing during the next campaign. The ON took charge of storing the 60 kg/ha for next year’s planting in order to ensure that this seed supply was not destroyed or consumed by farmers. The farmers, on the other hand, felt that the ON management maintained the seed supply itself because doing so allowed them to effectively enact a new levy: the quantity taken for replanting was actually greater than 120 kg/ha because it was collected in two 80 kg bags, i.e. 160 kg/ha231. In some cases, too, the entire 120 kg given by the ON were seeded on less than one hectare, which reduced the total production and thus compromised the farmers’ chance of obtaining a sufficient harvest for his household daily consumption232. The establishment of the economic police, and the guards who were responsible

document, Société d’Etude pour le Développement Economique et Social (SEDES), Opinions et Objectifs des Riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Avril 1988, p.49. The ON, which controlled the threshing, was the recipient of all the paddy production, and only provided to the farmers the cereals necessary for their daily consumption. 229 AON, 492, Etude Diagnostic et Proposition de Structuration des Organisations Paysannes á l’Office du Niger, Novembre 1981, p.7. 230 Interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. Most of the ON farmers had a village of origin in the dry zone. So, it was also very common to see the relatives who came to look for help (asking for some quantities of paddy for their daily feeding) during the threshing period. 231 AON, unnumbered document, Cheibane Coulibaly, Les Colons de l’Office du Niger et la Question de l’Intensification de la Riziculture en République du Mali, 1983, p.45. 232 Ibid, p.27.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies of controlling the circulation of rice between the fields and the villages, thus accentuated the food shortage. Women were at the center of this tension between the needs of the state (which wanted to maximize the quantity marketable rice) and those of the producers (who asked only to be fed daily). As the people in charge of preparing food for the household, it is obvious that they were very concerned about this problematic food situation in the Office du Niger. The researcher will discuss in detail in the next section the different measures taken by these women to deal with this situation.

3.2.2 “The rice takers”

One has seen above that the greatest concern of the ON was to commercialize as much rice as possible. It was in the service of this goal that ON management and the Malian Government established the “rice takers” in the villages and fields. By Malominéna (Bambara term used by most of the interviewees to designate the guards and the military corps who were in their eyes the “rice takers”) one must understand the guards of the economic police who were fighting against the illicit rice trade and fraudulent exports during the 1960s-70s. In this context some researchers, such as Emil Schreyger, have suggested that the establishment of the economic police satisfied the ON management’s desire to integrate the recalcitrant farmers into the collectivist economy initiated by the Modibo Keita regime, and to eliminate the parallel market233. According to Schreyger, it was in pursuit of these goals that decrees strengthening the economic police were adopted at the special conferences held on 12 and 13 December 1966 and on 22 and 23 May 1968234.

I agree with Schreyger that the main idea behind the establishment of this economic police force was to curtail the parallel market by suppressing the black-market trade in rice. However, what he fails to mention with regard to the establishment of this police force is the concern of the Office du Niger's management with meeting the rice marketing forecasts. One ON official blamed the ON’s failure to meet rice marketing forecasts on the inefficiency of the economic police:

233 Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984), 262. 234 Ibid., p.262.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

“Our production and marketing objectives for the 1977-78 crop year were: production (115 000 tonnes) and marketing (72 000 tonnes). Achievements were as follows: production (115 000 tonnes) and marketing (58 044 tonnes). The reasons for not achieving our marketing projections have been widely exposed both in our various reports and at the national marketing meetings. Nevertheless, it is useful to recall here the most important of these reasons, namely the parallel market. The shortage of cereals resulting from insufficient rainfall and poor distribution in time and space in the dry zone seriously reinforced the traditional parallel market which offered farmers far more remunerative prices than official prices. The action of the economic police was inefficient and we watched helplessly the exit of large quantities of rice which was sold in Bamako for two and a half times more than the prices in force”235. According to this official, the economic police, who were to ban the parallel market, did not play their role effectively, because rice had left the zone sufficient quantities to feed a thriving market in the country. These remarks alluded not to the women who usually only took small amounts of rice for food or money, but rather to the male farmers who removed large quantities of rice with the aid of corrupt guards. It was this rice that was being sold in the markets of city centers like Bamako, Sikasso or Djenné.

With the ON specialization in rice cultivation (1971), farmers were supposed to bring most of the rice stock they had collected for marketing. However, farmers were reluctant to comply with this expectation. When the state responded by introducing guards to prevent farmers from helping themselves to the stock reserved for marketing, the diligence of the former suddenly made it difficult for the latter to set aside for themselves even the portion of the harvest meant for their own consumption. In each village there were up to five military corps236 , recruited by the ON management to support the guards, with whom the farmers often fought. The military corps, which was nothing less than armed soldiers, was installed throughout the villages in order to put an end to this farce. It was necessary to reinforce the control, but especially the farmers’ fear, of the guards, so that farmers would not try to move rice outside of the zone. Therefore, the main objective in recruiting these military corps was to strengthen the ON economic police in order to ensure the smooth running of paddy marketing throughout the zone. They were evidently successful, as the arrival of the military corps marked an end to the scenes of battle between farmers and guards.

235 AON, 234/6, Plan de Campagne 1978/1979. Rappel de Quelques Données de la Campagne 1977/1978, “Document XY, not dated”, p.1. 236 Interview by author with Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté in Siengo, March 29, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

In addition to the recruitment of military corps to reinforce the control and surveillance measures, the ON management often changed the guards who were in the markets. The main role of these guards was to prevent women from selling the rice they had snuck past the vigilance of the guards who were in the fields and inside the villages. Roughly every six months, the ON rotated guards to avoid them becoming too familiar with the farmers. When the guards got to know the local women, the latters were often able to sell their rice at the markets without the guards taking action against them. The guards whom Diénéba Tangara knew did not confiscate her rice from her; they let her sell it at the surrounding market-places. On the other hand, her rice was taken from her several times by guards whom she knew only in passing or not at all237. While the ON perceived women simply as a problem for its paddy commercialization, their actions make clear that they were calculating actors. Women were not just passive, but always tried to do what they could with the situation which was given to them. Faced with the economic police, they organized themselves for the purpose of having rice either for food or for sale.

In the ON everyone was looking for malo (the white rice used by local people for lunch or dinner): women who, faced with insufficient food rations, had no alternative but to bring as much rice as possible back to the house for consumption; guards and military corps to take back the rice which they believed the women had stolen, hopefully frightening them in the process so that the marketing of this product could happen as planned by the ON management and the Malian government. In this situation of increased control, the women sought by every means available to hold onto whatever rice they managed to garner. Indeed, women did not stay in the village to wait until their husbands returned with or without rice. They went off to work with the men, and after having gleaned what little they could, they hid it from the guards to bring back home238. They were obliged to do so in order to supplement the food ration given by the ON to their husbands for daily consumption.

The guards did not frighten women away from bringing rice home from the fields, although it must be acknowledged that, they made it very difficult to do so. When the women went to the fields to look for some rice to bring home, they frequently met guards along the way. If the guards saw them, they would have to run. In especially difficult situation, many women

237 Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 238 Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies threw the rice into the canal or even entered the canal themselves with the rice in order to escape the guards. Women also frequently tried to slip past the guard's notice by pretending that there was a child (and not a sack of rice) on their back. Others feigned pregnancy by filling rice their clothes with so much rice that the guards thought they were with child239, when in reality, they were carrying not a baby they would have to feed, but only rice they intended to feed their family.

The economic police force throughout its existence also compromised the solidarity that was supposed to exist between the farmers and their relatives or friends who lived in their villages of origin or elsewhere outside the ON. When farmers went to visit parents, who lived in other regions of Mali, they were not permitted to bring so much as a grain of rice with them. It was necessary to be very discreet and even bold in order to bring rice when visiting relatives, as custom and social values demanded. Several times, Diénabou Touré and her mother, when they went to visit their relatives who lived in Gao, put the rice at the bottom of the travel bag underneath their clothes in order to snack the guards and the military corps. If they caught someone, all the rice they had on them would be confiscated240.

The fact that the guards and the military corps operated without local oversight posed a problem insofar as this left the farmers feeling that they no longer controlled anything that they produced, that they were not free241. This feeling was frequently expressed during our field research. Moreover, the lack of control over the operations provided of the economic police created the opposite effect to that sought by the government of Mali and the ON authorities. Instead of encouraging farmers to market as much of their rice harvest as possible to the ON it was the illicit traders who recovered most of the rice seized from farmers and their wives, selling

239 Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Youssouph Dembelé in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017; Comments from Abdoulaye Diarra during interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017. Also, in order to escape the vigilance of the guards, it was common for the women to join in groups of 8 or 10. Once they reached the guards, they dispersed very quickly. Even though some were taken by the guards, others had the chance to escape and bring a little quantity of rice back at home. 240 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017. 241 The economic police dit not depend on the administrative services in the ON zone, nor on the ON management. This situation made the control of this police very difficult and incidents between farmers and guards happened very often.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies it for their own gain242. Cheibane Coulibaly has asserted that the traders held with the complicity of the economic police and some ON officials the reins of the parallel market for paddy, which included some of the seizures made from the farmers243. Furthermore, many guards were corrupt, and, rather returning the rice confiscated from the women to the ON, took it at home to give it to their own wives. Some even resold a portion of this rice to make money244.

Even though the seizures of rice from women most often involved the small amounts they earned through their labor (e.g., gleaning), they sometimes also directly affected the provisions authorized by the ON for worker’s food during the harvest time. These provisions amounted to one bag (80kg) per week for a family of 10 people, two bags for 20 people or more and four bags for five people per 15 days. These types of supplies were supposed to be authorized either by the head of the production unit or by the head of the sector, but, it was common for the guards to abuse their authority by using the pretext of a bad or outdated draft (the authorization was only valid for one day) to confiscate this rice245. Of significant interest was the fact that male and female farmers often referred to the cotton production period (throughout the 1960s until 1971), as, in their view, the best time. In those times, according to many interviewees, all that the farmers produced to feed themselves they could keep. They were referring not just to rice, but also to millet, which some farmers produced for daily consumption246. It was inconceivable for a farmer to grow a cereal and not have enough to eat, yet this was the reality in the ON because of the guards and military corps. Monica van Beusekom described the moniteur during the colonial period as the person who had the most impact on the day-to-day lives of settlers and who was consequently the object of considerable settler resentment247. The role of these moniteurs is

242 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.30. 243 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités á l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 170. 244 Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017. 245 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.30. 246 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. Most farmers practiced millet in plots where water from the canal did not arrive. But, the millet was destined only for the food of the family, because it was not large plots. The size of the plots varied between 50 ares and 60 ares. Even though some farmers like Karamoko could have up to 10 or 15 bags of millet after each campaign. 247 Monica Van Beusekom, Negotiating Development. African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920-1960, (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), 101. See also Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980), (Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007), 146.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies comparable to that of the officers (guards and military corps) of the economic police who in the 1960s-70s enforced restrictive measures on farmers who were living and working in ON irrigated lands. Because of such mesures, this latter group felt dispossessed and exploited, and the risk was great that they would be discouraged from producing crops that the ON confiscated.

Thus, the combination of an increase in the food deficit and a decrease in the income of the farmers favored their dependence vis-á-vis the ON. This increase in the farmers’ dependence on the ON was sanctioned, as one has seen previously, by a reduction in production which could only contribute to increasing the economic difficulties they encountered. The two phenomena of food shortages and strict official control were undoubtedly the main causes of the degradation of the overall situation in the ON and of the tense relations between it and farmers. Seeing their husbands deprived of a large part of their production, women’s options for economic recourse were limited and increasingly directed towards the sale of their labor power. One has seen above that women tried every possible means to bring rice into the home for their households’ survival in spite of increasing control. The quantities they were able to obtain, however, were certainly not enough to enable them to cope with the situation, which required more imagination and creativity on their part. These traits are crucial aspect of women's ability to create, to innovate, and to find resources for their survival. So, what were the strategies put in place by women to survive?

3.3 Women's survival strategies within the context of an emerging cash economy

In the colonial era, the colonial franc was used in the Office du Niger and quickly adopted alongside the traditional cowries. In the countryside, too, cowries and barter have continued alongside this franc and then the CFA franc since the end of the war economy led by the Second World War. After the war, the CFA franc was created following a 140% devaluation of the French franc against the dollar and the pound sterling248. In the ON from its inception, royalties owed to the administration were paid in the colonial currency. However, barter and

248 Boubacar S. Diallo, “Des Cauris au franc CFA”, Mali-France Regards sur une Histoire Partagée, (2005): 424. See also Guia Migani, “L’Indépendance par la Monnaie: La France, le Mali, et la Zone Franc, 1960-1963”, Presses Universitaires de France, no. 133, (2008): 32.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies cowries were used between farmers, and at the ON markets. For instance, the marriage dowry was paid in cowries249. This contributed to an increased use of barter in the villages.

Women in the ON always sought a small plot of land to grow the crops traditionally reserved for them (vegetable gardening and dry crops such as millet and corn). Additionally, most women worked in the family rice and cotton fields. Faced with the lack of resources that they were, women found a source of income through this work, for which they were very often remunerated. The goal was to get a little wari ("pocket money") either to buy kitchen items, to purchase the beauty items they needed, or to acquire products they could exchange. This prompted the development of small-scale wage labor by women in the ON next to that of male farmers. The men upon having sold their harvest and earned some money were supposed to buy such subjects as bicycles, radios, and other imported products. The farmers’ desire for imports as well as the small increase in monetary incomes showed a slow development of the cash economy throughout the ON.

For women, condiment prices and the need for rice and millet for family meals were the main concerns. They were engaged in the harvesting of rice and cotton, they hulled the paddy they received as a remuneration to sell on the market for spending money, and some of them; even earned extra cash by engaging in post-harvest activities such as hand-hulling rice and millet. At the time when women were doing these activities to get cash, currency was spreading throughout the ON zone, forcing the inhabitants to rely on money for their survival. The development of this money economy contributed to the development of women’s economic activities. As Chantal Rondeau pointed out, changes in eating habits increased the expenditure of women250, who were supposed to buy sugar, smoked fish, and other more traditional condiments. To satisfy such needs, from time to time they needed cash251.

In the ON women always played a significant role in the agricultural economy. It was already difficult for women in the colonial epoch, when they were faced with the lack of resources such as land, water, and agricultural credits, among others. However, since our study focuses on the post-independence period, we will only analyze the strategies undertaken by

249 Interview by author with Diénéba Sangharé in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Anassa Bouaré in B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017. 250 Chantal Rondeau, Les Paysannes du Mali. Espaces de Liberté et Changements, (Paris: Karthala, 1994), 113. 251 Boubacar S. Diallo, “Des Cauris au franc CFA”, Mali-France Regards sur une Histoire Partagée (2005): 416.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies women during this period. One therefore cannot say that women did not utilize these kinds of strategies before, but it could be confidently stated as a result of this research that during the postindependence period these strategies constituted a response developed by women out of necessity in a new context which required them to play a more active role. There was a need to react, therefore the women did so. They used their strength and their know-how for their own survival and that of their household.

3.3.1 Female work in the rice and cotton cultivation fields

There are a growing number of country case studies examining women's role in farming systems. In her study of a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Jennie Dey argues that the division of labor for the same crop grown under similar cultivation conditions varies considerably not only between countries but also between ethnic groups living in close proximity252. However, in the ON case, another factor had an influence on the division of labor: the economic situation of the head of household. Women in the ON participated in paddy rice production during the seeding, weeding and harvest period, but the work of plowing was a male activity. Except, that is, when a woman’s husband was too poor to pay for an extra workforce, in which case the wife did the plowing by leading the oxen253.

The ON management gave the farmers a plot that could vary between 1 and 3 hectares on which to practice malo sénné (rice cultivation). For a head of household who did not have enough available hands for rice cultivation on such a scale, recourse to female labor was necessary. Women always worked the harvest, the mise en gerbier, with men, and participated in the threshing and winnowing of the rice. In those days, the technique of transplanting rice seedlings was not common in the ON zone, so the men engaged in sowing (direct seedling). However, in the ON’s Bambara community, women helped their husbands sow, even if the work they provided was less than what they had done in the villages from which they had come254. Women needed to provide less labor in the ON, because there the husband had better access to

252 Jennie Dey, “Women in African Rice Farming System”, in: Women in Rice Farming, ed. International Rice Research Institute (Manilla: IRRI, 1983), p.425. 253 Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. In addition to the financial means to possess in order to pay workforce, one must add the fact that at the time of rice cultivation, it was very difficult to find someone who could help you do the work, because everyone in the irrigated zone was doing the same work and at the same time. 254 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.32.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies more equipment and resources than elsewhere in the region. However, this does not mean that these women did not provide work in the family farming fields. Their lack of access to resources such as land, water, and agricultural credits to ensure agricultural activity in the ON irrigation system, motivated women to make this work in the family fields as profitable as possible for them. In those areas of the farming system reserved exclusively for women's, one shall see how they were able to obtain either wari (money) or products necessary for their survival and that of their families.

Although, women’s domestic activities are not the focus of this research and do not encompass their role in the agricultural economy, we would be remiss in not mentioning them. At home, almost all women were looking after the children and husband, were doing hauling water, pounding the cereals and doing the cooking. The preparation of food was the starting- point of agricultural activity: it was from this food that the workers acquired the energy necessary for the hard work of farming. Theories about the economic differences between men and women which paint the latter’s contribution as of only secondary importance thus offer an insufficient analysis of economic conditions. In her work on women from rural areas of Togo, Hella Ulferts points out that women's domestic work is not taken into account in statistics, despite which, without this subsistence work, there would be no trade and no monetary economy255.

Nearly all women reported that their agricultural duties, for instance, to cotton cultivation (cori sénné) and obligation to feed workers in the fields and paddies sometimes felt like a constraint on other, more interesting work opportunity. For instance, some of them were unable to grow farafini jaba (shallot, a highly esteemed product often cultivated by the local women) because of the amount of time they spent making food and coming and going between the fields and the house in order to deliver it256. The women indicated that, if the men were satisfied with cold food, they could save time by cooking the previous day or very early in the morning, though they still had to deliver it to the field. Not all accepted this solution, though. In the case of polygamous households, the women were at least usually able to help each other.

255 Hella Ulferts, Les Clefs de l’Avenir. Education et Formation des Jeunes Filles et Femmes des Zones Rurales du Togo, (Bremen: Zentraldruckerei der Universität Bremen, 2002), 30. 256 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017; Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

Cotton growing was intensified on several hundred hectares in order to increase yields during the 1961-62 crop year. This intensification required a great deal of work, such as: perfectly levelling the soil to ensure irrigation and good drainage of the fields; the improvement of soil fertility through the use of mineral and organic fertilizers; the protection of production by the treatment of cotton plants against insect depredations, and bird hunting257. Bird hunting in cotton fields was a form of direct employment for some women, who were remunerated in kind such as in the villages near the ON’s seed field in Dogofry. Apart from this one example of wage labor, women rarely worked on the fields of others, where they were remunerated in kind. Women’s avoided this type of work because of the guards who, as one saw above, usually took the small quantities of rice they managed to obtain258. Women’s hesitance to perform such work is understandable, since the main objective was to secure the means to cope with the difficult situation in which they found themselves. Work that brought them neither product nor cash was thus certainly not going to be part of their agricultural agenda. Therefore, the main question is: did those women gain something from the work they did in the rice and cotton fields?

3.3.1.1 Women's incomes from farming

The majority of women’s farm incomes came from rice farming. These gains were of three types: remuneration (during weeding, seeding, harvesting and winnowing); gifts; and self- employment (gleaning and threshing). Remuneration with rice was an important factor motivating women to engage in rice farming work. However, they could not make their own decisions regarding the quantity of this remuneration. Throughout the interviews, I noticed that women were not remunerated according to their work, but rather according to the amount of product that the head of the household was able to obtain at the end of each campaign. In a time of good yields, a woman could receive up to five bags of paddy. In the event that they did not receive what they felt to be their due, women could establish certain forms of resistance259.

257 AON, unnumbered document, R. Bernier, Les Projets de Programme d’Investissement de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated”, “n.p.” 258 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.36. In the Molodo sector at the time, women were recruited to harvest cotton by the ON management. But they were paid in cash (per day a woman could have between 300 a 1000 Malian franc) and their participation in cotton cultivation was limited to this activity, because of the availability of machinery for plowing and seeding. 259 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

It was not uncommon for women to receive nothing in exchange for their work on family farm. In these cases, the woman was remunerated solely with goods purchased out of the family budget: basic cereals and condiments (salt, meat, smoked fish). Most women did not consider this to be remuneration because they received no income from it, it was only for eating, they said. Frequently, this food for the family was not even enough. In this situation, it was always up to the woman to find something to feed her children, and sometimes the other members of the household as well. What these women wanted, was to have something that would allow them to earn money or products which they could use in case the need arose.

The other source of income for women in the ON was winnowing, threshing, and gleaning. In the case of winnowing the quantity received by the women varied, one or two calabashes at the end of the day of work. The quantity obtained depended on the number of days that the winnowing period lasted, but in some cases also on the relationship between the head of the farm and the women who did the winnowing activity. Woman who belonged the household could, for instance, be paid differently depending on if they were "active" or " old ", or close relatives. Important to mention here, is the fact that some women managed to organize groups of two to five people, on the basis of kinship or friendship, to do winnowing in rice fields other than their own household’s in order to earn more paddy. All the women in the group were remunerated in kind at the end of the day or at the end of the campaign, depending on the holding. Some women who earned paddy this way could end up with three 50kg bags260.

During the colonial period (the hand-threshing period in the ON) this activity could earn women as much as 15 to 20 bags of rice for every 100 collected. Gleaning was much less profitable in the post-independence period261. Rokia Malé, for example, now 82 years old, claimed to have received only one or one and a half bags of paddy for the gleaning she did in her husband’s rice field262. Hence, women received a certain amount for their participation in rice cultivation, either as remuneration, or gifts, or through self-employment. They hand-hulled this rice and sold it either at the Siengo or Niono market, or to the traders who came to the village to buy the rice from the farmers. This price dropped considerably after independence, and was

260 Interview by author with Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté in Siengo, March 29, 2017. 261 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.37. 262 Interview by author with Rokia Malé in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies lowered still more, from CFAF 14 (0.03 dollars) to CFAF 9 (0.02), in the second half of 1960 following an announcement by the new Modibo Keita government263.

Likewise, women gained a small quantity of cotton after each harvest as a reward for work done. The women spun all or part of this cotton to make clothes for themselves, their children and their husbands, selling whatever remained at the local markets. There were weavers in almost every ON village, to whom, women, after spinning the cotton, brought it to be made into loincloths. It was after the weaver had completed this transformation; the women took the loincloths and sold them at the market. Women could gain between 300 and 400 Malian francs264 per campaign through the sale of these cloths. However, the fact that women sold part of the cotton they received in the local market highlights Richard Roberts' thesis. According to Roberts, the main reason for the failure of the colonial cotton policy in Sudan was farmers’ preference for selling their harvest in the regional or local market instead of to the ON, from where it would go to support the development of France’s textile industry265. In the post-independence period, too, farmers were supposed to sell the cotton crops to the ON; yet, some of them still chose to sell it to local individuals. Thus, this small cotton trade in local markets persisted as an avenue through which women were able to make some cash. The most ambitious of them even managed to buy animals such as sheep and goats to engage in small-scale breeding at home and to buy jewelry for their personal needs266.

3.3.2 Growing millet to cope with rice shortage

A study carried out by Haywood in 1977 shows that there were nearly 40,000 hectares of dry crops (maize and especially millet) grown in the vicinity of the ON irrigated land, some of it by ON farmers. Women also participated in millet cultivation where they were mainly involved in the work of weeding, harvesting, and, perhaps after gathering beans (which were often grown in association with millet), cutting millet in the company of the men. Women engaged in this

263 AON, 132/1, Rémy Madier, Note sur l’Etat du Colonat, Novembre 1960, “n.p.” Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. The women had problems to bring the rice back to the village because of the guards, as mentioned above. It was very rare in some villages, as was the case in Sangharéla, that women brought back enough rice to sell a part at the market. The little they managed to bring back was for daily consumption. 264 Interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017. 265 Richard Roberts, Two World of Cotton. Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, 1800- 1946, (California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 9. 266 Comments from Mariama Cissé during interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies dual harvest in, for example, the M'Béwani zone267. During the millet harvest in M'Béwani, women used baskets to gather the crop, as they later did for harvesting rice. During the 1960s and 1970s, millet occupied the place that rice came to occupy after the irrigation of M'Béwani zone. Indeed, the inhabitants of this zone ignored rice cultivation until the ON began irrigating the area in the late 1990s with Dutch cooperation. To cope with the lack of rice in the region, women frequently used sorghum, commonly called the “big millet” pounding it in order to make small grains with the aid of a sieve. They prepared these grains of millet like other women in the other zones of the ON prepared rice, and served it with a homemade sauce based on peanut paste268.

In addition, the cultivation of millet was very important for the family and especially for women, who preferred being left alone to cultivate whatever millet they could consume, rather than rice from which they benefited little269. Explaining this preference, women once again referred to the guards and the military corps who forbade any removal of rice from the fields. For this reason, farmers increasingly took up millet cultivation to meet their daily consumption needs. For instance, most of the inhabitants of B2 Banisraela were accustomed to nio sénné (millet cultivation) in "hors casiers" plots. In the ON there have always existed at least two types of plots: the so-called "casier" plots which are located in the irrigated perimeter and the "hors- casiers" plots located outside the developed land and receiving the drainage water270. These two types of plots are exploited by farmers against payment of fixed water fees, the rate of which varies according to the condition of the irrigated lands, with water fees for "casier" areas being higher than those for "hors-casiers" fields. The millet cultivated at B2 Banisraela was mainly

267 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, November 10, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017. Rainfed crops had dominated in the M'Béwani zone for a long time, unlike other areas of the ON where they have never been really grown. These rainfed crops were essentially dominated by small millet growing either in the seno or in the surroundings of the villages. Other dry crops of varying significance (maize, fonio, etc.) were also practiced. 268 Interview by author with Fatouma Samaké in M’Béwani Centre, April 11, 2017. 269 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.35. 270 In the Office du Niger, there were several types of "hors-casiers". The "hors-casiers" with a water intake on a large adductor, with or without a distribution network. The realization and maintenance of the distribution and drainage networks were farmers’ responsibility. In general the drainage was deficient due to the absence of collector. The "hors-casiers" fed from an irrigation channel without "constructed" water intake, so the water supply became more random. Finally the "hors-casiers" which used the water of the drains, taking advantage of the waterlogging of these. Improvements in the drainage network and the management of irrigations in the pits to limit losses lead to a reduction in these types of areas. In any case, the water resource was absolutely not guaranteed and drainage was often deficient, especially in low zones.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies destined for family consumption, and the amount of millet that a head of household could gain at the end of the harvest, depended largely on the size of his field271.

Like with the cultivation of rice and cotton, women were remunerated in kind for work in their husband’s millet fields. In some cases, especially in large families, this millet harvest was stored as an backup food for children and women. Mariam Touré, for example, pounded the millet to prepare local couscous, and kept on the roof of her hut. It was not unusual for the family to have a meal that was either not enough or that she or her children did not like, in which case, she would prepare this couscous with milk or sugar to eat with her children272.

3.3.3 Cultivating vegetables and condiments

Vegetable gardening, long (throughout the 1960s and 1970s) considered a secondary activity in the ON, took place in home garden plots on a subsistance, and market basis. It was primarily practiced by women who wanted to satisfy their need for condiments273. Diénéba Tangara, a 79 year old women, living in B1 Niobougou, had the idea of doing vegetable gardening in the late 1960s because her husband did not give her money to buy the condiments needed in order to make a good toh (the main dish in Malian society). She realized that the garden could help her purchase condiments without having to spend the little money she earned through cotton and rice cultivation274. With the exception of a few apparently important female landowners, land ownership by women is restricted to small plots of land. Some women practiced nako bara (vegetable cultivation) in isolated plots that did not receive any water from the ON irrigation canals. They took water from the wells that the men (their husbands, sometimes their children) constructed for them inside the field, using calabashes to carry the water275.The water was often not too deep below the surface, as in B2 Banisraela for example, where women sometimes dug the wells themselves. Nevertheless, given the amount of labor involved in manually transporting water to vegetable gardens, it is not surprising that most women did not want to extend their plots.

271 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. 272 Interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017. 273 In other zones, particularly in Kokry and Kolongo rice yields were so low and farmers' debt somewhat higher forcing farmers to seek salvation from other crops, men also practiced the cultivation of the onion. Also in the Minianka villages, vegetable gardening was an activity of the whole family but dominated by men who practiced it in their villages of origins before their entry in colonization in the Office du Niger. 274 Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 275 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

By the 1970s, women had turned away as much as they could from rice production because of food insecurity and decreasing yields. In this context, vegetable farm plots were becoming more and more important and moved closer to the ON irrigation system. This change, however, was not without consequences for women’s access to water. Pierre Levesque, an engineer recruited as a rural engineer by the ON management in collaboration with the GEAU project (Gestion de l’Eau, or water management) who conducted a quantitative survey on vegetable gardening during the off-season in the ON, pointed out the extreme lack of water encountered by women, who struggled to water their vegetable plots. Levesque reported that once the rice irrigation was completed the ON only let just enough water pass through Point A to meet the basic needs of the local population. Under these conditions, the water level in some distributors was too low to fill the irrigation channels that the women used to water their plots276. According to some sources, from the 1960s to the late 1970s the ON was rightly worried about a deliberate deterioration of the channels in some zones to bring the water into the women’s vegetable gardens. On the other hand, the women complained about the ON management policies that forced them to go often four to five days without being able to water their gardens277.

In order to avoid the problem of insufficient access to water, and that of wandering animals (the circulation of oxen, sheep, and goats belonging to Fulani shepherds across the ON), women practiced vegetable gardening during the cold season. Even if they were interested in doing this activity during the warm season as well, doing so required several problems to be solved: soil quality (presence of potash), price of seeds (sold by traders at the surrounding markets), and the presence of crop-destroying worms278. Eventually the Office du Niger decided that it could improve relations with its farmers by helping the women in their endeavors, though, as one will see, it was not possible to do so until the mid-point of the 1980s

Indeed, the first project to support women’s vegetable gardening began in 1984 in the Kokry zone and was extended in 1986 over to include the Niono zone. This late starting date is not surprising, because the post-independence ON initially disapproved of vegetable

276 AON, unnumbered document, Pierre Levesque, La Culture Maraîchère de Contre-Saison á l’Office du Niger, Mai 1982, p.20. 277 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.33. 278 Ibid, p.34.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies gardening279 . Of course, Monica Beusekom has argued that in the colonial period the ON provided women with gardens 280 , while Isaie Dougnon added that, in the colonial era, management felt it was necessary to encourage farmers to practice vegetable gardening in addition to rice and cotton281. However, during the post-independence epoch, these vegetable gardens were seen as incompatible with rice and cotton cultivation by the ON management, because they were seen as degrading the zone’s hydraulic network. This was why vegetable gardening in the ON went through such a difficult phase during 1960-1970, from ban on gardening along irrigated perimeters to the threats that farmers who dared venture to practice such activity on the irrigated land would be evicted282.

Consequently, even though gardening had not been officially prohibited throughout the period 1960-1970, women did not receive any support from the ON management for this activity development. One would, however, see in chapter 5 how this farming practice developed over time since the ON management and its development partners like the Dutch decided to put it on the entreprise's agricultural agenda. This chapter would also analyse in more details the place occupied by gardening vegetable in local economie. Dougnon has argued that in the mid-1980s, the debate on the policy of crop diversification was amplified. According to him, the primary reason for this new policy was the flagging results of rice cultivation in the zone.283 It was through this debate over the agricultural crops diversification that the ON management came to see other crops, such as those grown in vegetable gardens as not competing with rice cultivation, but rather as complementing and reinforcing it284.

Because of women’s increased interest in vegetable gardening, it seemed important, by the 1980s, that the ON management determined quickly its position related to land problem. Land allocation was done by the ON management, but this process was complicated by

279 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.40. 280 Monica Van Beusekom, Negotiating Development. African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920-1960, (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), 98. 281 Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980), (Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007), 176. 282 Assana Sogoba, “Le développement des productions maraichères á l’Office du Niger: atouts et contraintes dans le context post-dévaluation”, mémoire de fin de cycle de l’IPR de Katibougou, Décembre 1996, p.4. 283 Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980), (Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007), 177. 284 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III, Coopération Néerlandaise, 1997, p.123.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies competition between families for the available plots, which ran the risks of sparking bidding wars. The archival and interview sources did not report any direct competition between men and women concerning access to land, the competitive nature of land acquisition nevertheless posed a challenge to women who were already seriously struggling to gain access to resources (water and land). The central problem women faced with regard to land acces, was that plots were allocated to the head of household on behalf of the family, without taking into account the number of women living in the household285. When competition for land meant that the size of the plot allotted to each head of household declined, women’s plots, already too small, shrank further.

Vegetable crops cited during my field visit ranged from common condiments to onions (also called shallots in the region): foronto (red pepper), guan (okra), tomati (tomato), and layi (garlic). Women used these products for cooking before selling the surplus at the surrounding market-places, but were nevertheless able to sell the bulk of their garden production. Diénéba Tangara admits that over time, if she produced many red peppers, she sold a good part of it at the market. Because, with this product it was easy to make the storage. It was only necessary for her to dry the fresh pepper in the sun for two to three days and she could then keep it in a dry place for more than a year without the product losing its taste or quality 286 . The 77 years old Youssouph Dembelé, also remembered that the women of the village of Sangharéla sold a good part of their vegetable products at the sougou (market) in Siengo287.

Thus, after using vegetable products as condiments in their daily sauces, women sought an income from vegetable gardening. In some cases, it was only when this income was obtained that they agreed to enrich their daily sauces with an eye towards nutritional improvement. Even though these women did really just not care one way or the other, the vitamins and salts contained in vegetables as pointed out by Kwie Hiang Oei288, they were doubtless aware that

285 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.34. 286 Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. Some of the onions and tomatoes she produced, she used them little by little in the daily kitchen. 287 Interview by author with Youssouph Dembelé in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017. 288 The survey conducted by this author on vegetable crops concerned the sector of Kokry in the zone of Macina. This survey attempted to answer the wish formulated since 1980 by the general management of the ON which

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies adding them to sauce could improve its taste289. The income from vegetable gardening was nevertheless sometimes the priority, because it enabled women to cover other personal and family needs by purchasing goods such as soap, clothing, and medicine. With Mali developing a currency-based economy and increasingly became a country consuming manufactured good, it is not surprising that women wanted to have a little income of their own to meet their most essential need. More and more new needs were born (salt, sugar, soap, shoes, clothes, and so forth) and both urban the urban citizens and rural farmers needed money to meet them. It is not as if the cash economy was introduced from above, or as if the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) suddenly began educating women about nutrition. Rather it was the problems of women's every-day lives in a slowly changing context which led them to invent measures that would help them survive.

3.3.4 Women hand-hulling

From the 1960s to the very early 1980s, hulling of millet and rice was done manually by women. The working instruments used by women were simple, consisting of mortar and pestle (made of wood or metal), and winnowing baskets and calabashes to remove the husk from the rice. The mortar was filled halfway, and the work of hulling was done by one or two women according to their availability (in the case of family consumption) or the quantity to be hulled (in the case of paid work). After husking the grain, the women used two calabashes or a winnowing basket to extract the husk with the wind290. The paddy that had retained its hull was then put back into the mortar to be pounded again. The thioiiry (hand-hulling) was done by women in the Office du Niger for two reasons: daily consumption, and income earning. As reported by Mariama Cissé, at the time machine té, fouille té, a bé boulou ! In other words : there were no machines, everything was done by hand !291 This meant a great deal of work for women who were in charge of hand-hulling the millet and making it into toh. They began around 5 in the morning, by pounding the millet into powder preparatory to making the toh. After having

sought to better know the vegetable gardening in the zone in order to be able to assist women in the diversification of their farm. 289 AON, 703, Kwie H. Oei, Les Cultures Maraîchères dans le Secteur de Kokry (Mali), Juillet 1983, p.12. 290 Comments from Mariam Cissé during interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. 291 Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies finished preparing the toh (at 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning), it was necessary to transport it to the fields which were about ten kilometers from the village292.

After serving the meal, the women worked beside the men in the fields until about 5 pm before going home, depending on whose turn it was to cook, once they arrived home, women might make the fire and prepare the evening meal. After all this work, the women finished their day late at night293. Most of the time, they would go straight to bed feeling enormous physical fatigue, without enough energy to even take a bath. According to most of the women I met during the field visits, the fact that everything was handmade explained not only their poverty (they only earned a little income from cotton, rice and a few vegetable products) but especially their fatigue. Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, an 83-year-old woman, told us that because of the manual labour, women’s hands were so hard that one could easily imagine that there was no blood circulating in their veins294. Given the role played by women in the family economy, it was not surprising that the ARPON project in the early 1980s launched an appeal on behalf of these women in the ON villages, claiming that they constitute a huge reserve in labor force that will have to be revitalized for an endowment of land and agricultural inputs"295. This analysis shows that the project leadership already recognized that women held a available place in the agricultural economy of the ON, but that they lacked the resources and means to enhance the value of their work.

If hand-hulling reveals how women in the ON villages suffered greatly in the 1960s and 1970s, it was also a means for them to earn incomes in a time economic hardship. Since there were as yet no rice hulling machines, or village mills in the early 1980s, women provided hand- hulling services during ARPON project. This service consisted of hulling the rice or millet rations of other women who both needed this job done, and who also had the means to afford to

292 Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. 293 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. 294 Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. 295 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de le Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.7.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies have others do the work. Korotimy Kalosy Fofana always hulled her rice herself because, she told me, she did not have the means at that time to pay for the husking of her rice, despite being able to earne a little money from time to time through the small-scale trade in cotton, rice and fresh milk she did at the N'Débougou market 296 . Hand-hulling was thus not just an inconvenience, but also offered women the opportunity to earn something for themselves.

Like agricultural work in the rice and cotton fields, the hulling service performed by women was remunerated either in money or in kind. For each hulled basin they received roughly two calabashes of rice or 75 Malian franc, while for an 80 kg bag of paddy the women received between 100 and 150 Malian francs as remuneration297. Most of the small quantities of rice that women managed to sell at the markets came from paid hand-hulling work that they did in their villages and in the surrounding villages. In order to be able to earn more within a day, some women organized groups of two to three people. If one woman could hull a single bag of paddy, in a group they were able to hull two bags the day298. It was also safer for women to move from one village to another if they travelled as a group. Diénabou Touré told us that the women who did the hand-hulling in the sector of Molodo at the time came from the villages of Niéminany, Molodo-Bamana, and Niéfassy299.

3.3.5 Women’s contribution to the household's expenditures

Admittedly, I can not measure the contribution that women in the ON villages made to their households. Nevertheless, with the information I received and especially with what I know about what they earned, I can have an approximate idea of the total spending power available to these women to provide for their survival and that of the members of their household. One have seen previously that everything these women succeeded in gaining was possible due to agricultural activities (rice, cotton, millet, and vegetable gardening), and the agriculture-related work of hand-hulling rice and millet, but this does not mean that women’s contribution to their household expenditures was low or non-existent. Denise Paulme has argued that, in Africa a

296 Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017. The few incomes she had just served her to contribute to the expenses of the family, to take care of her children and sometimes (very rarely) to buy clothes and jewels. 297 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017; Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017; Interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017. 298 Interview by author with Youssouph Dembelé in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017. 299 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies wife's contribution to the needs of the household is direct and indispensable. When grain stocks are exhausted during the lean weeks before the harvest, it is the tubers grown by women in gardens behind their houses that provide food for the household. Paulme further argued that if foodstuffs still run short, women have to supplement them with purchases made at the markets300.

However, there are differences between Paulme's description of how women in tropical Africa contributed to their household needs, and how women in the ON did so. Both groups practiced vegetable gardening in the postindependence period, but women in the ON had their plots closer to their husbands’ fields301. In addition, these women did not grow their crops only during lean times, but did so whenever they felt the need. Zoumana Coulibaly, a 62 year old farmer at the village of Siengo, the husband of two women and father of a dozen children, said he knew how women used the money they earned by the fact that he always enjoyed the sauces accompanying his meals, despite not giving his wives money for the purchase of condiments302. This old man’s statement, expressing an arrangement also mentioned in the testimony of several other male and female interviewees, reveals that men gave their wives almost no money for the purchase of non- essential ingredients. Wives therefore commonly grew the necessary ingredients themselves, or purchased them at market out of their own funds.

Women bought condiments such as namugu (powder made from baobab leaves, mainly used for the sauce accompanying toh), and sumbala (processed grains from néré that the Sahelian women use to give sauces flavor), among others, make appetizing meals on the days when they were supposed to cook. Apart from food, having money allowed them to cope with other expenses like clothing for them and their children, soap, petroleum, shoes, and preparation for their children’s marriages.303 Given that it was not unusual for husbands to give their wives

300 Denise Paulme, Women of Tropical Africa, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 4-7. 301 Interview by author with Karamoko Kalosy in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Youssouph Dembelé in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017. 302 Interview by author with Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté in Siengo, March 29, 2017. 303 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de le Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.6; Interview by author with Diénéba Sangharé in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017; Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017. Oumou Kalssoum Cisse, despite being married to a very wealthy man from the village of B2 Banisraela, told me that she always had to buy clothes for herself and for her children. In many cases, men by habit or egoism refused to give money to women to buy clothes for their children, or for themselves.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies money to buy basic foodstuffs, it is not surprising that the purchase of medicines in case of their childrens becoming ill was also the responsability of women. Some interviewees were more ambiguous about the issue of women's participation in household expenditures. According to Youssouph Dembelé, the women took this money to go see the marabout (a holy man, a sage who is accorded a great respect and influence in Africa and especially in the sub-Saharan countries) so that their husband will not take a second wife. The implication in this testimony is that, women were simply wasting their cash incomes instead of spending it for good causes, such as the survival of their family304. It must be recognized, however, that it was easy for family members, especially husbands, to know how women were spending their money, as Zoumana Coulibaly's statement showed.

Also, women’s contribution to household spending (especially the purchasing of condiments) was so significant in the ON villages that some of the female interviewees told us that, they had seen polygamy as a means of escaping, at least part of the time, from such expenses. This was possible because a woman who lived in a polygamous household spent her money to purchase food for that household only on the day that she was supposed to prepare the family meals. In this context, polygamy was seen by most of the women interviewed as something positive. For these ON women polygamy was not only a type of marriage, but also a mutually beneficial element of society. Alongside the purchase of condiments and other products necessary to the household, the sougoumo (the small gifts that women brought back from the market for children) was another expense that women did took on for the well-being of their children. Sougoumo included foods such as cakes, mangoes and other small treats305. Whenever Korotimy Kalosy Fofana returned from selling rice and basic condiments at the Siengo market (five kilometers from the N'Débougou production zone), she brought her children and those in the neighborhood sougoumo.

The children would run behind Korotimy shouting, daso nana daso nana ! (daso is back, daso is back !), every time they saw her coming back from the market306, because, they were certain that she had something for them. For women, sougoumo was also represented a way of

304 Interview by author with Youssouph Dembelé in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017. 305 Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017; Interview by author with Salimata Coulibaly, and Nafissatou Coulibaly in Kando, April 13, 2017. 306 Interview by author with Korotimy Kalosy Fofana in B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies compensating children for not having seen their mother almost a full day. In hopes that the children would not cry the next time they saw their mom leaving for the market. Thus, from the well being of the children to the survival of the other members of their household, the women of the Office du Niger villages contributed to the daily expenses. Despite their meager incomes, they played a role in the well being of their family. Admittedly it has been pointed out that women could get many of the for food ingredients they needed from their garden, but the fact remains that other necessary items such as salt and, dried fish among other could only be purchased at markets with money.

To conclude this section, it can be said that two factors, the food crisis and the constraining factors on paddy collection until the late 1970s motivated women's strategies to find alternative sources of income. These strategies utilized agricultural activities carried out in the fields, both those of their husbands and those of other households, and also the marketing of their female know-how through manual hulling. The ability of these women to organize themselves for work in service of their goal of securing the means of survival for themselves and their households reinforces Denise Paulme’s observation that a wife’s contribution to the needs of the household was direct and indispensable307. Women created opportunities, they made choices, and they designed strategies. They did not merely react and obey, but did things independently despite having a very limited range of freedom. I share Isaïe Dougnon's thesis that women, despite their important role, were under the economic power of male farm managers, who had a monopoly on rice management and agricultural credit and who were favoured by principles for granting irrigated land that systematically excluded women. Nevertheless, contrary to how they are sometimes portrayed in previous books on the ON, women were not passive objects of Office du Niger policies308.

3.4 Conclusion

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the ON gave great importance to technical and financial problems and also to the strict control of the circulation of rice at the expense of producers’ involvement in decision-making and input regarding socio-economic conditions.

307 Denise Paulme, Women of Tropical Africa, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 4. 308 Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980), (Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007), 179.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies

Some interviewees placed the blame for these policies on Mali’s new (at the time) regime, which, they maintained was not at all interested in the concerns of the ON farmers. Zoumana Coulibaly remembers that it was this disinterest that put the farmers in a total crisis, because many of them eventually found themselves in debt309. Falling into debt was the exact opposite of most ON farmers’ expectations for life in the zone. Apart from the settlers brought against their will by the French colonizers, most of the farmers who had settled in the ON, especially during the drought years (1963, 1972-1973), had done so voluntarily in pursuit of food security and a reliable and adequate monetary income.

The Malian government’s pursuit of food self-sufficiency through the intensification of rice cultivation had more stringent collection of production in the zone impoverished farmers as yields decreased and food shortages increased, forcing growers to devote ever more of their income to obtaining food 310 . In this context, women were the group most affected by the economic hardships encountered by the ON farmers. These women had been kept far away from the ON interventions. Without access to land or water that would allow them to develop agricultural activities like men, women suffered the greatest effects of the ON management’s maximal collection of rice production311. To cope with such conditions they were as active as possible in their husbands’ fields by developing a variety of activities that allowed them to earn small incomes and a small quantity of agricultural outputs (i.e. rice and millet). Through their contribution to the agricultural system and related activities, women played an important role in their own survival and that of their families.

Since it was very common for men to not give their wives money to buy the ingredients required for the daily sauce, it was up to the wives to do it. This responsibility was one of the main reasons for the practice of gardening, as many women saw in it a means of not spending the little income obtained through their activities with rice or cotton. In addition to condiments, women also frequently used their gardens to supplement the rice diet provided by the ON management to the farmers, because this ration was often insufficient to feed the whole family throughout the year. Women’s contributions in this area certainly demonstrated their capacity to

309 Interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017. 310AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.4. 311 Ibid, p.4.

Chapter 3: Women in Office du Niger: Survival Strategies react in a slowly changing context, but did not, however, make it possible for them to be more involved in the rural development process as directed by the ON management.

The ongoing technical rehabilitation project which was initiated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the assistance of the international community in general and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in particular, would in my view have little chance of successfully obtaining satisfactory results if it did not take into consideration the following problems: satisfaction of food needs; organization of women around centers of interest likely to bring them incomes; regulation and standardization of the reciprocal obligations of farmers (men as well as women) and the ON; and sufficient training, and empowerment of women. In the next chapter, one will see whether these needs were really be taken into account by the ON management which was now supported, as well as influenced by the international community.

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

4.0 Women and Rural Development in the Dutch Partner Program in the Office du Niger, 1978-1997

4.1 Introduction

In 1977 the president of Mali, Moussa Traoré, visited his marabout in the ON village of Souala in the ON near the Kokony Agronomic Research Station. It was during this personal visit to his marabout that farmers approached him about their hard working and living conditions. Searching for a solution to the problems faced by the ON's irrigated lands, General President Moussa Traoré asked the international community for financial and technical support in order to rehabilitate the irrigated lands312. He also requested that the international community examine the most appropriate means by which the Malian government and especially the ON management might highlight the special needs and problems of farmers, even if recommendations would oblige the ON management to carry out maintenance work on the hydraulic infrastructure in place of the government of Mali and with its own resources.

In 1979, the Dutch started to assist the ON with money and expertise, focusing mainly on the cultivation of rice, which was the only crop planted in the zone since cotton had been abandoned in 1970. However, it must not to be forgotten that the World Bank had already become involved in the ON in 1978. The ON was at the time the recipient of important international attention, and perhaps that was one of the reasons why the Netherlands got involved, too. The aim of the Dutch aid was to improve the position of farmers and their autonomy vis-á-vis the ON management, increasing production through the provision of technical knowledge and resources313. Within this context and based on these intentions the Dutch presented their goals as being rational and practical and sought to fulfill them by establishing the project Amélioration de la riziculture paysanne à l’Office du Niger (Improvement of Peasant Rice Cultivation in the Office du Niger), ARPON314.

312 Interview by author with Amidu Magasa in Bamako, March 01, 2017. See also, Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques et Stratégies Paysannes au Mali 1910-1985. Le règne des mythes á l’Office du Niger, (Bamako: Le Cauri d’or, 1997), 169. 313 AON, unnumbered document, Ambassade Royale des Pays-Bas á Dakar, Femme et développement au Mali, 1989, Folder Office du Niger/Programme ARPON, p.21. 314 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.68.

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

However, the Netherlands felt that in order to improve productivity and production in the ON, they had to support farmers and make some changes in the means of production. In other words, the modernization of technology in the ON was not in itself sufficient in the eyes of the Dutch, who wanted to support farmers directly. A report of an evaluative mission conducted and funded by the Netherlands provides detailed information on the main activities of the ARPON project, which included the improvement of the irrigation system, the provision of agricultural equipment, the agricultural extension services and the provision of credit to farmers315. As observed by Theodore Schultz, farming under irrigation is not a simple matter 316 . This is somewhat the Dutch understood earlier when they decided to helping the Malian authorities as well as the ON management to rehabilitating the irrigated lands in the zone and everything that went with it. In accordance with this ambition, which privileged "strengthening the farmers’ force"317 and the pragmatic approach, the ARPON project consisted of three successive phases: (1) identification of problems and needs; (2) testing of suggested solutions; and (3) generalization of the adopted solutions. It was on the basis of the results and appraisals of various evaluative missions carried out in 1984, 1986 and 1988 that the Netherlands continued their intervention in the ON through the first two phases of the ARPON project. This approach led the ARPON project and the Dutch officials to work with the farmers directly and to circumvent the Office du Niger management and the local authorities considered at the time to be "parasites of the farmers"318.

The Netherlands' support in the ON zone is distinguished first by the size of the investments― the budget just for the transitional phase of the ARPON project was more than one million dollars, out of a total of more than thirty-four million dollars for the entire ARPON program319. This support is also distinguished by the fact that the Dutch were the only foreign partners present on the ground in the ON irrigation scheme for six years. Some local officials

315 AON, unnumbered document, B. Heringa, K. Ztjderveld, and P.V. Blom, Rapport Mission d'Evaluation Bilatérale "Office du Niger"-Mali, 1984, Folder ON/Programme ARPON. Divers 1982-1985, p.16.

316 Theodore W. Schultz, Transforming Traditional Agriculture, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 179. 317 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.69. 318 Ibid, p. 69. 319 AON, unnumbered document, Phase Transitoire ARPON II. Plan d'Operation 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, 1991, p.3.

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON even remember the Dutch as “the first rescuers of the ON" because they were there when the people really needed help320. Yet, the most remarkable thing about Dutch aid is that they were the first development partner (present in Mali) who promoted a policy in favor of women farmers in the ON. Retail, the project funded with French cooperation to work directly with farmers, especially women would not start until 1986321, while the Netherlands had begun provided financial support for ON farmers within a year of the Malian government’s 1978 request for aid.

The program which later became known as ARPON had begun with small projects such as BEAU (Besoin en Eau), Water Requirement, and GEAU (Gestion de l’Eau), Water Management. It was in the clear and rapid decision in favor of farmers in general and of women in particular that the originality of the Dutch cooperative approach could be seen. This approach also explains my great interest in Dutch aid, because it was the first time that a donor made such a choice, while at the same time giving due importance to the technical constraints of irrigation. Therefore, the questions to be asked here are: When and how did Dutch aid start in the Office du Niger? How did their interest translate into policy within the ON? Why were they so concerned with women’s issues? In the sections that follow, this paper will trace the late 1970s beginnings of the Dutch intervention in the ON. The argument will then shift focus to the broad intention of the Dutch to improve the situation of women in the ON through the lens of the women’s promotion policy which emerged from it. This analysis will help us to better understand that, the role and situation of women were never directly targeted at all levels of the ON and in its villages and union representations until the early 1980s, with the intervention of the Dutch and other international donors in the ON.

4.2 The beginning of the Dutch partner program in the Office du Niger

Farmers were in a desperate situation when the government of Mali convened a 1978 donor meeting in Ségou to discuss the problems of the ON. There were three reasons for the organization of this meeting by the Malian authorities. First, there was considerable evidence

320 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, May 11, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016. 321 AON, Projet Retail 29/91986 au 01/12/1986, Observations d’Ordre Général sur les Documents de Réorganisation de l’Office du Niger, 1986, “n.p.”

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON that the hydraulic network and the lands were becoming increasing degraded322. The water control was often very bad. This was related to the history of the irrigation system, partly designed for cotton irrigation, as wells as the lack of network maintenance, and the degradation of the soils induced by repeatedly of ploughing over plank323. During 1971/72 agricultural campaign, only 901 of more than 1, 042 hectares set aside for sugarcane cultivation (introduced in 1965) was harvested. During the same campaign, out of a total 212, 900 hectares allocated for rice, only 42, 000 hectares were cultivated324. In Niono, the most disadvantaged sector at that time, half of the 10, 000 hectares that had been developed were abandoned325.

During the early 1970s many plots were abandoned due to a lack of rainfall, but especially a lack of irrigation. Fafré Diarra, who started working as a young agronomist in the ON in 1975, remembers how the land and the water system were often in a state of ruin because the ON management which was in charge of the development and maintenance of the network did not perform its role326. The maintenance of a hydraulic network like the ON’s costed a lot of money, and the financial situation of the country could not really, at the time, support a regular management of the network. Moreover, the money destined for the maintenance of the irrigated lands was sometimes used for other purposes, for reasons beyond the focus of this research. Indeed, the Malian amount outstanding, including undisbursed in 1969 was 38, 230 USD, while the projected debt service for 1970 was estimated at thousand 11, 000 dollars327. As a result, production in the 1970s remained low.

Second, the situation in the ON was marked by a dizzying fall in yields and a notorious shortfall, in farmers’ incomes. As far as the cultivation of rice was concerned, farmers were

322 AON, 31, Phase Transitoire ARPON II. Plan d’Opèration 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, Folder Office du Niger/Programme ARPON 1991-1996, p. 27. 323 Jean Yves Jamin, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Succès et Echécs des Révolutions Vertes. Des Paysans Sahéliens Engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les Riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, (Montpellier: CIRAD, 1995), 2. 324 AON, 73/2, Commission Nationale de Planification de l’Economie Nationale, Huitième groupe: Zone Office du Niger, Première Partie, Situation du Développement de la Zone, Etude de Potentialites, p.2. 325 AON, 400, Journée d’Etudes et de Réfléxions sur les Problémes de l’Office du Niger 21-22 Juin 1984 á Ségou, 1984, p.17. 326 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, May 11, 2016. 327 World Bank Group Archives [hereafter WBGA], John C. de Wilde and Mary Marting, Mali External Debt, June 1970, p. 5. This very unfavorable financial context aggravated the technical problems of drainage that contributed to the gradual abandonment of cotton cultivation until it ceased entirely or was officially abandoned in 1970. Even before the definitive end of cotton growing, the quadrennial program of 1956-60 gave priority to rice, which was considered more profitable than cotton. This shift in priorities motivated the substitution of cotton-rice crop rotation for cotton-rice fallow crops, the increased use of farm machinery, and the bringing back into cultivation of previously unused irrigated lands. Extensions were also planned at a rate of 5,000 hectares per year.

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON forced by the ON authorities to follow a strict rotation and an imposed fixed schedule, so as not to disrupt the well smooth running of the agricultural campaign and bring about poor yields. In order to escape this constraint, and water fees, as well as to have a little paddy to grow food for their families, most of farmers preferred to cultivate fields called "hors-casiers". From 1976-77, the area of these "hors-casiers" increased by 3,000 hectares, taking into account the rice production of some cotton producers328. From 1978 to 1979, the quantity of paddy rice was on the decline, in part because of strict policies designed to maximize yields (see Table1 below).

Table 1: Paddy rice production during the 1970s

Year Cultivated Paddy Rice Yield Commercialized Paddy Acreage Produced KG/HA Rice (Hectares) (Tons) (Tons) 1970-71 39, 839 69, 678 1,749 38, 067 1971-72 38, 533 69, 629 1,807 46, 320 1972-73 37, 626 74, 364 1, 973 46, 852 1973-74 40, 139 83, 129 2, 071 54, 862 1974-75 40, 774 86, 000 2, 109 65, 000 1975-76 39, 916 90, 000 2, 254 63, 880 1976-77 39, 567 94, 400 2, 385 65, 500 1977-78 37, 946 101, 000 2, 662 58, 044 1978-79 35, 402 94, 000 2, 680 52, 298 1979-80 35, 104 62, 314 1, 775 50, 756 Source: AON, 234/5, Les Activités de l’Office du Niger. Conférence Spéciale 1979, 1979, p.21; AON, 244/6, Document de Travail/CCCE, Note de Synthése sur l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1983, p.6; AON, 244/1, Office du Niger, Présentation, p.5; AON, 264/5, Evolution des productions á l’Office du Niger, Juillet 1983, “n.p.” From the ON authorities’ point of view, an increase in the area of "hors-casiers" beyond a reasonable limit was not desirable because of the resulting impact on productivity and the commercialization of paddy which the farmers were supposed to sell to the ON management. They were thus aware of the risks connected with expansion of the “hors-casiers” but probably believed that if farmers had a somewhat better standard of living they would be more willing to work in the interests of the ON. Moreover, as long as the use of "hors-casiers" enabled them to meet some of their food needs, farmers were unwilling to abandon this practice, even though it

328 AON, 73/3, Commission Nationale de Planification de l’Economie Nationale, Huitième groupe-Office du Niger, 2eme Partie, “Document XY, not dated”, p.3.

100

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON risked compromising the achievements of ON programs by contributing significantly to the decline in the rice yields available for commercialization.

This situation worried the Malian government, which depended on the ON lands in order to feed its population. During the colonial period the ON’s objectives had been the production of cotton for the needs of the French textile industry and of rice for the needs of the territories of French Sudan and French West Africa, but in 1970 the Malian government had decided to achieve food self-sufficiency by drawing on the ON’s irrigated lands329. In addition to the decline in food crops, sugar-cane production, which had regularly increased until 1970-71, began a decline from 1971-72330. In this situation, relations between the ON and farmers could not be good. On the one hand, farmers who at that time had only their land and agricultural activities on which to survive felt their most basic rights to have been betrayed. On the other hand, the ON authorities increasingly felt betrayed by farmers to whom they had given land and water, only to be repaid year with the expansion of the "hors-casiers", and declining overall productivity.

Third, although Mali had been independent since 1960, farmers in the ON seemed to still be under the colonial yoke; the team of nationals who replaced the supervision of the French colonizers after Mali's independence had perpetuated to a large extent the former metropole’s vision for the ON. A meeting about the problems of the ON held in June 1984, which produced a document entitled “Conférence spéciale consacrée aux problémes de l'Office du Niger de Mai 1979”, went even further:

In this context, therefore, from the colonial logic, the texts establishing relations between the Office du Niger and the farmers at that time; could only be a reflection of a very inhumane approach. It is this acceptance of things is reflected in the "Contrat General" commonly known as the "Cahier de Charges", the preamble of which specifies that it is established in reference to Ministerial Order No. 25 of 31/12/1955 regulating the allocation and exploitation of the irrigated land by the Office du Niger. At the end of this contract, one notes among other things that the farmers could not "under penalty of eviction practise any commercial operation either directly or through an intermediary, and that the sacred and intimate character of the dwelling was not recognized as belonging to the farmer". This contributed to developing the feeling of being a

329 AON, unnumbered document, La Stratégie Alimentaire du Mali, 1982, Folder Office du Niger/Programme ARPON, p. 17. 330 AON, 73/2, Commission Nationale de Planification de l’Economie Nationale, Huitième groupe: Zone Office du Niger, Première Partie, Situation du Développement de la Zone, Etude de Potentialités, “Document XY, not dated”, p.8.

101

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON simple instrument of a cause that was not his own, but in which he was obliged to participate mainly because of the power of brutal pression that the ON had on him331. This document highlights the position of constraints and dependence in which the ON farmers found themselves: the ON authorities were concerned only with production, marketing, and profits. These authorities forgot the fact that the concerns they had in mind could only achieved if the main actors, the farmers, were not treated as objects.

Within such a relationship of force it was expected at the outset that farmers were looking for ways of bypassing the barriers (i.e. the economic police, the guards, among other constraints). Some farmers simply chose to leave the ON and to return to their villages of origin. This was the case for many of those who came from Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso). In sum, 22 families totalling left the ON in 1978-79, and 39 families accounting for 304 people left at the end of the 1979/80 campaign332. In addition to this exodus, the rules fixing paddy and rice prices and the marketing policy then in force in the zone constituted other brakes to production. At the same time, the ON was experiencing serious financial deficits, which totalled more than three million dollars in 1991333. The first evaluation mission conducted in 1984 pointed out the lack of transparent accounting and the often-irrational use of human and material resources to explain the financial situation of the ON:

The system of the Office du Niger's accounting lacks transparency and has not permitted a separate examination of the revenue and expenditure of various ON activities such as sugar production, rice production and processing. On the other hand, the number of people employed in the ON management and the often-irrational use of these and the equipment constitute the other reason for the financial and organizational crisis in which the ON was until the beginning of the 1980s334. Finally, because of this financial situation, there was a climate of distrust which often manifested in open conflict between the very unproductive farmers and the ever more inefficient ON.

The Netherlands made a commitment to support the government of Mali in its efforts to rehabilitate the ON lands. Since 1975, Dutch development policy was present in some

331 AON, 400/2, Journées d’Etudes et de Réfléxions sur les Problémes de l’Office du Niger 21-22 Juin 1984 á Ségou, Juin 1984, p. 12. 332 AON, 247/23, Victor Douyon, Situation de la Colonie Voltaique Sortie de Colonisation, Campagne 1979-1980, Octobre 1980. 333 AON, 249/9, Robin, Présentation de l'Office du Niger, 1949, p.26. 334 AON, unnumbered document, B. Heringa, K. Zijderveld, and P. V. Blom, Rapport Mission d'Evaluation Bilatérale "Office du Niger"-Mali, 1984, Folder ON/Programme ARPON. Divers 1982-1985, p.6.

102

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON developing countries encouraging farmers to participate actively in development programs and projects335. However, it was not until the late 1970s that the Dutch government decided to invest in the ON's irrigated lands. The first step of the Dutch intervention consisted of carrying out a project commonly known as Project BEAU. This project was among those recommended by the World Bank mission in 1977 and interested the government of the Netherlands, which had pledged to finance the estimated cost of 150 million Malian francs336. The project began in April 1979 with the assistance of the Irrigation and Civil Engineering Department of the Agricultural University of Wageningen (AUW) and ended in April 1981. It was able to determine, at the sprinkler level, the water requirements of rice and sugar-cane cultivation. Its approach to hydraulic improvement gave the ON, and then pursuing a diversification policy, the water needs of each (rice, sugar cane, maize, cowpea, etc.) during the various stages of their development, and the gravity irrigation methods best suited to the characteristics of the diversification scheme. Like the BEAU project, the Dutch agreed to finance and coordinate the GEAU project which was another part of the ON rehabilitation program defined in 1978337. The GEAU project began in July 1981 and run until April 1984. The short-term aim of this project was to optimize water management at the divider level using the existing system and structures. On the other hand, the project examined the distribution efficiency that could be achieved by directing the irrigation system from the level of the semi-module.

KL-2 was chosen for the realization of the tests because it possessed a range of geographical and hydrological characteristics that made it a good stand-in for the ON as a whole. The KL was topographical benchmarks used by hydraulic engineers during the colonial period to navigate around the ON zone. Later, local people used these benchmarks to designate certain villages or neighborhoods. This designation B2 in N’Débougou and the distinction between KL- 2 and KL-22 in Niono are examples of this practice. At KL-2, the project carried out a series of works such as: measuring the system, determining the scale and design of improvements to the system, overseeing the implementation of water, and managing the rehabilitation of the

335 AON, unnumbered document, Ambassade Royale des Pays-Bas á Dakar, Femme et Développement au Mali, 1989, Folder Office du Niger/Programme ARPON, p.18. 336 AON, 249/1, Notes sur le Projet BEAU et GEAU, Novembre 1981, p.1. 337 AON, 400/2, Journées d'Etudes et de Réfléxions sur les Problémes de L’Office du Niger 21-22 Juin 1984 á Ségou, 1984, p.17.

103

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON network338. The results of these works at this level were twofold: due to more reliable access to irrigation water, as well as to better organization of other production factors such as soil condition, farmers were able to follow the agricultural calendar mandated by the ON management. The net effets of these changes was to enable yields higher than those before the implementation of the project339. So, it seems that for the Dutch, as for the ON management, a focus on increasing productivity was the overarching theme.

When researched by the agricultural "Volet d'Expérimentation" revealed constraints to the introduction of other crops, the GEAU project decided to start studies on rice cropping systems. As discussed above, the problems at the ON rice perimeter consisted of both reduced yields and slightly decreased rice acreage. Production at the end of the 1970s was almost 2.0 tonnes per person, and in 1984 it was about only 1.0 tonne. While the population as a whole was increasing, studies undertaken by the project showed that extending the irrigated acreage was not a good solution for increasing production for the following reasons: (1) the network, which was very extensive in relation to total production was in the process of degrading so that its extension did not seem opportune; and (2) most farmers had a very low productivity340. A policy in favor of the development of intensive rice farming, however, could solve the problem of productivity and of increasing population in rice cultivation zones. The World Bank was very concerned about the population increase related to agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan African countries during the years leading up to 1980341. In many of these countries’ population rising was linked to economic growth. When the structural adjustment reforms' debates began in some countries, the WB had made demographic policy a condition for accessing financial aid. As observed by Maria Dӧrnemann, in Kenya family planning programs became part of the financial conditions of the bank 342 . During this period, for the World Bank reducing the risks of

338 AON, unnumbered document, Evaluation sur les Travaux Hydrauliques dans le Partiteur KL-2, Septembre 1982, p.2. 339 AON, 249/9, Robin, Présentation de l'Office du Niger, 1949, pp.37-38. 340 AON, 249/9, Robin, Présentation de l'Office du Niger, 1949, p.63. 341 Stephen K. Commins, Africa’s Development Challenges and the World Bank. Hard Questions, Costly Choices, (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988), 30. In the framework of the structural adjustment policies, the World Bank decided to keep the focus on agriculture because of its central importance, economically and socially, and because of the imminent dangers to the fragile environment inherent in the combination of traditional agriculture and increasing population density. 342 Maria Dӧrnemann, “Seeing Population as a Problem. Influences of the Construction of Population Knowledge on Kenyan Politics (1940s to 1980s)”, in A World of Populations: Transnational Perspectives on Demography in the Twentieth Century, ed. Heinrich Hartmann and Corinna R. Unger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 215.

104

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON population growth included the reduction of hindrance to economic development. Like this international financial institution, the Dutch certainly seemed to worry about this population growth. This pessimism was evident in the pronouncements of the Malthusians who advanced the conclusion that, with more people, more investment was necessary to maintain the same levels of capital and output per person which implied lower consumption per person343.

In this general atmosphere, the adoption of intensive rice farming would clearly fall within the framework of cereal self-sufficiency, a major concern of the Malian authorities. The drought of the damage caused by the drought of the early 1970s had not yet fully abated scarcity of rains in the dry areas of the country, the death of livestock especially in the northern part of the country, malnutrition of children and undernourishment of the working adult population, and reduction of production throughout the country. For instance, the production of millet, the basis of the population's diet, reached only 40% normal production, forcing Mali to import 260, 000 tonnes of cereals at the time344. Also, the drought of 1972-73 forced the government to be more open to the international community, to international aid and to imports for the survival of its population. However, the authorities of the country were becoming more and more aware that this was not the ideal solution. It was necessary to use, if possible, the country's resources to increase production and deal with this type of disaster. The irrigated lands of the ON seemed to be the ideal place for this food policy.

In the first half of the 1980s, the Dutch interventions were developed through the ARPON project. The programs consisted of supporting the implementation of the agricultural training program; the annual rehabilitation with Dutch technical assistance of 2,000 hectares; the establishment of an autonomous Agricultural Inputs Fund; the creation of a workshop for assembling agricultural materials; funding for seed farms; support for accompanying research; support for agronomic research; and support for the peasants empowerment by implementing village associations 345 .The ARPON project was a bottom-up process that emphasized the strengthening of the farmers and an innovative and pragmatic approach that was carried out in

343 Julian L. Simon, Theory of Population and Economic Growth, (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 15; See also Working Group on Population Growth and Economic Development, Population Growth and Economic Development: Policy Questions, (Washington D,C,: National Academy Press, 1986), 4. 344 Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, [here after AMAEF], 314, Letter from Louis Dallier, ambassador of France in Mali, to Michel Jobert, Minister of Foreign Affairs, April 20, 1973. 345 AON, unnumbered document, Accord Administratif, Janvier 1983, pp.1-2.

105

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON three successive phases. It was somehow a bottom-up approach. The project’s different phases included identification of problems and needs, testing of suggested solutions, and generalization of the solutions chosen by farmers in the ON villages. In order to realize this approach, the ARPON project set the general objective of participating in the rehabilitation of the ON with a view to contributing using the methods mentioned above, to the improvement of farmers’ exploitation conditions.

It must be stressed that the rehabilitation of the hydrological infrastructure in the ON benefitted from the assistance of other international donors as well. Yet, apart from the French Development assistance with the construction of the Canal Costes-Ongoiba (1979) and technical assistance from the World Bank (1978), help from the international community for the rehabilitation of the ON began only in the second half of the 1980s. Following a series of consultations between donors, the government of Mali and the ON management, a general rehabilitation program was developed. This program was part of Mali's economic and financial recovery policy, supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and within the framework of the food strategy set-up with the support of the European Economic Community. This vast rehabilitation program implemented jointly with the international community included the financial and technical reorganization of the ON, the preparation of the ON for its new role as a service provider for the benefit of farmers (implementation, coordination, and control), and the decentralization of responsibility regarding the production and marketing of paddy to the benefit of village associations such as the women’s economic groups and the private sector346.

In 1978, the excavation of the Canal Costes-Ongoiba and its accompanying infrastructure began. This canal, 19 km long, running between the Macina and the Sahel adduction canals would make it possible to realize the Upper-Kala hydraulic system in the following villages: Dougabougou (3, 000 ha) sugar cane; Siribala (4, 000 ha) sugar cane; Koumouna (2, 100 ha), rice with the possibility of other irrigated crops; and M’Béwani (16, 660 ha) rice cultivation. Financial assistance for the construction of the canal mainly came from French organizations

346 AON, 432/6, Coordination de l’Exécution des Projet de Réhabilitation de l’Office du Niger, 1982, “n.p.”; AON, unnumbered document, Schéma Dirécteur de Développement de l’Office du Niger. Note Préliminaire, Juillet 1984, p.1.

106

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON such as the Caisse Centrale de Coopération Economique and the Fonds d’Aide et de Coopération347.

"It is vital for the ON, if it wants to keep a stable population, to take into account the women’s needs and to help them satisfy these needs"348.This first voicing of concern on behalf of the ON women, articulated in 1980, seemed to awaken the cognisance of the ARPON promoters. In 1984, the first official effort on behalf of women farmers came into being with the Kokry vegetable gardening project. As observes by Corinna Unger, the most important tasks seemed to be an increase in agricultural production and the improvement of the conditions of rural life349. In the ON, concerns about population growth and decline were among the main issues motivating this project. There was concern that the ON work force was not sufficient to producing the food needed. Such a situation led some to arguing that if women were to have more children, their living conditions had to be better, but did women in the ON at this time have fewer children than in earlier times, or did they only need to be more involved, like men, in the development process. What is certain is that, as mentioned in previous chapters, the more children a man had, the wealthier he was. As a result, society highly encouraged births among married women.

Isaie Dougnon has argued that it was in the first half of the 1980s that the recognition of the importance of vegetable gardening was formalized in the ON350. By 1983, the recruitment of the first female extension officers by the ARPON project led to those in charge paying specific attention to women farmers for the first time. In April-May 1987, the diagnostic study of female activities in the Kokry and Niono sectors took account of the needs expressed by women, to define priorities. Program aims were the increase and diversification of women's incomes around centers of economic interest, the alleviation of women’s daily work and tasks, the improvement of sanitary and food conditions, and the functional literacy and transfer of responsibility that promoted the empowerment of women farmers. But why were the Dutch so concerned with women’s issues?

347 AON, unnumbered document, Plan d’Opèration du Projet ARPON, Mai 1985, p. 13. 348 AON, unnumbered document, IRAM/IER, Rapport sur l’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La situation des Femmes, 1980, p.6. 349 Corinna R. Unger, International Development: A Postwar History, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 29. 350 Isaie Dougnon, Travail de Blanc, Travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana 1910-1980, Paris 2007, p.177.

107

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

As Theresa Steverlynck and Georgette Konaté have argued was done in Burkina-Faso, the Netherlands incorporated the theme “Women and Development"(F&D) in their development policy beginning in 1975 and were among the most active international donors in this field351. Ali de Jong, who analysed the considerable change during the last few decades of Dutch development cooperation with Mali, argued that at the end of the 1970s, new topics such as the gender bias of ongoing activities were added to the development agenda352. The objective of Dutch F&D development policy was the structural improvement of the economic, social and overall position of women through their active promotion in the development process. The Dutch parliament, by through its 1987 endorsement of the Women and Development Action Program, confirmed this policy353. In operational terms, the Netherlands had at that time in the rural areas of Sahel countries in general and in the Kou Valley in particular the following aims: improving women's access to and control over factors of production (land, labor, income), services and infrastructure (water, energy, health, education); alleviating women's workloads through the introduction of appropriate technologies; strengthening legislation that ensured equal rights and opportunities for women; strengthening women's participation in decision-making; improving the organizational capacity of women at all levels; improving knowledge and awareness of women in informal education and training; and combating physical violence and sexual abuse against women.

So, when the Dutch began their intervention in the ON they already had experience with the policy of promoting women in the region. One shall see that in the ON the Dutch even followed the same women promotion policy they had already begun in the Burkina-Faso’s Kou Valley. This should not be a surprise, as one knows that 1970s was a decade marked by international awareness of the contribution of women to family and national economies though the WID approach. Indeed, the United Nations declared 1975 to be International Women's Year, and 1976-1985, the Decade for Women. This Decade's primary focus in the South was on the

351 AON, unnumbered document, Teresa Steverlynck, and Georgette Konaté, Rapport de l’Etude Socio-Economique sur les Femmes dans la Vallée du Kou, Tome I, Février 1990, p.4. Also see Karen Garner, Women and Gender in International History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018); and Corinna R. Unger, International Development. A Postwar History, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). 352 Ali A. de Jong, “Continuity and change in the Netherlands-Mali bilateral aid relationship”, in Development as Theory and Practice. Current perspectives on development and development co-operation, ed. David Simon and Anders Närman (London: DARG Regional Development Series No.1, 1996), “n.p.” 353 AON, unnumbered document, Ambassade Royale des Pays-Bas á Dakar, Femme et Développement au Mali, 1989, Folder Office du Niger/Programme ARPON, p. 18.

108

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

"integration of women in development," a methodology that is also known as gender "mainstreaming" 354 . This "integration" was accomplished at that time by including a "women's component" in programs that had previously been directed mainly toward men, or through the comprehensive adaptation of projects to include women.

According to the report “Assessment of Bilateral Cooperation between Mali and the Netherlands (1975-1990)”, within the framework of empowering rural communities with regard to their own development, access to and control of the main factors of production remained the domain of men. In this context, strengthening the participation of women in the process of rural development in Mali was of particular interest to the Netherlands355. In addition, at the opening of the bilateral Mali-Netherlands meeting held in Bamako from 25 November to 1 December 1989, the head of the Dutch delegation, Pieter Marres, explained that:

“We place great value on the women’s position improvement subject―especially at the economic level. The program offers opportunity not only in the form of specific projects but more in the form of activities in broader rural programs such as the ARPON project”356. Analysing this assertion, one can see that the Netherlands, by collaborating with local authorities, were promoting women's development policy as a leitmotiv of their development program in Mali in general and in the ON in particular. As remarked by Arturo Escobar, the fact that international organizations made clear their interest in formulating women's policies at the official level pushed governments in this direction357. In the first half of the 1980s, it became increasingly clear that this development program was aimed at integrating women's interests and activities into all projects. Unsurprisingly, the Dutch sought to develop in the Office du Niger a women promotion policy, and they believed that change could come gradually in this domain, through financial, technical and political improvement.

354 Elke Grawert, Making a Living in Rural Sudan. Production of Women, Labour Migration of Men, and Policies for Peasants ‘Needs, (Basingstoke: Mac Millan Press, 1998), 4. 355 AON, unnumbered document, Procés Verbal des Consultations Bilatérales entre le Gouvernement de la République du Mali et le Gouvernement du Royaume des Pays-Bas Concernant la Cooperation Financiere et Technique pour l’Année 1995, Février 1995, p.10. 356 AON, unnumbered document, Procés Verbal des Consultations Bilatérales Mali-Pays-Bas 25 Novembre-01 Décembre 1989, “Document XY, not dated”, p.4. 357 Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), 184.

109

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

4.3 Responsibility transfer to women farmers

In the first half of the 1980s, with the support of the ARPON project, the ON management elaborated a number of reforms which would accompany the rehabilitation of lands and which were designed to ensure their long-term economic and financial viability. These reforms included the introduction of a paddy pricing and marketing policy, the guarantee of farmers’ land rights, the development of farmers' bank credit, and especially the gradual transfer of certain activities from the ON to farmers, in particular to women358. Previously, well before the ON management disengaged from certain agricultural activities, postharvest processing operations such as threshing were carried out by the ON with large threshing machines driven and pulled by tractors. The husking of paddy rice was then done by the rice mills installed in many villages by the ON management. These operations were costly for the ON which already faced many financial problems that deprived of receipts that were needed to cover its operating expenses. Among these problems, for instance, was a sharp decline in the production of sugar after the peak of 1977-1979 which in 1981/82 left the sugar refineries operating at only 38% of their capacity.

This situation forced the Mali government to import food from neighboring countries, especially Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. After 1978, rice production declined significantly359. Moreover, the farmers were not involved into this management-directed harvest, which often led to discontent amid complain that the threshing campaign started too late. These factors, combined with the desire of the Dutch to promote the position of the ON women through ARPON, motivated the improvement of farmers’ social status, particularly the transfer to women of such activities as the threshing, winnowing, and husking of rice360. In the ON, most women identified the implicit and explicit constraints which limited the time available to them to pursue income earning activities as relating to the burden of the agricultural calendar, weeding, sowing, transplanting rice seedlings, harvesting, collecting wood, and so forth. Many fields, moreover, were often at considerable distances (between seven and nine kilometers) from the home, which

358 AON, unnumbered document, Ministère de l’Agriculture, Contrat-Plan 1988-1990. Etat-Office du Niger, p.1; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, November 10, 2016; Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016. 359 AON, 244/6, Document de Travail CCCE. Note de Synthése sur l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1983, pp.5-6. 360 AON, unnumbered document, Procés Verbale des Consultations Bilatérales Mali-Pays-Bas 25 Novembre-01 Décembre 1989, 1989, p.4.

110

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON increased walking time and energy expenditure. In addition to this, these women were doing all the housework: washing the clothes, taking care of the children, pounding the rice and millet by hand, and preparing the meals they brought to the men in the rice fields361.

The combination of household and agricultural work in ON women were engaged clearly left them little time to carry out activities that could bring in some income. This constrain was also demonstrated by the 1981 mission which surveyed women with the aim of analyzing their economic position and socio-economic role in order to elaborate an annual or multiannual development plan at the village and regional levels362. In response to these conditions and especially in the aftermath of this mission, ARPON decided to introduce agricultural equipment to women. These agricultural equipments addressed the needs expressed by women, who felt that it would alleviate their workload sufficiently to allow them time for other income generating- activities363.

4.3.1 Introduction of threshing and winnowing machines to women

Before the transfer of threshing activity to farmers' organizations and women, the ON carried out this activity; using large-scale threshing machines manufactured by Garvie, Frick, and Alvan Blanch364. Prior to the 1984/85 season, the threshing was carried out by the ON using these large threshers which yielded 120 kg of paddy (12%) per tonne of harvested plant. The operation with this type of equipment consisted of treating large quantities of paddy, which was simultaneously winnowed. The product obtained did not require any winnowing work on the part of women, who had in contrast, been widely employed by the ON during the colonial era to clean the grains processed by threshers365. Nevertheless, in this new system of paddy treatment,

361 Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017; AON, unnumbered document, Office du Niger. Organisation Collective des Paysans. La Situation des Femmes, Ministère de l’Agriculture, Institut d’Economie Rurale (IER) Bamako, Institut de Recherche et d’Application de Méthodes de Développement (IRAM) Paris, 1980, pp.42-43; AON, unnumbered document, Résultat par Village Etude Diagnostic des Activités Féminines Secteur Niono, “Document XY, not dated (1987)”, “p.n.” 362 AON, unnumbered document, Etudes Déscriptive de la Position et du Rôle Socio-économique de la Femme dans les Villages de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated, p.1. 363 AON, unnumbered document, Contribution á la Réflexion sur l'Elaboration d'un Plan de Travail Promotion Féminine á l'Office du Niger, 1990, p. 2. 364 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p. 26. 365 Laura A. Twagira, “Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali): Technology, Environment, and Food ca. 1900-1985”, (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2013), 272. Twagira argues that male farmers were obligated by the ON authorities to use the industrial machines in their fields. Women by contrast were not obligated to do this work,

111

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON women could recover leftover product discarded with the straw by threshers. “We treated what had fallen from the machine and after each agricultural campaign we obtained up to four bags of 50 kilos of paddy, if the harvest was good”366.

The small Votex Ricefan threshers from the Netherlands, introduced beginning in 1984, greatly accelerated the emergence of women's groups. The Dutch were able to use machines to change the women’s situation, because organized in groups they were able to get their message (the needs for equipment and opportinuties for economic activities) out in a more compelling way than had previously been possible. The decision to switch to small machines was an expression of the concept of "appropriate technology" which was very popular during the 1970s and 1980s in the development field. Stephen Macekura puts the origin of this new technology approach in the context of the ecologists’ movement emergence. In his book, Of Limits and Growth: The rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century, Macekura sets out quite clearly the expected reforms by the introduction of small-scale, "appropriate" technologies. According to Stephen Macekura, the idea was that developers should replace capital-intensive, large-scale technologies with small-scale, labor-intensive ones predicated on meeting local needs with local supplies367. Before Macekura’s work, Small is Beautiful presented by Ernst Friedrich Schumacher shows how available technology products should be use in the way that it would produce useful goods from local materials for local use.

Schumacher goes further as to argue that most agricultural populations would be helped immensely if they could themselves do the first stages of processing their products368. Thus, debate on this new technology use revolved around different economic points which could help see how people especially poorer people needed an economics that aimed to educating and elevating them, not to measuring their low-grade behavior. The ON case was an example of appropriate technology, (whether it was seen or described as such by the Dutch actors or not), because it involved a particular type of technology geared at a very specific situation, in this case

but chose to work the machines to support household needs. Moreover, during the colonial era the introduction of technology concerned only men, not women. 366 Interview by author with Diénéba Sangharé in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Comments from Abdoulaye Diarra during interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017. 367 Stephen J. Macekura, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 138. 368 Ernest F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989), 197.

112

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON the limited time available to women in the ON to conduct work. This targeted strategy was different from an approach introducing just any type of rice thresher or winnowing machine and assuming that it would do the job―the Dutch actively thought about which machine would better serve women’s needs. Here “the purpose of development was to bring help to those who needed it most”, to use the words of Schumacher369.

Moreover, in the ON villages the paddy processed by the Votex threshing machines required manual winnowing, which the farm managers entrusted to their wives. The small threshers modified the conditions of winnowing in the villages. Women now had to winnow the entire harvest by hand, which was a source of fatigue and cause of shoulder pain for most of them. This was one of the reasons why many of them left this practice to Bella women370. The other reason for the use of Bella women in manual winnowing that they were paid less rice remunerated in kind. During the agricultural campaigns a very large number of these women came to the ON villages to seek work that brought them either money or rice.

However, this immigration was temporary, because it only concerned the period of the fieldwork. When the work was finished, most of these women returned to their villages of origin until the next campaign371. In addition to the hard work of winnowing, the Votex threshers reduced the quantity of rice left in the fields for the taking. The owners of these machines, who were paid according to the threshed quantities of rice they collected, were very vigilant. The Votex drivers regulated the machines so as not to leave grains among the straws372. Thus, the introduction of new technology led to a decrease in direct grains acquisitions for women, an increase of the Bella workforce in the process, and especially an increase in the volume of winnowing work. With regard to Dutch development goals in the ON, these effects nevertheless helped to reducing the amount of time that ON village women spent on rice cultivation

369 Ernest F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989), 187. 370 The Bella constitute an ethnic group of servile status within the Touareg society of Mali. A nomadic population, the Bella were driven from the north of the country by years of drought from 1983 to 1986. With very limited wealth at their disposal, the Bella women in order to satisfy their vital needs left their villages to work as maids in Bamako or found their way to the irrigated lands of the ON. Here they were employed as seasonal workers in exchange for money or agricultural products. 371 Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016. 372 AON, unnumbered document, Anette Correze, Rapport de Mission au Projet Retail. Office du Niger. Impact de l’Intensification Rizicole sur les Femmes, Décembre 1988, p.35.

113

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

(spreading up rice threshing) so that they could carry out other activities such as petty trading, soap making, vegetables storage, dyeing, etc.

Women participation in winnowing first took place in the fields of their husbands. Most of those farm managers’ wives who preferred to do the winnowing activities themselves were assisted either by members of their aid grouping, if they were part of one, or by friends, relatives or others. Women who assisted in this winnowing were given, by way of remuneration, enough paddies to fill a calabash, called “guindé flein” (here “guindé” is the bottom of the gerbier and “flein” the calabash)373. Oumou Sankaré, a 50-year-old resident of B2 Banisraela, who still had no land in the 1990s, confirmed that she participated several times in the winnowing work in the fields of her neighbour’s husband. In exchange for her services she received up to four bags of paddy. Most of the time, she hulled the rice and sold it to buyers who came to her village374.

In order to alleviate women task load of women in rice fields during harvesting period, the ARPON project and the ON management decided to introduce winnowing machines as well. Unlike the threshers, the use of which brought unambiguous benefits, the winnowing machines mitigated women’s workload, but deprived them of a substantial part of their income. Winnowing during the 1970s and 1980s had been an extremely painful activity, but also an income-generating activity for women375. As soon as winnowing machine was introduced, the women who had been paid in kind to perform the work lost this source of paddy. Nevertheless, in addition to being the best way to distribute political and social power, and to build more sustainable relationships between humans and the natural, as advocates for the "appropriate technology" approach saw things376, these small winnowing machines were a means by which at least some women in the ON could earn an income.

Small winnowing machines were introduced in response to a male farm managers’ request in the first half of the 1980s. By 1989, six small winnowing machines were already installed in the villages of Niono, and the ARPON project envisaged installing two hundred

373 AON, unnumbered document, Janvier 1990, op. cit., p.26. 374 Interview by author with Oumou Sankaré, Noukhoum Mariko, Aboubacar Koné, and Astan Tamboura in B2 Banisraela, March 21, 2017. 375 AON, unnumbered document, “Mission d’Appui Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.5. 376 Stephen J. Macekura, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 139.

114

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON before the end of the 1989/90 agricultural season377. These machines manifested a conflict of interest between farm managers and women on the one hand, and between women of different socio-economic categories on the other hand. The “Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger intervened in this situation by proposing to the ARPON/ON program two solutions. The first was to put in place a more systematic system to monitor the impact of this equipment on women's income and health. The second was to work with local women to identify, other income-generating activities which would compensate the shortfall resulting from the introduction of this equipment378.

In South Asia and parts of Southeast Asia where the “green revolution” raised wages and increased harvest volumes, small threshers were rapidly adopted in Indian Punjab, the Philippines, and Central Thailand as soon as efficient designs became available in the late 1960s. In Sub-Sahara African countries, on the other hand, threshers in agriculture systems were still rare in the 1980s379. Mali is one of the countries in the sub-region which did make progress in introducing agricultural equipment, probably because of the country's potential and the availability of agricultural land. However, the agricultural system’s structural constraints continued to exclude farmers, especially the poorest, from the benefits of this innovation. The amount of equipment in the agricultural system remained below what the country could have potentially utilized and only a minority of the agricultural production units were equipped380. In the absence of a national agricultural policy, the Malian Ministry of Rural Development collaborate with the FAO on a comprehensive and through analysis aimed at defining a strategy of agricultural mechanization.

The resulting document identified beneficial technical and financial assistance programs and projects that could be financed by the state's own resources or by donors. The use of

377 AON, unnumbered document, “Mission d’Appui Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.5. 378 Ibid, p.5. 379 Prabhu Pingali, et al., Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 142. These authors argue that the lack of threshers use in the region could be explained by the small harvested quantities per person, the low improvements in access to markets or seed varieties, the low in harvested output, and the low increase in wages in the farming systems. Whereas in Mali 40% of national rice production was already produced in 1980, due to an irrigation system. While at the same time, the rehabilitation program permitted extension of cultivation to two per year or for cultivating marginal lands. Therefore, it is not surprising that the ON farmers became the more mechanized ones in the country since the early 1980s. 380 FAO, D.N.A.E.R., Appui á la Définition d’une Politique Nationale de Mécanisation Agricole. Mécanisation Agricole au Mali Situation Actuelle. Atelier de Validation, Bamako, Mali, Février 2002, p.4.

115

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON threshers among farmers did not emerge in Mali in general or in the ON in particular until the early 1980s. Their adaptation followed a 1980 to 1983 trial and pre-extension phase, undertaken by ARPON in collaboration with the ON management, using Ricefan threshers in the Niono area. This phase culminated in a definitive plan for the machines, the realization of which was within reach in Niono, followed by the local manufacture and large-scale introduction of the small Votex Ricefan thresher381.

By the first half of the 1980s, 550 Ricefans have been manufactured locally and introduced by the ARPON project in the irrigated perimeter to replace the great threshers of the ON management. By February 1990, almost the whole of the ON’s rice perimeter (about 45,000 hectares, excluding "hors-casiers" rice fields) was being by Ricefan threshers with an average seasonal capacity of 170 tonnes382. These Votex Ricefan threshers differed from those used by the ON during the 1960s and 1970s as well as from those introduced in the Niono sector by the colonial staff and administrators of the Office du Niger in 1951. In fact, the latter had a much higher overall threshing output than the small new Votex machines, even though they did not process the majority of the rice harvest in Niono until 1957383. The following table provides an overview of the introduction and performance of the small Votex Ricefan threshers for the rice cultivation campaigns from 1982/83 to 1988/89. It shows that from one year to the next farmers began to use the Ricefan thresher more actively. Farmers letting the rice plants grow taller before cutting them, the adaptation of a diesel engine to the threshing machine as well as the increase in yields of paddy per hectare, were important factors which made possible a higher threshing capacity.

381 AON, 31, Phase Transitoire ARPON II. Plan d'Opèration 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, 1991, p. 28. 382 AON, unnumbered document, J.P. Heijboer, Mody Sow, and A.A. Wanders, Introduction et fabrication Locale de la Batteuse Votex Ricefan. Expérience á l'Office du Niger, Projet ARPON, Mali, Février 1990, p.21. 383 Laura A. Twagira, “Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali): Technology, Environment, and Food ca. 1900-1985”, (PhD diss., Rudgers University, 2013), 266.

116

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

Table 2: General summary of threshing activity in the ON with the Ricefan threshers, 1982-1989

Campaign 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 /1983 /1984 /1985 /1986 /1987 /1988 /1989 1. Nb of threshers 8 38 158 174 387 433 443 2. Utilization (overage/thresher) 300 208 287 270 256 308 313 -Nb of hours of threshing 44 34 49 45 41 44 52 -Nb of days of threshing 6,8 6,1 5,9 6,1 6,2 7,0 6,2 -Nb of hours per day 3. Total amount of threshed 871 3,534 22,730 23,770 54,259 73,253 76,883 rice (tonne) 4. Total threshed area - - - - - 38,000 40,595 (ha) 5. Threshing capacity (aver/thresher) Capacity per hour (kg/hour) -Capacity per day (kg 362 450 501 510 548 556 555 /day) 2,5 2,7 3,0 3,1 3,5 3,9 3,3 -Capacity/campaign 109 933 144 137 140 169 174 (tonne/cpg.) - - - - 90 88 92 -Threshed area (ha/cpg.) Source: AON, unnumbered document, J.P. Heijboer, Mody Sow, and A.A. Wanders, Introduction et fabrication Locale de la Batteuse Votex Ricefan. Expérience á l'Office du Niger, Projet ARPON, Mali, Février 1990, p.4.

In transferring threshing activity and the organization thereof to the farmers’ level, the ON management and the ARPON project intended to create a real center of economic interest for women at the village level. This action, in the allocation of small threshing machines to the village associations and to the women's economic groups, was a very important step in the process of transferring more responsibility to the farmers as a whole384. Working together in the economic groups, women felt useful in postharvest activities, and some of them began to believe that they would not spend all their lives helping their husbands in the rice fields. They were certainly encouraged by the Dutch to think this way. Beginning with the introduction of the threshers, women contributed in a recognized way to the agricultural activites of their communities and women had more power than before. This was the first time they had had such a responsibility. However, in pursuing the empowerment of women, ARPON gave them

384 AON, unnumbered document, Point de la Coopération Néerlandaise á l'Office du Niger, Juin 1991, p. 3.

117

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON mechanical equipement only if the following criteria were met: agreement amongst the women on the use of the machinery and an agreement at the village level (the village association or “Ton villageois” 385 to support women farmers). ARPON wanted the small threshers to be the basis for organizing women, who could embrace other activities, such as hulling rice paddy, as their organisation developed.

However, in some cases threshing machines were delivered despite these criteria listed not having been met. Elsewhere in the ON, especially in the M'Béwani production zone, ARPON offered the women of 36 villages a malo gosi mazin (threshing machine). Although women in this zone were not yet organized into groups, a research center in the village of Sizanagara, on the road to the city of Bla, took receipt of a threshing machine386. The project leaders simply asked them to take the machine and work for their common interest. The female agricultural extension agent, Bintou Kani was in charge of delivering the machine and accompanying them in this small project387. In return, the women were initially expected to reimburse ARPON for the estimated seven hundred dollars cots of the thresher, but this requirement was dropped when the project later decided to make a gift of the machine.

4.3.2 Malo woro mazin: Women’s hulling machine

Women in most Sub-Saharan Africa countries rely on their income from rice and other crops to meet a variety of household and personal expenses. Both men and women have a distinct set of obligations to the household, as well as certain rights388. In the ON case, however, the situation of many women was marked until the beginning of the 1980s by their having no access to and no control of land, no stable income-generating activities, and especially an

385 The "Ton Villageois" were traditional self-help groups in rural Mali, though these associations had no official status at that time. They were based on solidarity, and mutual aid between the different members who composed them. 386 Interview by author with Fatouma Samaké, Oumou Diarra, and Yaya Cissé in M’Béwani Centre, April 11, 2017; Comments from Fatouma Samaké during interview by author with Mariam Touré in M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017; Interview by the author with Salimata Coulibaly, and Nafisatou Coulibaly in Kando, April 13, 2017. 387 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Markala, October 31, 2016; Comments from Bintou Kani during interview by author with Fatouma Samaké, Oumou Diarra, and Yaya Cissé in M’Béwani Centre, April 11, 2017. 388 International Rice Research Institut, Women in Rice Farming, IRRI, Gower, 1985, p. 430. See also Elke Grawert, Making a Living in Rural Sudan. Production of Women, Labour Migration of Men, and Policies for Peasants ‘Needs, (Basingstoke: Mac Millan Press, 1998); Denise Paulme, Women of Tropical Africa, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963); Margaret Snyder, “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990); Bilkisu Aboda Musa, “Women Participation in Agriculture: The Role and Impact of Agricultural Development Project (ADP) in Kogi State”, (MA diss., Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 2011).

118

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON enormous and poorly remunerated workload at home and in the fields of their husband. It was in order to remedy this situation and to help women to increase their income, as well as their productivity more generally, after the introduction of winnowing and small threshing machines that the ARPON project assisted the Rural Promotion Division (DPR) in setting-up several women's actions389. These actions included vegetable gardening, soap making, literacy, culinary demonstrations, maternal and child health, as well as the introduction of hulling machines. In other words, the actions of the Dutch project responded both to a form of feminist thought and to economic interests.

First introduced in the ON towards the end of 1984, the number of hulling machines has been steadily increasing since the 1990s390. The most widespread type of these machines in the zone was the "Engelberg" type391. The majority of these hulling machines in the ON (80% of the total) were owned by women's groups. These organizations held most of the machines and were particularly well represented in the zones of Niono and Kokry. Not all hulling machine were collectively owned, sometimes one person owned a machine by herself. Maa Diarra is a fifty- five-year-old woman who lives in Niono with her family. She husked and cultivated rice, because as a breadwinner, she needed an income to satisfy the nutritional needs of her family. At the end of the 1980s, Maa Diarra received a loan from the National Bank for Agricultural Development (BNDA) to purchase a hulling machine worth CFA 1, 300 000 (2, 236 USD), after which farmers (men and women) brought their paddy to her for husking. She husked 75 to 80 kilo sacks of paddy for CFA 750 (1, 29 USD) apiece, and after a year and a half, had recovered the money used to purchase the hulling machine 392 . Maa Diarra's successful rice husking business can be explained in part by a sharp increase in the production and consumption of rice in Mali.

Women who owned machine (either collectively or individually) practiced small scale agricultural activities such as rice cultivation, and sometimes vegetable gardening and the

389 The DPR, which was under the auspices of the ON Technical Department, was the structure in charge, with the support of the ARPON project, for the development and implementation of a policy for women. The recruitment of responsible female outreach personnel into the division during 1987 helped to strengthen the efforts made since 1984 by the Dutch development partners in this field. 390 The hulling machines were first introduced in the ON (specifically to the village association) in 1984, but it was only in 1988 that such machines were distributed to women's economic groups. 391 Jean F. Cruz, Transformation de Riz au Mali, (Niono: URDOC, 2001), 4. 392 Interview by author with Maa Diarra in Niono KL 23 Coro, April 04, 2017.

119

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON breeding of small animals such as poultry, goats and sheeps 393 . The term “small-scale agricultural activities” means not that women contributed only a small share of the work in their husband’s fields, but that, in terms of individual development, these activities did not allow women to earn an income adequate to help them to set-up their own income-generating activities. Most of them were family workers, that is, a family labor force that contributed to the income of the head of household, which left the women time to pursue small-scale agricultural activities mostly during seasonal breaks in processing activity. In the ON until the late 1980s a woman farmer and landowner were unimaginable394. During our interviews, Yaya Diarra and Fafré Diarra told me about women’s working and living conditions in the ON villages before the 1980s. According to them, women had no rights at all. Even their small vegetable gardens were grown either in the fields of their husbands or behind the courtyard of the house. The ease of maintaining the machines and their convenient storage in the village center of the owner’s concession made it easy for women to engage in these small-scale agricultural activities 395.

4.3.2.1 Management of hulling machines

Paddy processing activities in the ON took place from November to May for wintering rice and from July to October for off-season rice. However, there were a number of small enterprises, such as mills, that functioned almost year-round to meet the processing needs for self-consumption by local people396. In addition to hulling, threshing and winnowing machines, women in the villages, also often operate cereal mills. During field work in the villages of the Office du Niger I observed that most of the women's groups that had a hulling machine also had

393 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016. 394 Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016. These two former ON employees now retired, respectively the chief of a rural council, and a technical director of the ON, started work in the zone during the early 1970s. 395 Most of the small postharvest equipment (winnowing, threshing, and hulling machines) found during the field visits, was located in the owners' house or in a very attractive place within the village where one could easily see the machine. When we were scheduled for an interview, I found Maa Diarra sitting in front of her house door next to her hulling machine. I was not surprised, since the location was surely a way for her to advise to the population the presence and readiness of the machine. 396 For more information about mills in the Office du Niger, see AON, unnumbered document, S. Van der Berg, and Fatimata Coulibaly, Rapport d’Etude. Les Groupements d’Intérêt Economique des Femmes Autour des Décortiqueuses á l’Office du Niger. Une Evaluation de Trois Villages, Novembre 1991. Results of this study showed that most of the groups of women who claimed a hulling machine were also interested in mills. In addition to this, during our field visits we found mills used in most of the locations visited. The important point to note here is that the service was provided on a charge-per-unit basis by private owners or village cooperatives especially women's groups.

120

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON a mill. These mills were generally frequented by women who came to pound their families’ food ration. As for the aforementioned agricultural machines, mills were a need expressed by women who felt that this equipment could alleviate their milling workload and allow them time for other activities. Moreover, after equipping the women with hulling machines, it was necessary to consider how to counter the lack of knowledge pertaining to maintenance of the machines’ motors397, which had the potential to increase breakages and maintenance costs. To solve this, the ARPON project collaborated with the ON management to organize training for the engine- drivers. The authorities of these two structures understood that it was necessary to educate those responsible for the maintenance of the machines and engines as well as teach them how to manage the incomes generated by machines.

However, given the low level of women's education as well as some socio-cultural barriers at the grassroots level, the management of machines was generally carried out by men. At the beginning, ARPON asked the women to find in their village a young (male) mechanic they trusted. Considering that the ON had never given special attention to women's development and that the farmers’ culture made it difficult for women to develop themselves independently of men, the support of the latter for women's groups was seen as indispensable for the application and management of machines owned by women398. The young mechanics selected by the women were trained in the techniques of use and handling of the hulling machines. Each women group proposed a number of mechanics commensurate to the number of hullers it possessed. If the group had two hullers, it proposed two mechanics. At ND 2 Sangharéla in the N’Débougou sector, the women’s group Sabaly chose a young mechanic, about twenty years of age and resident in the village to drive the machine which ARPON provided them. The women also chose Aminata Traore and Binta Kouraïchi (president and vice-president of the group) to get involved in the management of the machine with the help of village female extension agent399.

397 Michel Havard, Conseil de Géstion aux Petites et Moyennes Entreprises de Décorticage de Riz auprés de l’Unité-Recherche Développement et Observatoire du Changement (URDOC). Rapport de Mission á Niono, Mali, (Niono: URDOC, 2003), 7; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 398 AON, unnumbered document, S. Van der Berg, and Fatimata Coulibaly, Rapport d’Etude. Les Groupements d’Intérêt Economique des Femmes Autour des Décortiqueuses á l’Office du Niger. Une Evaluation de Trois Villages, Novembre 1991, p.67. 399 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Nana Diarra N'Débougou, November 25, 2016.

121

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

The monthly check-up was usually held at the village chief’s home, to which all women were invited for a general report on recent developments and the state of business. This procedure also empowered women who participated to any degree in the management of their machines alongside the driver and the instructor to compulsorily collect information to report to the rest of the group. Within the team that managed the hulling machine (engine-driver, and female extension agent), only two women regularly followed the work done by the group’s machine. These two women were chosen by the women's economic group as a whole. In most cases, they were selected from among those who held formal office within the group: president, vice-president or assistant president, treasurer, assistant treasurer, and so on400. The majority of the group, who did not participate in the management or operation of the machine, could still, and often did claim a proper account from the management team. The problem for women was that, due to lack of education, they were not trusted to manage the machinery themselves.

It was noted by some interviewees individual hulling machines owners did not face this problem. With no monthly check-up and no one report to, individual owners tended to forego record keeping, even though the installation of the machine in the concession gave family, members aright to see the records in case the owner was absent. In some cases, it was the adult children or the husband of the owner who managed the work of the hulling machine, establishing a climate of confidence which made of the machine a family good. According to Maa Diarra, found sitting in front of her house door in Niono, the hulling machine she owned was a good for all her family. "Everyone in the house managed very well the work of the machine especially my husband during my absence". The spouse of this first woman to privately own a huller in part of the zone, forced to take care of the machine during her absence, and to help her when she was present, became an expert at managing this machine. When she was absent, she could always be sure that her husband would manage her machine401. Maa Diarra’s statement tells us a little more about the changes that occurred in gender relations in the ON. Not only did women take on a degree of leadership, but men accepted this state of affairs in a society in which it had been very difficult for a woman, two or three decades back, to cultivate a rice field on her own account, much less to own a small rice hulling business with her husband as the help.

400 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Fatouma Samaké, Oumou Diarra, and Yaya Cissé in M’Béwani Centre, April 11. 401 Interview by author with Maa Diarra in Niono KL 23 Coro, April 04, 2017.

122

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

Despite the efforts of ARPON encouragement, did not every women’s group was able to find a suitable village mechanic. The shortage of available male managers prompted the idea of developing a system for the use of notebooks with a system of images was emitted, by means of which fewer literate persons could also keep records402. Using this method, the illiterate majority of women would be able to maintain a notebook and participate in the management of their small project. Their ability to master this method could increase their dignity, ultimately motivating these women to participate in literacy classes. Later in this chapter, it will be explained how ARPON, in collaboration with the ON management, supported women’s literacy.

4.3.2.2 The price of hulling service

The processing of the rice by hulling machines was done in the same manner as threshing. The customer brought his paddy in a bag or in large bowls and he would recover his white rice and the chaff at the end of the service. More than half of the women who owned these machines only accepted cash payments. The reason for this preference was the fact that this method of payment facilitated the expenses which the machine required for its operation (loan payments, purchase of diesel oil, purchase of spare parts, and so on)403. The other hulling machine owners accepted both cash payments and payments in kind, Maa Diarra who was one of these. According to her, the economic hardships of the times meant that not everyone possessed cash for the hulling services404.

Most women and male farmers could afford the price for hulling. It varied between $ 1 and $ 1.30 for a bag of paddy, which allowed customers to repay easily their monthly credit, forty-five dollars per month during the threshing period, and thirteen dollars per month during the off-peak period. The availability of credit enabled women in some of the ON villages to access hulling services. The women sold the rice thus hulled and refunded (without interest) a few days later405. These small hulling machines, thus, alleviated women's labor, provided them with some degree of income (after the period of credit repayment), provided them with a center of common economic interest, and fed a small informal trade (the sale of rice in local markets). Price

402 Ibid, p.63. 403 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 404 Interview by author with Maa Diarra in Niono KL 23 Coro, April 04, 2017. 405 AON, 615, Réhabilitation Casier N’Débougou. Etudes Avant-Projet Détaillé, Rapport Final, Août 1990, p.25; Interview by author with Rokia Malé in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017.

123

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON disparities could be explained by a number of factors such as competition between different owners (in Niono and Kokry), price increases in some zones, local availability of spare parts, and varying costs of transport.

4.3.3 Local production of equipment to accompany the introduction of technology

As part of its transfer of responsibility to the ON farmers, ARPON carried out a concerted approach of testing and introducing agricultural machinery. This strategy included the replacement of the hulling, winnowing, and threshing machines, used in the ON by smaller equipment the project considered more suitable to local conditions,406 the introducing of which would obviously create a demand for maintenance services and spare parts in most of the villages407. The ON villages have a very long blacksmithing tradition. Local smiths were seen having good potential to carry out repairs and production using scrap metal and a minimum of imported or new parts. Some blacksmith workshops were able to manufacture spare parts (ploughshares, plows pieces, heels, etc.) or even complete plows. However, the demands on the traditional artisans' services changed as the farmers acquired new technology and equipement. According to Ousmane Djiré, as the technology changed it was necessary not only to organize the blacksmiths but also to give them the means and conditions to modernize their workshops. It was these goals in mind that the ARPON project created the association of blacksmiths. The ARPON project also set up the Assembly Workshop of Agricultural Materials (AAMA) in order to promote the local manufacture of equipment. It became essential to make available to male and female farmers sufficient equipment to enable them carry out all the agricultural work: from animal-powered tillage to husking and threshing.

Several plants for the manufacture and assembly of equipment have been started in the past two decades in most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Their production catalogues cover a wide range of material, from tools for manual cultivation and equipment for animal traction to motorized equipement408. In the ON during the first half of the 1980s, the Action Forgerons409

406 AON, unnumbered document, B. Heringa, K. Zijderveld, and P. V. Blom, Mission d’Evaluation Bilatérale “Office du Niger”-Mali, Mai 1984, p.39. 407 Interview by author with Ousmane Djiré in Niono, November 18, 2016. Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016. For more information on how local blacksmiths’ work changed in Sub Saharan Africa, see Prabhu Pingali, et al., Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 130-131. 408 Prabhu Pingali, Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 131.

124

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON was followed by a support program for village blacksmiths. Initiated in 1982 with the installation of the first workshop at Niégué (KM 23) in the Niono sector, the blacksmiths’ network support program for the maintenance and manufacture of agricultural equipment in the ON zone involved every blacksmith in the zone410. To promote greater and more sustainable farmers autonomy, it was necessary to promote and expand the range of services to be provided to farmers by local blacksmiths. Beginning in 1984 an increasing number of village blacksmiths have participated in a program of support organized by the AAMA411.

In addition to repair and maintenance work, the local blacksmith also focussed on spare parts for small postharvest machinery and animal traction equipments. Between 1983 and 1987 large numbers of plows and harrows valued at 100 million CFA francs (174, 072, 694 USD) per year were produced by the AAMA and introduced among farmers by the ARPON program412. In 1988, dozens of workshops received a container of materials for storage and direct sale to farmers. These materials included a number of pieces of current equipment for soil preparation, as well as for the Ricefan threshers and the hulling machines. Then, in 1989, the AAMA began installing the first five mobile welding stations at blacksmiths' workshops, including accessories such as a drill and grinding wheels 413 . In the following table, production includes all the agricultural equipment for the preparation of the soil, transportation, and for the post-harvest activities. According to the mission carried out in December 1988 to evaluate ARPON actions in the ON, the facilities provided by the AAMA made it possible for the workshops to produce sufficient agricultural materials. The construction of a new assembly workshop as envisaged in

409 The “Action Forgerons” included: provision/sale of raw materials (scrap metal), practical training and technical follow-up from the AAMA and the mechanic sector, and step by step improvement and extension of blacksmiths’ tooling workshops as well as miscellaneous equipment. This structure allowed the blacksmiths,-with the assistance from Ousmane Djiré, responsible of the blacksmith action-to negotiate financing contracts at the level of the Village Development Fund (FDV) for the supply of raw materials, the purchase of tools, and additional equipment. Moreover, with the additional training (both technical and management/accounting) and intensive follow-up from the AAMA, it was expected that a heavy equipment would allow the selected blacksmiths to take over most of the revision of materials such as threshers. Interview by author with Ousmane Djiré in Niono, November 08, 2016; AON, unnumbered document, J.W. Dogger, and A.A. Wanders, Promotion Fabrication Locale Materiels Agricoles. Action Forgerons Région Office du Niger, Avril 1994, p.4. 410 AON, unnumbered document, Nyeta Conseil, CAFON (Coopérative Artisanale des Forgerons de l’Office du Niger). Prospéction de Nouveaux Débouchés pour les Matériels de la CAFON, Avril 2003, p.2. 411 AON, unnumbered document, J.P. Heijboer, Mody Sow, and A.A. Wanders, Introduction et fabrication Locale de la Batteuse Votex Ricefan. Expérience á l'Office du Niger, Projet ARPON, Mali, Février 1990, p.20. 412 AON, unnumbered document, J.W. Dogger, and A.A. Wanders, Promotion Fabrication Locale Matériels Agricoles. Action Forgerons Région Office du Niger, Avril 1994, p.2. 413 AON, unnumbered document, J.P. Heijboer, Mody Sow, and A.A. Wanders, Introduction et fabrication Locale de la Batteuse Votex Ricefan. Expérience á l'Office du Niger, Projet ARPON, Mali, Février 1990, p.20.

125

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON the operation plan was not necessary, storage rooms would be sufficient. The mission did, however, criticized the AAMA's financial management, which had not been finalized in this period. Although the production numbers are known, there was no clear contract or cost calculation. A calculation of cost estimates for one production unit carried out by the evaluative mission showed that most of the farm equipment was sold for less than the production price.

Table 3: Production of agricultural equipment by AAMA, 1983-1989.

Description 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1. Equipment of soil 1,225 1,250 1,500 1,500 preparation, and - - - - transport 910 800 1,000 1,000 1,100 - - -plows 350 - 200 - - - 20 -adaptation of plow 350 - 250 - 525 - - -harrows ------ox-dozer ------ox-scraper - - - - 12 29 20 -cone puddler - - - - 79 30 26 -grader bar ------1 -grader board - - - - 30 20 10 -hand weeder - - - - - 7 - -axial pump - - - - 85 327 181 -cart - - - -wheel - - 83 -seeder

Number of units 2,835 2,050 2,950 2,500 1,831 413 341 2.Postharvest equipement - - 138 227 60 20 75 -Ricefan Threshers - - - - 400 10 190 -Ricefan Winnowing - - - - - 25 61 machines -Votex hulling machines Number of units - - 138 227 460 55 326 Total number of units 2,835 2,050 3,088 2,727 2,291 468 667 Source: adapted by author from ON data, AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la Mission d’Evaluation de ARPON (Septembre 1990), Wageningen, Novembre 1990, p.40; AON, unnumbered document, J.W. Dogger, and A.A. Wanders, Promotion Fabrication Locale Matériels Agricoles. Action Forgerons Région Office du Niger, Avril 1994, p.2.

126

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

4.3.4 Women’s economic interest groups establishment

Since the establishment of the ON in 1932 by the French colonial administration, the zone’s management had attempted to organize farmers into cooperative associations. These cooperatives were called successively “indigenous agricultural associations” (1932-1942), “agricultural cooperative associations” (1958-1963), and “cooperative production units” (1963- 1982)414. According to some of the ON officials interviewed, through all these cooperative structures, the ON authorities wanted to empower farmers to take control of their own destinies and thus participate actively in the decision-making affecting the enterprise life as a whole. However, the results of this research lead me to believe that this was not the ‘real’ goal of the ON authorities. These authorities wanted to give up control over the farmers, but their underlying goal was for farmers to become more productive. In fact, they were aware that one of the conditions for good productivity was a degree of freedom for the farmers. The administrative practices of the 1960s and 1970s were no longer tenable in the 1980s. Because as observed by Dominique Gentil, more often cooperatives have been provoked by the central government to respond above all to its own interests415. So, it could be said that the relaxing of control over farmers was not something the authorities wanted, but was rather a necessary step towards achieving their actual goal. From independence until 1968, Mali was a socialist republic under the regime of Modibo Keita. The socialist government involved itself in planning the economy, and built an agricultural economy based on collectivism. In the ON, the government thus set up farmers' associations with the aim of improving farmers’ standard of living, methods of production, and to providing agricultural equipment416, although these ambitions remained in the realm of aspiration and remained unrealized.

Instead of being structures in which farmers (men and women) could control their interests, associations, under Keita’s regime, were the institutional instrument that allowed the administration to control the production sector. Through the associations, the government was

414 AON, 1032, La Dynamique de la Résponsabilisation Paysanne á l’Office du Niger. Le Point de la Situation en décembre 1987, décembre 1987, p.2; AON, 1091, Les Associations Villageoises á l’Office du Niger, Mars 1987, pp- 2-4; AON, 247/9, Historique du Mouvement Coopératif au Mali, Novembre 1980, pp.1-6. 415 Dominique Gentil, Les Mouvements Coopératifs en Afrique de L’Ouest, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1984), p.11. 416ANS, 122, Généralités Mali-Dossier République du Mali 1960 Coupures de Presse-Numéro Spécial de l’Essor Hebdomadaire, Organe de l’Union Soudanaise-RDA-Parti de la Fédération Africaine, no. 64 du 20 Juin 1960, “n.p.”; Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, (Wiesbaden: Steiner 1984, p. 88.

127

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON able to define, organize, and supervise entirety of production, the sale of merchandises, the supply necessary goods and equipment to farmers, the organization of credit, and the acquisition of machines417. The testimony of a couple of writers shows how farmers living and working conditions were the source of failure for these cooperatives. Amidu Magasa, in his book entitled "Papa Commandant a jeté un grand filet devant nous―les exploités des rives du Niger 1932- 1962" records moving testimonies on labor force―displacements and resettlement of farmers without notice in a new agricultural production system418. Meanwhile, in the preface to Emile Schreyger's book, “The Office of Niger in Mali, 1932-1982," Brunchwig Henry draws a lesson of history: "What will undoubtedly attract their attention is negligence, by the protagonists’ experience. The human factor ... and the use of coercion engendered the passivity of those to whom one wanted to impose the progress "419.

In 1987 with support from the Dutch who had already begun to develop small centers of economic interest by supplying postharvest machines to women, the former cooperative units were dissolved and each village of the ON was established as a village association420. However, in order to pursue the transfer of threshing, hulling and marketing activities to women, the ON management, in collaboration with its Dutch partners, thought it necessary to help theme set up groups economic interest groups. One has seen previously that ARPON required women to form organizations in order to receive postharvest machines. To have a better understanding of women's economic interest groups, it is important to first have a look at how older forms of women's organizations functioned in the context intensifying rice cultivation in the irrigated lands of the Office du Niger.

417 Ibid, p.91. In his book Schreyger takes a critical look at the farmers' associations which, at the colonial time, were only forms for the administration to use farmers as it wished. He writes: "the indigenous agricultural associations with its instructors constituted the instrument that controlled the whole sector of production. Because, the instructors, as employees of the colonization service of the ON, occupied with their extended powers a key position within the framework of the association. Due to the instructors who did not need to account for their actions to the association or to the farmers, the ON was able to exert influence on producers at all levels". 418 Amidu Magasa, Papa – commandant a jeté un grand filet devant nous. L’Office du Niger 1902-1962, (Hamdallaye Ségou: fondation Yeredon, 1999), 10-12. 419 Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984), VIII. 420 Ibid, p. 8.

128

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

4.3.4.1 Women's self-help associations

Prior to the introduction of hulling machines and small threshers in the ON villages there were traditional women's groups that organized feasts421. Each woman contributed to pay for the dresses, food and other feast expenses. These events were usually organized after the commercialization of the harvest422, because it was the money gained from the sale of the rice with which women arranged these feasts in order to have an occasion of relaxation and pleasure after the long hard days of work in the rice fields. Most of the female extension agents we met told us that, during the 1980s, women in the villages earned money by transplanting rice seedlings and with small-scale vegetable gardening. Then, after each agricultural campaign, they organized a feast during which they spent all their income buying clothes, food, and drinks. They never thought about investing this money in income-generating activities423.

These traditional women’s groups also organized collective working sessions. Transplanting rice seedlings was an especially widespread form of this collective work. With the rice intensification policy in the ON, transplanting rice seedlings has become an increasingly common practice since 1984 and has been spreading gradually since then424. Transplanting rice seedlings was introduced in 1984. In the beginning, this technique was not important in the villages of the ON, but each year saw an increase in the area given over to rice cultivation. For instance, in 1988 the increase in transplanting was 20%, the limiting factor being the lack of seed425. Nevertheless, with the effect of the off-season, of farmers' collaboration and of the impact of the Retail project, transplanting rice seedlings became the technique most used by the ON rice farmers.

421 AON, unnumbered document, S. Van der Berg, and Fatimata Coulibaly, Rapport d’Etude. Les Groupements d’Intérêt Economique des Femmes autour des Décortiqueuses á l’Office du Niger. Une Evaluation de Trois Villages, Novembre 1991, p. 25. 422 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 423 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Kadiatou Dembelé in N'Débougou, November 24, 2016. The female extension agents we met during the field research reported that after the celebration of the feast women farmers had no more money in the group’s caisse. 424 After a refusal by farmers to practice the technique of transplanting in the 1960s, it was reintroduced to the ON during the 1980s. The technique was then practiced first by the Younouss Sogoba family at kilometer 20 in the village of Nioumanké. It was the Retail project that drove the adoption of the practice of transplanting rice seedlings in the zones of the Office du Niger. Indeed, the French promoters of this project, allocated rehabilitated lands only to farmers who agreed to practice transplanting. As a result, the technique of transplanting spread to almost all the villages of the ON during by second half of the 1990s. Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016. 425 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Harmonisation des Systèmes de Mise en Valeur à l’Office du Niger, Août 1989, p.25.

129

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

With the increase of transplanting it became necessary to solicit a considerable number of laborers. The family workforce was the first to be mobilized for transplanting work, but, this labor pool was only in very rare cases sufficient to carry out all the necessary work within the constraints of the requirements of the agricultural calendar. Most of those who worked on farms for wages were non-resident farmers. Farmers employed solitary wage workers, small groups of young girls and boys, and especially large groups of women created following the development of intensive rice farming in the zone. Since the late 1980s, itinerant wage labor has declined to the benefit of dynamic and organized women's groups in every village426. It appears that these women’s groups came to dominate the rice transplanting sector of the economy because they took over these jobs themselves and cut the temporary imported laborers out. The plants these women’s groups transplanted grow the best. Through this activity women's groups earned a good amount of money427.

With the establishment of the UDPM (the ruling party from 1968 to 1991), traditional women's groups were transformed into women's political groups set-up by the female section of the party, the ULFM (Local Union of Women in Mali)428. The UDPM was founded by the CMLN military junta regime to provide it with political legitimacy. In September 1975, Moussa Traoré announced the formation of the party, with himself as general secretary. Upon the restoration of civilian rule in 1979, it became the only legal party in Mali until 1991. Although the UDPM, like the first ruling party after the country's independence, the Soudanese affiliate of the African Democratic Rally (US-RDA), had a women's section, it must be recognized that the interventions of this section with regard to the interests of women were limited more or less to the capital, Bamako. The development of rural women was not part of the party’s political project.

This female section of the single party had mainly a political role, spreading the doctrine of scientific socialism by transmitting the party's slogans and instructions429. Some went so far as to describe the UNFM as a single-party instrument for better asserting influence over people,

426 Interview by author with Mariam Diarra in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 427 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016. 428 AON, unnumbered document, S. Van der Berg, and Fatimata Coulibaly, Rapport d’Etude. Les Groupements d’Intérêt Economique des Femmes autour des Décortiqueuses à l’Office du Niger. Une Evaluation de Trois Villages, Novembre 1991, p. 25. 429 AMAEF, 69, Direction des Affaires Africaines et Malgaches, Mali 1975-1978, Luis de Guiringaud, Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres, Secrétariat Général, Décembre 1977, p.1.

130

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON especially women430. Woman needed to have a UNFM membership card of the UNFM in order to have a legal existence. There was no promotion without adhering to these party structures: this was the reality in Mali under single party by the UDPM. In almost every village, there was an office of the ULFM. The aim of the women’s section was to retain as members of the village ULFM office those women capable of playing a role in the mobilization of women. Thus, women's groups participated in elections and in contributing members to political committees. The office informed and assembled the women whenever needed431. As an institution aspiring to control society and all political activities, the ruling party wanted women involved in the political system, albeit as subjects rather than partners.

4.3.4.2 Organizing women into economic interest groups

Annette Correze, a consultant for the Institute for Research and Application of Development Methods (IRAM), oversaw a mission in January 1981 the results of which stressed the need to organize women around economic activities. The mission’s final report clearly deplored the attitude of the ON management which had excluded from its interventions women who played an important role in family life through the economic activities they developed and the role they played in food production432. During the 1980s it became obvious that without actions to improve their income, it would be difficult to mobilize their efforts. The call issued by the mission was heard by the promoters of the ARPON project, who consequently found it necessary to help women organize themselves officially. It was with the aim of encouraging such official organization that the project decided to promote the creation of a women's group as a prerequisite for obtaining a post-harvest machine433. The success of the hulling, winnowing and threshing activities of women's economic interests’ groups depended on their motivation and

430 ANM, Echo hebdo, édition hebdomadaire de Jamana, du vendredi 19 juin 2009, p.17. 431 Mamadou Doumbia, “Etude de l’Evolution du Rôle des Femmes dans les Exploitations Agricoles Familiales de l’Office du Niger” (MA Diss., Institut Polytéchnique Rural de Katibougou, 1989), 46. 432 AON, unnumbered document, L’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La Situation des Femmes, Janvier 1981, p10. 433 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la Mission d'Evaluation de ARPON (Septembre 1990), Wageningen Novembre 1990, p.49. As we already observed, according to this mission, ARPON allocated the post-harvest machines to the women of the villages provided that their groups were, technically and financially able to manage the machines. Subsequently, despite this condition hawse have seen that most of the machines of the women's groups were managed by a male mechanic and the female extension agents, because women the education and training to succeed in the former role.

131

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON organization, and the continuing assistance that would bring the ON management structures into contact with women434.

During the second half of the 1980s, the traditional women's rice transplanting groups were transformed into economic interest groups. In each group a management committee and a working team435 were set up with the support of the village associations, the DPR, and the ON’s female extension agents 436 . The members of the management committee and those of the working team were elected at a general assembly of village women. According to the female extension agent Bintou Kani, the purpose of holding this assembly was to uphold group interests and maintaining group harmony by avoiding the outbreak of factions437. In most of the villages the selection criteria for the members of the management committee were almost the same. These criteria were based on trust, patience, understanding, and availability. During field research, I found out that in addition to these criteria, the women's group of ND 2 Sangharéla insisted on having each illiterate committee and working team member be seconded by a literate person438.

Moreover, what struck us during the interviews was the fact that in many villages the women's economic groups did not act as “development leaders”. Most groups’ management committees were still composed of the founding members, and had not held an election to choose new members since their creation. There was a notable absence of new members who could fulfil the needs of the group in relation to the development aspirations promoted by the authorities of the ON in collaboration with their partners. The women gave the impression of aligning themselves behind the president of their group, who was usually an elderly person, and therefore worthy of respect in a society where age counts. These women were not very “dynamic” (with

434 AON, 755, K. Dioni, D. Dembelé, and M. J. Niesten, Rapport sur les Décortiqueuses dans Douze Villages du Secteur Kokry. Une Comparaison de Fonctionnement entre les Décortiqueuses GIEF et les Décortiqueuses Privées, Mai 1991, p.23. 435 This working team was composed by people who managed the hulling, threshing, winnowing machines and sometimes cereal mills. Furthermore, there were times when the members of the management committee belonged this team too, a situation that could be explained simply by the fact that, among the women's economic interests groups, there was a real problem of formal education. 436 AON, unnumbered document, S. Van der Berg, and Fatimata Coulibaly, Rapport d’Etude. Les Groupements d’Intérêt Economique des Femmes autour des Décortiqueuses á l’Office du Niger. Une Evaluation de Trois Villages, Novembre 1991, p.27; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 437Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 438 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017.

132

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON the exception of Fatouma Samaké, the president of the women’s group of M’Béwani, Yérédémé, who seemed to be well aware of the challenges of rural development, despite her age), but they continued to occupy their place largely because of their age.

Women's economic interest groupings received their receipts with the hope that this might give them some support in the future, but, it seemed that their mastery of the approach and value of this paper was not very well-developed. One found out that the management of these groups concentrated mainly on agricultural technical advice and statistical monitoring (areas planted and, cultivated) and much less on the strengthening of the organization and the capacities of the members (and especially of leaders) to make the groups real motors of self-promotion439. Interest in a alleviating women’s work and time commitments had prevailed over the economic interest. After three to four years of commitment with postharvest machines, women also had to face increase competition from men, entrepreneurs and traders who massively penetrated the market with the increase of rice production in the zones of the ON440. In this context, the subject of “literacy” in the ON, as well as training to improve the functioning of these women's economic interest groups, as they were approached during the 1908s, is very important.

4.3.5 The way forward: introducing training and literacy to promote women’s farming skills In spite of the Addis Ababa recommendation that primary education should be available to all African children by 1980, the expansion of primary education was not given top priority in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Mali441. The country today ranks high amongst countries with the poorest access to primary and secondary education. According to UNESCO and World Education data, the education landscape in this country presents many challenges: the second lowest youth literacy rate at just below 25%; low female school participation rates; a shortage of trained teachers; and the third a low illiteracy rate (82% amongst women)442. Given what one knows about the relation between women's level of education and their awareness of

439 Ibid, p.21. 440 AON, unnumbered document, A. Lambert, and Diénéba Diarra, Mission d’Appui pour la prise en compte des Groupements féminins au sein des CPS, Novembre 2000, p.6; AON, 756, K. Cissé, M. Thiero, and M. J. Niesten, Rapport sur les Décortiqueuses dans Sept Villages du Secteur de Niono. Une Comparaison de Fonctionnement entre les Décortiqueuses GIEF et les Décortiqueuses Privées, Mars 1991, p.23; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Yaya Diarra Ségou, November 08, 2016. 441 UNESCO, Prospects in Education. A quarterly bulletin, 1969, p.13. 442 World Education Mali, Improving the Quality and Equity of Education in Mali, Bamako Mali, “Document XY, not dated”, p.1.

133

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON development problems and understanding of the world in which they live, one could conclude that a major transformation in rural women's status would have occurred if they were more literate.

Everywhere in the world adult education is of great importance, especially in rural areas443. This is significant in, Mali where female participation in education is extremely low, and where disparities between females and males vary greatly between regions. In rural Mali, girls are generally not enrolled. There were two main reasons for non-enrollment: first, the assumption that school had a negative impact on the education of children and especially that of girls, second, girls were expected to marry at the age of 15 or 16, so school was not necessary for them444. Thus, in the eyes of the critics, the negative effects of schooling were that girls became less subservient and more independent. This attitude on the part of the population was so prevalent that even in urban areas some family heads had the same reservations as their counterparts in the countryside. As a result, a very small percentage of girls were enrolled in school. It should be added that the role-models available for girls and the shortage of secondary schools increased the chances of girls leaving school early than the zone’s development partners would have liked. Girls who wanted a higher education had to leave their villages to get it. Many women told me about their desire to see their daughters be educated, but that they could not afford for them to continue their studies in other cities where secondary schools existed.

In this general atmosphere, it is not surprising that in the ON the level of education was very deficient. In 1954 there were 133 schoolchildren, 114 of whom were children of settlers, attending classes at Kokry, and 163 schoolchildren at Niono445. In 1960, the enrollment rate was only 10%, meaning that of the 5510 children of school age only 551 possibility worth expanding on446. Irregular and non-attendance meant that not even all enrolled students actually received the

443 Margaret Snyder, “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 19. 443 World Bank Group, Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015. Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity, (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2015), 10. 444 AON, unnumbered document, Moussa L. Sidibé, Les Femmes Chefs de File dans le Secteur Agricole au Mali, Avril 1990, p.3. Also, during the colonial era, many illiterate parents were offended by the demoralization of their children and held the administrators more or less responsible. Many preferred to keep their children in the Koranic schools, which they saw as the only way to maintain their cultural and social values. 445 Dominique Zahan, L’Office du Niger, un exemple historique de coopération franco-africaine, (Strasbourg: Centre Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Européennes, 1962), 36. See also Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, Wiesbaden 1984, pp.204-205. 446 Emil Schreyger, L'Office du Niger au Mali: la problématique d'une grande entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel, (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984), 205.

134

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON education for which they were eligible447. Additionally, in this region where everyone lived and depended on agriculture, it is not surprising that it was difficult for girls to access education. Indeed, data showed that economic reality often required that girls help in the fields, gather fuelwood and carry water. Very often they were kept out of school to help their mothers448. As a result, many of them dropped out of primary without attending secondary school, as is still frequently the case today.

In the early 1980s, rural development policy in the ON was marked by the relaunch of the cooperative movement, specifically of women's groups, by the zone’s management with Dutch assistance. This policy demanded a literacy program throughout the zone. According to Anette Correze’s mission, the relaunch of the cooperative movement and the transfer of certain activities to farmers in the Office du Niger needed to be accompanied by a vast literacy and awareness program so that each farmer could seize all the advantage he or she could draw from good cooperative organization and management449. In other words, the ON management and their Dutch development partners were particularly interested in literacy as a prerequisite for the transfer of competence to farmers450. In the same year as the Correze’s mission, the search for solutions to the issue of rural-to-urban migration in the ON zone suggested, among other things, a literacy program. Local authorities and development partners expected that many literate young people would choose to remain in the villages, since they would understand the role they had to play in society and in ensuring their relatives’ place451.

447 The natural conditions, moreover, did not lend themselves well to the establishment of schools. The settlement villages had, on average, only 300 inhabitants, and they were scattered. This settlement pattern had the advantage of bringing the farmer closer to his place of work, but made education difficult and costly, and undermined the individual social evolution. 448 AON, unnumbered document, Résultat par Villages. Etudes-Diagnostic des Activités Féminines. Secteur Niono, “Document XY, not dated (1987)”, p.23; AON, unnumbered document, M. Doumbia, Etude de l’Evolution du Rôle des Femmes dans les Exploitations Agricoles Familiales de l’Office du Niger, Institut Polytéchnique Rural, Katibougou, Mémoire de fin de cycle, Décembre 1989, pp.15-20; Interview by author with Diénéba Tangara B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017; Interview by author with Ba Lamine in B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017. Young girls and married women participated in working the fields of heads of households (plowing, manual winnowing, hand threshing, and collecting). Some young girls also helped their mothers cook. In addition to fieldwork and household occupations, young girls and married women practiced vegetable gardening. 449 AON, 247/4, Quelques Obsérvations sur le Rapport de Mme Correze Intitulé “L’Organisation Colléctive des Paysans. La Situation des Femmes”, Mai 1981, p.4. 450 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Encadrement á l’Office du Niger. Evolution et Pérspéctives, Février 1984, p.16. 451 AON, 247/27, Le Chèf de Division Paysannat et Coopération, Victor Douyon, Notes sur l’Exode Rural dans la Zone de l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1981, p.4.

135

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

4.3.5.1 Women farmers’ training

In 1989, the Agricultural Training Center (CFA) trained 524 farmers, of whom 381 took part in a one-day semi-modular system. Given that there were around 10,000 farmers in the ON at the time, these numbers were not impressive. Worse, comparing the training days, the supervisory staff was privileged (4,070 days against 3,360 days for farmers)452. The most striking fact, however, is that the center did not succeed in training women farmers. This shortcoming is attributable to the fact that CFA training center programs took place not in the ON villages, but in towns, such as Niono, which women were, for cultural reasons, reluctant to visit. Others who may have been interested in participating in the training were not given permission to do so by their husbands453.

Men's unwillingness to support women’s training meant that it was necessary for program organizers to launch an awareness-raising campaign for men on this topic. ARPON’s most important achievement was to overcome these roadblocks by helping the ON management recruit women to go into the villages to provide the local women with the training necessary for their empowerment (in the following chapter we will discuss further the conditions under which these female extension agents were established in the ON villages). In order to teach village women cultivation techniques, the ON management organized training sessions delivered by the female extension agents who had earlier proven their w effectiveness by training women farmers how to transplant of rice seedlings454. In 1983, the ON had begun moving away rice cultivation based on direct seeding to transplanting. For women to master this practice, female extension agents showed them, among other essential skills, how to space the plants and how many plants should be placed within each hole. This program was essential to village women’s eventual emergence as the most successful and efficient transplanters, as we saw in the previous pages.

452 Ibid, p.66. 453 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. According to most of the interviewees, previously husbands did not allow their wives to leave the village or go to Niono for training and meet other men there. It was with the arrival of female extension agents who went to the villages that women began to really be trained in techniques specific to certain crops such as potatoes, onions, peppers and so on. 454 Interview by author with Aminata Yacouba Touré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016; Interview by author with Kadiatou Dembelé in N'Débougou, November 24, 2016.

136

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

For better management of hulling machines, some women were trained in this skill, too. Typically, the drivers of the hulling machines were mostly young men chosen by the leaders of the women's economic interests’ groups and trained to conduct and maintain the machines through the CFA by Assembly Workshop of Agricultural Materials (AAMA) technicians. The women managers of such machines, meanwhile, were typically trained by the female extension agents in methods of calculation and the keeping of the daily workbooks. Monitoring of this activity at the village level was carried out by the same female extension agents. Almost all the female extension agents testified to the interest of the women farmers in all these activities that were addressed to them. It has to be emphasized, through that the timetables of agricultural activities, did not allow the women to attend the training programs provided by female extension agents as the latter would like455.

4.3.5.2 Functional literacy for women farmers

During the World Conference of Ministers of Education on the Eradiction of Illiteracy held in Teheran from 8 to 19 September, 1965, it became clear that the impact of traditional literacy campaigns on economic development was insufficient and a new approach had to be found which would simultaneously diminish illiteracy and enhance economic development456. It became evident during the conference that experimental approaches which would meet the concept of functional literacy as laid down by the Teheran Conference needed to be developed in the so-called developping countries, especially in the rural areas. The new approach was to link literacy with the vocation of the participants and as far as possible to integrate theory with practice. In this discussion of adult education, some of scholars focus on functional literacy and women’s education to give a more rational definition of the concept. Claudia Fonseca, for instance, argues that the functional literacy program consisted in the dissemination of information and teaching of skills, through classes or practical activities, that would be useful to those concerned457.

455 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui “Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.10; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Coulibaly in Molodo centre, November 24, 2016. 456 Rita Wiesinger, “Economic Development and Functional Literacy for Women: A Pilot Project in Iran”, Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 19, no. 1 (1986): 96. 457 Claudia Fonseca, “Functional literacy for village women: an experiment in Upper Volta”, Prospect 5, no. 3 (September 1975): 382.

137

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

Literacy programs, especially in rural areas, are for people who, for the most part, have problems meeting many survival requirements: producing food, seeking income, coping with family and social obligations. In this precise context, literacy will only be pursued if it offers an answer to these different problems458. Unfortunately, according to a study conducted in 1980 in the ON, literacy educators too often take a mechanistic approach centered on the ability to perform set specific tasks, forgetting that the real underlying motivation for literacy is the search for solutions to these survival issues. For this reason, "classical" literacy education methods would prove ineffective in the ON. Nevertheless, once the basic mechanisms were acquired, it was important in the ON case to focus literacy on the problems of the cooperative, and the (information, and management) documents necessary for all to participate in its operation459. In the ON, the implementation of cooperative actions, especially the women’s economic interest groups, was therefore accompanied by a progressive development of literacy.

Efforts to achieve functional literacy mainly targeted women in the ON villages and were characterized by the learning of the Bambara alphabet and basic numeracy. In some villages, such as Molodo Bamana, and Bagadadji, women’s literacy was an added precondition for acquisition of a hulling machine460. Literacy was seen as necessary for managers and work teams to understanding the functioning of the hulling machines during training. The report of the Mission d'Appui "Femme et Developpement" á l'Office du Niger stressed that women's literacy should be considered as one of the necessary components of the hulling machine action and that it should be part of the accompanying actions intended to improve the management capacity of the concerned groups. It was taken for granted that women who stood to be liberated from the work of hand hulling would see the need for proper hulling machine management, and thus would be motivated to take literacy courses.

Functional literacy benefited from a revival of interest in the ON with the creation of village associations, in particular the women's economic interest groups. The ARPON project contributed greatly to the realization of this program. In addition to travel funds for the six

458 AON, unnumbered document, L’Organisation Collective des Paysans. La Situation des Femmes, 1980, p.24. 459Ibid, p.24. 460 AON, unnumbered document, S. Van der Berg, and Fatimata Coulibaly, Rapport d’Etude. Les Groupements d’Intérêt Economique des Femmes autour des Décortiqueuses á l’Office du Niger. Une Evaluation de Trois Villages, Novembre 1991, p.26.

138

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

Functional Literacy Zone (ZAF) heads461, incentive allowances, and funding for the training of moniteurs and female extension agents to train the villagers, ARPON built up literacy rooms for men and women. The number of literacy rooms for women increased from 12 in 1986/87 to 23 in 1987/88 and 33 in 1988/89 462 . In addition, ARPON supported the program by supplying blackboards, booklets, pencils, lamps, and other materials for the construction of rooms in the villages. Like ARPON, the DPR also strongly supported functional literacy. The DPR began its work on women's literacy following the introduction of hulling machines to women's economic interest groups. Since then, it trained roughly eighty village female extension officers463 to act as literacy educators for other village women. These female extension agents were very often young unmarried women, with some formal education464. The ON management and ARPON goal pf having one néo-alphabète465 per family required a number of staff capable of training very large number of students. The DPR, by linking functional literacy to the management of hulling machines, motivated women to learn by showing them an immediate use for the education on offer. Indeed, literacy made it easy to teach women who participated in the management of such machines how to keep records of management, operation, stock, supply, and so on.

However, factors such as lack of motivation, and time on the part of women, and the resistance of some husbands undercut efforts to facilitate the organization of intensive learning sessions for women farmers466. Thus, the results of the functional literacy action in the ON zones were bound to be unimpressive and unlikely to improve for a long time. Well after the intervention of the Dutch in the area through the ARPON project, the ON authorities almost no

461 The ZAFs were established to assist in the implementation of the ON literacy Program. For the five production zones, there were a total of six ZAFs under the Ministry of National Education. The head of the regional ZAF trained village female extension agents as well as female extension agents of the zones. The DNAFLA ((National Direction of Functional Literacy and Applied Linguistics) brochures and the technical sheets relating to harvesting activities transferred to women (threshing, hulling, and so on) served as supports. 462 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui “Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.9. 463 For the literacy program in the ON zones, two groups of village female extension agents were recruited. The first group included the male extension agents who addressed themselves mainly to men, and the female animators of the villages who were trained by the female extension agents of zones, i.e. those of the ON, to teach the women farmers. 464 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la Mission d'Evaluation de ARPON (Septembre 1990), November 1990, p.51. 465 In the context of the Office du Niger, the néo-alphabète is defined as a person who is able to read, write, and calculate in Bamana language. 466 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, November 08, 2016; AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui “Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.10; AON, unnumbered document, Termes de Références pour la Mission d’Appui “Femme et Développement”. Programme ARPON-Mali, “Document XY, not dated”, p.40.

139

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON longer provided literacy sessions for women in the villages. Economic and financial constraints were factors that could explain this kind of situation. I share the argument by Meg Huby and Stuart Stevenson that, the withdrawal of donors funding can cause difficulties related to the continuity467. During the field visit there were almost no literacy classes in the villages, even though the majority of women farmers interviewed expressed their wish to see local literacy courses continue468. The table below shows the number of néo-alphabètes and the percentage of literate men and women in the ON villages during the period 1987-1990. The table shows that the number of literate women was much lower than that of men, and that the total number of literate men and women remained low. In conclusion, the goal of having one néo-alphabète per family was far from being achieved during this period.

Table 4: Number of trained néo-alphabètes in the Office du Niger, 1987-90.

Campaign Campaign Campaign Total Percentage 87/88 88/89 89/90 population literates Sector Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women Kokry 129 1 136 1 65 13 5123 5549 6.4 0.3 Kolongo 195 - 46 13 53 8 412 4779 6.6 0.4 Niono 74 8 93 21 32 22 509 3802 5.6 1.3 Sahel 187 21 223 22 35 2 020 3272 14.7 1.3 Molodo 255 17 167 14 ? ? 690 5080 8.9 0.6 N’Déb. 122 - 202 15 25 25 696 7255 6.8 0.5 Kourou 100 8 193 9 5 5 955 4285 9.1 0.5 mari Dogofiry 252 18 251 48 9 9 340 3618 18.9 2.0 Total 1314 73 331 143 18 94 Source: AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la Mission d'Evaluation de ARPON (Septembre 1990), November 1990, p.52. The percentage in the last column is derived from the total of the first three columns, divided by the total number of men or women.

467 Meg Huby and Stuart Stevenson, “Meeting need and achieving sustainability in water project interventions”, Progress in Development Studies 3, no. 3, (2003): 197. 468 Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016; Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017.

140

Chapter 4: Women and Rural Development Programs in ON

4.4 Conclusion In the 1970s, the very difficult conditions prevailing in the ON forced many farmers to return to their villages of origin while those who stayed were looking for ways to escape the various barriers imposed by the authorities (economy police, guards, etc.). It was in this context that the Dutch decided to support the Malian government in its policy of rehabilitating the irrigated land of the ON. Concerns about population growth and decline were one of the main issues motivating this intervention. To satisfy the work force requirement in the ON, it was enabling women to have more children by improving them. These internal concerns, coinciding with the influence of the United Nations Women and Development Decade, meant that a women’s policy was markedly important to the Dutch intervention.

Due to the granting of postharvest machines by the ARPON project, village women developed activities that could not only bring them a little income, but also alleviate their daily tasks. In addition to hulling, threshing and winnowing machines, women in the villages also benefited from of cereal mills which could alleviate their milling work and allow them time for other activities. ARPON's strengths were its flexibility, its spirit of innovation, and its emphasis on the training and organization of farmers, especially women farmers. In order to ensure the effective participation of women in the management of their post-harvest activities, the establishment of economic interests’ groups was accelerated and training and functional literacy for their members promoted.

The Dutch episode greatly contributed to changing the role of ON women in their community’s development process. Women began to be involved in the project as they received plots to develop vegetable gardening, and rice growing, for the first time in ON history women became landowners. In groups or individually, it was also the first time they developed postharvest activities supported by purposed-built machines. A new era of change was opening up to these women and they were highly motivated to take advantage of everything that could help them move forward. They would not hesitate to work with the female extension agents recruited first by the Dutch and then by the ON management to accompany them in their agricultural activities.

141

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

5.0 Women entry into extension services in the Office du Niger: the “Mousso ladilibaka”, 1983-2010.

5.1 Introduction

In this chapter the researcher endeavor to analyze the work done by the ON female extension workers in the context of a policy in favoring the emancipation of women in general and of rural women in particular. In the ON villages, where women not only did more of the labor than men in-rice, cotton and vegetable farming, but increasingly made production decisions pertinent to these activities, extension information was only disseminated by male extension officers to male farmers. Like what was happening elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa countries, many interviewees, male and female farmers, ON officials and female extension officers, said that female farmers were less likely to receive extension service or to access quality services than were their male counterparts in the zone. Agricultural extension agents only visited men, as custom often restrained or reduced communication across genders lines, and men who were the only landowners did not bring information home to their wives469. During the 1978/79 cropping season, as part of the policy of intensifying rice cultivation in the zone, extension services focused on levee construction, use of selected seeds, seeding in line, weeding and fertilization470.

As part of this agricultural extension process, extension agents were trained by the Niono Agricultural Training Center (CFA), with only one agent supposed to be assigned in each 150 farmers471. In the first half of the 1980s, when the Dutch, decided to introduce women into extension services in order to reach more female farmers as part of the ON rehabilitation project, this center became their driving force for training and agricultural knowledge transfer. The CFA benefited from the help of the Agricultural Machinery Division (DMA), which was subordinate to the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Division of Rural Promotion (DPR)472. The extension

469 Jean M. Due et al., “Gender-Views of Female Agricultural Extension Officers by Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania”, World Development 25, no. 5 (May 1997): 714; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré, in Ségou, October 26, 2016. 470 AON, 234/5 bis, Plan Redréssement Progréssif Production Rizicole, “Document XY, not dated”, p.1. 471 Ibid, p.2; AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'encadrement á l'Office du Niger, Evolution et Pérspéctives, Février 1984, p.9. 472 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui “Femme et Développement” á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8.

142

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON services provided by mousso ladilibaka, female agricultural extension officers in the ON473, were closely tied to adoption and improved seed and fertilizer for both female and male farmers, even if it must be highlighted that their work was mainly directed towards women. In addition to these agricultural concerns, education, health, nutrition, and a few other mineurs topics, completed the list of actions undertaken by female extension personnel.

The discussion focus in this chapter is, therefore, on the dissemination of knowledge pertaining to agricultural and farm management as well as to non-farm activities such as health, business management, home living conditions and nutrition (i.e. for female farmers, their children, and their family members). In the view of one of the most important ON partners at the time, the Dutch ARPON project, it would be better if extension services were more available to women in order to increase their productivity474. Many village farmers did not want their wives to participate in meetings or other activities involving male extension agents, thus depriving them of advice and training. The introduction of women into extension services helped female farmers improve their agricultural productivity and increase their incomes, as argue by Jock R. Anderson and Gershon Feder475, but it also highlighted the need for development decision- makers to close the gender gap in productivity and access to extension services throughout the ON villages. It should be highlighted here that, in addition to the ARPON project, the Research- Development Unit and Observatory of Change (URDOC) was a significant actor in the ON agricultural extension policy, especially in the early 2000s. URDOC was active in the zone as part of the French project, Retail. Its commitment in the Niono production zone in 1994 before spreading to all other ON’s zones.

In the Office du Niger, agricultural extension is as old as the irrigation scheme itself. Since the zone’s creation in the 1930s, farmers assisted one another with ideas to increase output, and colonial officials considered extension services to achieving agricultural development,

473 This Bambara name highlights the advising aspect and relates to the work that female extension officers were doing with women in the ON villages. It was, among other things, a duty characterized by sensitization, accompaniment and providing support to these women. According to Yaya Diarra, agronomist and former head of the ON’s Rural Council, the female extension officers were contact persons that women farmers could consult at any time for rural advisory support. 474 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré, in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Bené Traoré, in Ségou, November 06, 2016. 475 Jock R. Anderson, and Gershon Feder, “Rural Extension Services, Agriculture and Rural Development Department”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2976, (February 2003): 3.

143

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON poverty reduction, and food security. In the first half of the nineteenth century a new developmentalist approach emerged among colonialism’s defenders and ideologists. The main idea was that African peasants were ‘backward’, and unable to help themselves476. Very focused on taking what they could from African resources, Europeans colonial officials held the view that African should be supported and helped by civilized and developed European peoples. As observed by Corinna Unger, development thinkers in the colonial era felt the need to intervene for religious reasons or because they felt that they, as members of a supposedly superior society or race, had a civilizing mission that involved changing the lives of others477. This is also what Monica van Beusekom called the interwar ideal of “mutual development”478. However, in the late twentieth century the arguments and the rhetoric of this rural development approach had changed from their origin justifying European empire building.

As Monica van Beusekom has argued, in the late nineteenth century most colonial administrators saw Africans as capable of evolving a higher level if they followed in Europe's footsteps. According to van Beusekom, nowhere in French Soudan was this believe more evident than in the Office du Niger, where farmers and project, colonial, and metropolitan officials had struggled over the terms and conditions of development since the mid-1920s479. Significantly, in the case of the ON, is that the application of the mutual development model in the zone gave the French colonizers a greater involvement in local development by ensuring a transfer of knowledge and technology in the service of local development. In line with this, the ON Colonization Service staff was supposed to providing professional training to native farmers, teach them how to feed, train and care of draft animals, and instruct them in the use of farming tools and rational methods of land and livestock farming480.

For instance during the postcolonial period, especially in the 1970s, the extension sector was involved in the popularization of improved farming techniques, and disseminating standards and methods for the adoption of these techniques as well as supervision and monitoring of the ON's crop production farms, forth to name just a few areas of responsibility. Although different

476 Corinna R. Unger, International Development. A Postwar History, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 24. 477 Ibid., 24. 478 Monica Van Beusekom, Negotiating Development. African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920-1960, (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), xxii. See also Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society. The Labor Question in French and British Africa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 32. 479 Ibid., xxvi. 480 AON, 33/2, Organisation de l’Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated”, p.10.

144

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON groups of people provided these agricultural extension services (French and then Malian), the content of the arguments and speeches made during the colonial and postcolonial periods was apparently the same ; increasing in agricultural production was the main purpose during both. As Jock Anderson and Gershon Feder have argued, the goals of these extension services were the transferring of knowledge from researchers to farmers, advising farmers on how to make better decisions, and enabling farmers to stimulate desirable agricultural developments481. However, in the ON there was a gender-determined difference in access to rural services, including agricultural extension. There were two main factors found to significantly affect women's access to extension services. The first was the proportion of males in the household relative to land size and livestock numbers, which affected women’ workload as part of the family workforce. The second was social prejudices, for instance, distinctions between the sexes which began at birth and increased with maturity.

In response to these gender barriers, female extension agents were hired in the ON zone for the first time to reach female farmers and to work closely with them in the field, persuading them to take up new practices and encouraging initiative482. It was the Dutch who for the first time, during the first half of the 1980s, hired young women with a Basic Studies Diploma (DEF), most of whom were graduates of the Samanko Agricultural Learning Center483. This learning center had existed in Samanko well before the Dutch arrival in the ON zone. These female extension officers were assigned to take care of agricultural extension by organizing regular village visitation circuit. According to most of our interviewees, these visits were the genesis of that many small-scale activities such as the storage and processing of produce (shallots, tomatoes, and garlic, to name just a few), small animal husbandry the purchase of rice hullers, and the granting of threshers to women's groups484.

Perhaps, the Dutch understood that setting up must needed programs to reach both female and male farmers with quality extension services would lessen women’s persistent

481 Jock R. Anderson, and Gershon Feder, “Rural Extension Services, Agriculture and Rural Development Department”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2976, (February 2003): 2. 482 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'encadrement á l'Office du Niger, Evolution et Pérspéctives, Février 1984, p.8. 483 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8. 484 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Marie Odile Dougnon, October 27, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017.

145

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON disadvantage in accessing productive resources and input. As argued by G.A. Truitt, evidence suggests that projects employing agricultural extension officers that do not utilize female agents reach fewer women and have a negative impact not just on women's participation, but also on the sustainability of the project as a whole485. In the ON zone, the introduction of women into extension services was also a means of assisting female farmers in their income-generating activities with the small, collectively-owned hulling and threshing machines, as well as soap making, weaving, and vegetable storage. This major expansion in extension services provided in the ON zone adapted, against the backdrop of structural adjustment, the general extension practices template to fit Malian political and economic goals.

When and how did female extension officers begin working with women farmers in the ON ? How did actions related to the agricultural extension policy further the emancipation of women in the ON? Did men and women have the same opportunities ? From a historical point of view, it is important to analyze whether women's situation with regard to extension services changed over time. In other words, was there, between 1983 and 2010, any differences in the way extension programs were run by the ON management or international organizations or in how women positioned themselves with regard to them? Did the ON management understand women’s problems better over time, and did it correspondingly change the extension services programs as to make them more accessible to ON women? Or did these women become more self-confident or economically aware and start demanding programs which would better take their needs into account? How effective has female extension work been and what impact has it had?

5.2 The beginning of female extension officers’ work in the Office du Niger

Agricultural extension is one of the most important components of any grassroots development process: when it conforms to farmers' demands, it develops their capacity to self- sustain and take charge on many initiatives. But as observed by Jean-Marc Ela, in order to reach this stage, farmers have to participate themselves in the process of change and innovation necessary for the improvement of their living conditions486. The ON, with its Dutch partners,

485 G.A. Truitt, “Female agricultural extension agents in El Salvador and Honduras: do they have an impact?” Economic and Social Development Series, no.55, (1998): 64. 486 Jean-Marc Ela, L’Afrique des villages, (Paris: Karthala, 1982), 174.

146

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON provided important development, research, and extension efforts suited to the zone’s emphaze on rice cultivation. The Agricultural Training Center (CFA), created in 1981 by the Dutch, was the main tool of the ON management in this field. It was open to all requests from farmers that would help them increase their self-sufficiency, and became in 1988 became a multi-functional Training Center (CF) and service provider487. However, because male extension officers and agricultural advisors were more accessible to male than to female farmers due to custom and some husbands’ objections, the women would be unable to improve their economic prospects if new provisions were not considered as soon as possible488. In the light of demands from the international community for the participation of communities, and especially of women, in the development process, the ARPON project, which already had considerable resources such as technical and supervisory staff and, training infrastructures, decided in 1983 to hire female extension officers in order to increase agricultural production. These female officers would be in charge of advising, supporting, and monitoring women farmers in the ON villages. What, then really motivated the Dutch to plan to hire women into the ON's extension service during the first half of the 1980s?

5.2.1 Gender differences in access to extension services and the need to hiring women as extension officers

In the ON irrigation scheme, there was a clear difference between female and male farmers in terms of access to male extension agents’ visits and advice, as well as other channels of information such as exchange meetings between the enterprise supervision and farmers organized by the ON management. Male farmers were more likely to attend community meetings and visit demonstration plots for two main reasons. First, women were not rice plot owners, while the gardening they practiced at the time (until 1984) was not yet considered by the ON authorities to be a crop that was an integral part of farmers' agricultural calendar. So, these women were less likely to be users of productive technology such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs. Thus, the difference in terms of access to resources (such as land), and education, and the difference in the rate of use of fertilizers and improved seeds could be the

487 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.11. 488 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016.

147

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON factors leading to the observed difference in access to extension services between men and women. Women’s circumstances gave them less reason than men to be interested in the advice and training provided by male agricultural advisors. Second, women wishing to participate, for instance, in demonstration plots or other activities organized by male extension agents, were often faced with their husbands’ refusal.

Before female extension officers arrived, women farmers received virtually no support in their agricultural activities. Only men were taken into account by agricultural agents, because most husbands refused to have their wives in contact with other men489. That was one of the reasons why only men benefited from the support and advice of agricultural agents. As Jean M. Due et al., note in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though where women did more of the labor in smallholder farming than men, chose the seeds, and were increasingly making production decisions, extensions information was still traditionally disseminated by male extension officers to male farmers. Male extension agents, these authors argue, visited female farmers much less often than male farmers, as local customs frequently impeded communication between genders, and husbands did not bring information home to their wives490.

As argued by Susan V. Poats et al., since male houshold heads are typically the public representatives of family groups, it is often assumed that information and resources conveyed to them would trickle across to others in their household. According to these authors, when this did not occur this omission represented a loss of valuable new knowledge and could lead to inadequate or incomplete application of technological innovations491. In the ON, in addition to these two factors emphasized by the mentioned group of authors, many husbands did not allow their wives to participate at agricultural extension meetings (as opposed to the farm visits already discussed) organized by authorites and run by male agents. Male extension officers organized meetings without women’s presence. As one of the first female extension officers remarked, this arrangement explained the ignorance shown by women at that time about farming techniques and

489 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. 490 Jean M. Due et al., “Gender-Views of Female Agricultural Extension Officers by Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania”, World Development 25, no. 5 (May 1997): 713-714. 491 Susan V. Poats et al., Gender Issues in Farming Systems Research and Extension, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1985), 8.

148

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON the means by which they could claim certain rights such as access to natural resources (i.e. land and water) and agricultural loans492.

Another factor that could negatively affect women's access to extension services, was male agents’ lack of time. Despite their classification as extension agents, these men were primarily involved in the provision and management of inputs, harvest collection and management, recording of debts, and financial remittances493, all of which left them little time left for real extension work. Administrative tasks accounted for almost 80% of the total activity of extension agents and thus occupied a very outsized amount if time. To remedy this, the first step that the ON management needed to take was to increase the time spent on extension by the agents to at least 50% of the total. To achieve this goal, a series of administrative tasks had to be delegated to officials who were specifically responsible for inputs and credit. This solution, however, would run up against the ON enterprise’s very precarious financial situation during the 1970s until the 1980s. The ON budget was not able to afford at that time the recruitment and wages of additional staff. As a result, the ON agricultural extension services remained unchanged494.

Both external and internal factors played a role in creating a more favorable situation for the introduction of women into the pool of recipients of agricultural extension services in the ON. During the 1980s, the World Bank encouraged the development of the training and visitation system in a number of the so-called developing countries. As noted by Jean M. Due et al., in Tanzania the training and visitation system encouraged by the bank was designed to improve extension programs and to be gender blind, which strengthened arguments, in favor of hiring more women extension agents495. At the local level, two main internal factors could explain the need for female extension officers in the ON : the liberalization of rice marketing in 1985 and the privatisation policy being emphasized by the ON management and its development partners. Together, these changes increased the importance of providing women farmers with nearby extension services sensitive to their economic and social interests. In the 1980s and

492 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. 493 AON, unnumbered document, B. Heringa, K. Zijderveld, and P. V. Blom, Rapport Mission d'Evaluation Bilatérale "Office du Niger"-Mali, 1984, Folder ON/Programme ARPON. Divers 1982-1985, p.46. 494 Ibid., p.50. 495 Jean M. Due et al., “Gender-Views of Female Agricultural Extension Officers by Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania”, World Development 25, no. 5 (May 1997): 714.

149

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

1990s, like in most developing countries, and especially the Sub-Saharian African countries, the effects of structural adjustment programs were felt in the ON villages. Overall, policies advocated under the "Women in Development" approach had the consequence of drawing more attention to women by effectively including them into the development process.

I have already shown in the previous chapter how, with financial support from the Dutch, the world bank, and the other international agencies, women in the zone benefited from small-scale, adapted technology, and credit to build up more sustainable income generating practices. However, this view contrasts with that of many social analysts and scholars who have demonstrated that the problem for poor women in general and rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa in particular is that they have been largely neglected by structural adjustment efforts. These scholars are part of the school of though which maintains that structural adjustment programs (SAPs) have failed to stimulate economic growth or recovery in Sub-Saharian Africa496. Various explanations have been offered for this failure. Judith Marshall, in a study on Mozambique, after underlining the acute need for policy reform in the country, and highlighting the main areas in which reforms were needed, shows how difficult it was for the adjustment programme to make desired changes. The poor, children and women in particular found their living standards dropping sharply with devastating consequences for their nutrition and health497.

In the edited volume on Structural Adjustment and African Women Farmers, the Amherst College anthropologist, Miriam Goheen explores women's access to land in Nso, a village in Anglophone Cameroon. She claims that the very category which has given women status and power in Africa—motherhood—is that which has been undermined and subverted by the market place and the differential valuation of male and female work, creating a feminization of poverty which is exacerbated by a growing stratification in many rural areas. This situation has been created primarily by limiting women's access to and control over productive resources—mainly land and education—while at the same time greatly increasing the demands on female labor and income, because women grow the bulk of the food consumed and have the social responsibility

496 Christina H. Gladwin, Structural Adjustment and African Women Farmers, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991), 13. 497 John Loxley, “Structural Adjustment and Social Policy in Mozambique”, Review of African Political Economy 17, no. 47-49 (Spring 1990): 30.

150

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON for provisioning the household498. Considered together, these differents points of views show the terms of debate over the effects of structural adjustment programs on the African continent's economy. What, many experts failed to account for, however, is that, because development planners had neglected women in past development efforts, SAPs were significant in beginning to take women into account. This was the case in the ON in Mali. Throughout this study, one will see how the reforms undertaken during the structural adjustment programs have had an impact and, as a result, stimulated some changes in how women's interests are considered in the ON villages, even if, it must also be recognized, these changes are often limited in scope.

The expectation was that extension services would provide farmers, women in particular, information about sources of agricultural inputs, current prices, markets, crop storage, new seed varieties, crop diversification garden seed availability, nutrition, and credit. The Dutch intervention in the ON, characterized by a women promotion policy which resulted in an alleviation of women farmers’ daily tasks in order to give them a chance to generate some income, thus urgently needed to recruit female officers to work alongside them in the zone. As a former head of one of the ON rural council explained, the first female extension officers were commissioned by the ARPON project with the expectation that they would introduce women to farming techniques, health and hygienic behaviors499. By 1990 the agricultural extension services for women farmers in the ON village level were provided by a team of thirteen female extension officers which was formed gradually between 1983 and 1987500. Fatoumata Lamine Traoré was the first Malian women who to take charge of women's agricultural extension service after the Dutch woman who had previously held this leadership position left the zone in 1986. Fatoumata, knows all about the history of female extension officers and their activities in the ON. She told me a story of how the ON management hired female extension officers after the initiative was adopted and developed through the zone by the Dutch women for whom she herself worked as an extension officer501 :

The female extension officers work did start with the ARPON project. The project had brought a Dutch woman (the one responsible for female extension outreach) from the Netherlands. This

498 Christina H. Gladwin, Structural Adjustment and African Women Farmers, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991), 16-17. 499 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016. 500 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8. 501 Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016.

151

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON woman was supervising the work of these officers in all the five zones that existed at the time in the ON. It was at the departure of this Dutch woman in 1986 that the ON management recruited me to be in charge of the female extension services so that I worked with the female extension officers and women farmers in the villages. I collaborated with them in a very narrow way, frequently organizing tests in the experimental gardens on gardening seeds such as potatoes, cabbage apples, etc. I had set up programs that the female extension officers had to respect throughout the year. For instance, Fridays were devoted to bi-weekly meetings. That is to say that every 14 days I organized meetings in order to present the results of the experimental tests carried out with women farmers. This witness highlights the fact that it was the Dutch who recruited female extension officers for the first time to help them better pursue their policy in favor of women in the zone. It was with this policy in mind that the ARPON project first conducted a diagnostic study of women's activities in the ON villages, specifically in the Niono production zone, for the sole purpose of understanding the socio-economic situation of these women. The results of this study made it clear to the Dutch partners that an effective policy of promoting village women, would required first tackling the problem of their domestic tasks 502 . These women were given postharvest machines (threshers, hullers, mills) which could relieve their household chores, win them back a little income, and allow them the to seriously practice other agricultural activities such as vegetable gardening.

Fatoumata’s recollection that it was only in 1986 that the ON management hired, for the first time, women into its agricultural extension sector also answers one of my questions, asked at the beginning of this chapter. Specifically, her testimony highlights that the ARPON project sought to reach female villagers more effectively by introducing women into the ON agricultural extension services. Trainings sessions and visits, encouraged by the ARPON project and the ON management, were organized by male officers and designed to improving extension programs and be gender blind, but this has not happened. In the zone it was found that male farmers benefited from extension services but female farmers did not, despite their desire to do so. Also, external factors such as the World Bank training and visitation system, as well as the

502 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.9; AON, unnumbered document, Résultat par Village Etude Diagnostic des Activités Féminines Secteur Niono, “Document XY, not dated (1987)”, “p.n.”; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. According to Bintou Kani, in order to carry out these kinds of studies in the ON villages, at that time, the project called upon the female extension officers to survey village women to better know their socio-economic situation. To support them in this work, the project put means of individual transport at their disposal. The granting of motorcycles and the concept of premium had appeared for the first time with ARPON.

152

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON liberalization and privatisation policy in the ON during the first half of the 1980s, contributed to female extension officers being established in the villages.

5.2.2 The “Mousso ladilibaka” (female extension officers)

Since 1981, the ON management and its Dutch partners had perceived the importance of training by founding the Agricultural Training Center (CFA). The CFA was where female extension officers and their male counterparts from the different production zones that composed the ON were supposed to be trained by a group of Dutch and Malian agronomists. At the time, the center's objective was the retraining of agricultural instructors and the training of rural supervisors for the extension of adapted farming techniques and the training of farmers503. Over time, training needs had evolved towards needs in all areas of Office du Niger's activities. Thus by 1987, the agricultural training center was empowered under the name of Training Center with a multidisciplinary vocation. Many of the female agents received three years of training in this center, which acquainted them with agricultural skills including vegetable gardening, animal husbandry, and extension techniques504. Bintou Kani, this female extension officer and 58-year- old woman is from Kouloukani village, behind Kati commune in Koulikoro region, about 15 km from Bamako 505 . Prospective ON extension agents were interviewed first at the CFA headquarters in Ségou, then by the Ministry of Agricultural in Bamako. To apply and have the chance to be selected as a female extension officer, it was necessary to have a basic degree.

Once hired, these women were supposed to receive three-year of training in the Samanko training center before starting work as agents506. Many of these female extension agents were older and married, but not all, as, during the field visit to Marakala, the researcher met young unmarried female agents serving in the M'Béwani production zone. Marital status was a very important factor in agents’ profession practice, as being married women helped them gain women farmers' confidence. Female farmers stated that they preferred working with married

503 AON, unnumbered document, Programme ARPON, Phase Transitoire ARPON II, Plan d’Opèration, 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, Ségou, Octobre 1991, p.31. 504 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8. 505 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 506 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016.

153

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON female extension officers, as they felt freer to discuss problems with them507. Also, according to Fatoumata Guindo, married female agents could always put themselves forward as an example to make women understand the benefits that a wife could bring to her family through her work.

These agents constantly reiterated that they left their husbands at home to come and work with women farmers in the villages in order to earn something they could bring back home to improve the living conditions of their families. This approach seemed to work, according to Fatoumata Guindo, female extension were able to gradually interest the ON village women and help them be more involved in their family and community advancement508. Astan Keita went further arguing that, their status as married women explains to some extent the fact that the Office du Niger’s female agents were accepted not only by women farmers but also by their husbands, who saw in them responsible women on whom they could count to help their wives in their agricultural activities509. Actions undertaken by these female agents will be explained in more detail in the following sections.

Female extension officers were recruited as part of the ARPON project beginning in 1983. It was only after the end of this project, in the 1990s, that the ON management took charge their services. Both during the ARPON project and after, these agents were directly responsible to the sectors' rural promotion offices and were supported by the ON zone’s Division of Rural Promotion (DPR), which supervised and coordinated their activities. They had different statuses, some were premanente, while others had renewable six-month contracts 510 . One female extension officer told me during an interview, telling me how their working conditions became more difficult after the ARPON project ended. When asked to elaborate, she explained that during the ARPON project female extension officers not only had a salary, but benefited from allowances being paid on time, more reliable transport, including a motorcycle for each agent, more training, and being able to attend occasional workshops511.

507 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017. 508 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. 509 Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016. 510 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8. 511 Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Marie Odile Dougnon in Ségou, October 27, 2016.

154

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

In addition to technical training, female extension officers were also taught how on how to approach women farmers, as one former female extension officer describes it512:

The female extension officers all had a basic education as well as a degree in agronomy. They also were taught how to approach the farmers’ world, how to spread vulgarized information and awareness to women, how they should behave towards women, how they should dress, how to report, everything the extension officer needed to know to get their message across. In order to diversify women farmers’ activities, a central goal of the ARPON project at the time, the CFA appealed to the Agricultural Machinery Division (DMA), under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture, to train female extension officers in tomato conservation, and in soap making techniques. Thus in addition to their regular educational backgrounds, another body of knowledge that frequently crops up in conversation with female agents and ON officials is the agricultural techniques they learned in the beginning of their careers as extension workers. As one "mousso ladilibaka" explained", "Me and my colleagues were trained in rice transplanting techniques, in seeds, and vegetable gardening nursery techniques, and advice on hygiene and well-being for the mother and child"513. The main objective of such training was to enable the officers to carry out their mission in the field, namely to help improve the living and working conditions of women in the villages of the ON, and to allow them to increase their agricultural production.

Female extension officers were deployed in the different sectors of the ON depending on the local importance of activities directed towards women farmers. New projects brought more hiring : when the ARPON project initiated vegetable gardening activities for women in 1984, three extension agents were recruited in Kokry, along with another three in Niono, one in N'Débougou, two in Molodo, one in Sahel, one in Kouroumari, and one in Dogofiry514. Most of the interviewees reported that a female extension officer could service up to five villages, but, it must be pointed out that this number could also vary depending on the size of the sector to be covered. For instance, in Niono one female extension officer could service only four to six villages while in the Sahel a female officer would service up to ten villages515. At the village level, they worked in close collaboration with the female village agents, to spread literacy and

512 Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016. 513 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 514 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.8. 515 Ibid., p.8; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016.

155

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON disseminate knowledge related to gardening. These local agents were trained by the local ON authorities and their Dutch partners in order to achieve the more rapid and widespread extension of agricultural activity among women farmers. Once they completed their training, and delivered by the female extension officers and the DPR, these female village agents were supposed to assist the extension officers in their work. With this purpose in mind, the extension workers chose women who not only knew a little writing and reading, but also those who ran the village women's associations. These women could be two or three per village, depending mainly on the size of the village and the number of extension themes to be developed among women farmers516.

In addition to these village female agents, the female extension officers solicited the support of male village agents as well as of their female counterparts. Female extension officers augmented and supported the work of the village agents by offering programs the frequency of which (weekly or monthly), was determined on a case by case basis by the extension agents themselves in consultation with their supervisors 517 . Although based in the chief towns of sectors, these female extension officers were equipped with means of transportation (mopeds and fuel) which allowed them to regularly check-in on village women’s economic activities, such as rice hulling, gardening, and literacy.

5.3 Actions of female extension officers in the women empowerment process

To increased their managerial, organizational, entrepreneurial and decision-making skills, along with their technical skills related to food production and, small-scale industries, required an effective information service518. ARPON and the ON management both understood this need when the Dutch initially decided to support the Office du Niger irrigated zone in the early 1980s. Since 1983, as part of the policy of food self-sufficiency in Mali and of promoting rural women, the ON engaged in a development process aimed at increasing creativity and women’s capacity to manage basic initiatives and different interventions. The ARPON project, as the initiator of the women's promotion policy in the zone, significantly supported the efforts of the Malian

516 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Diarra in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 517 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.10; Interview by author with Mariam Diarra in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 518 Gwyn E. Jones, Investing in Rural Extension: Strategies and Goals, Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Center, (UK: University of Reading, 1986), 155.

156

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON government and the ON management in this process. In order to reduce women’s daily tasks and increase their participation in productive projects, ARPON initiated a program to install hulling machines and provide support for vegetable gardening 519 . Meanwhile, the Retail project supported the policy of spreading the rice transplanting technique in the zone by developing significant ressources and distributing plots of land to obedient farmers.

The introduction of women into extension services was part of an improved technical framework policy for women farmers, and supported the Retail project’s efforts, with a specific focus upon expanding and consolidating the role and position of women in the ON. As Gwyn Jones argued, educational and extension activities for women must meet the needs and interests of women farmers if they are to provide any meaningful support. Mali in general and the ON zone in particular, although women dominated the informal sector (the small-scale trade in goods and services not usually counted in national economic statistics, to say nothing of their role in the agricultural production), they were seldom given any opportunity for formal training in production, marketing or management. In spite of occasional difficulties, such as the initial reluctance of some women, and the limited accessibility of some villages, female extension officers made great efforts to provide women farmers with extension services that could assist them in their farm and non-farm activities. Before analyzing the different actions undertaken by female extension officers to achieve the rural women’s development programmes adopted by the ON and its partners, one will take a look at how they approached their work in relation to local development schemes being promoting through the zone.

5.3.1 The role of the female agricultural extension work approach in facilitating local development

The realization of the program that included the female extension officers’ work involved two main components. The first was the design of the officers’ activities. This design process involved multiple participants : the heads of the Peasant Organization Training Council (FOP) teams in the agricultural sectors of Niono, Molodo, N'Débougou, Dogofiry, Kouroumari, and Kolongo, and finally, the manager of the experimental garden in Kokry, in collaboration with that sector’s cooperation department. The second component was the skill of female officers that would make possible the implementation of this program. Even once the elaboration of this

519 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.2.

157

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON program was a reality, its execution was not always a smooth process. Indeed, there was not even a consistent means of transmitting messages to agents, with information being delivered in various forms which differed from one female extension officer to another, from one subject to another, and from one problem to another. Each extension agent nevertheless at least received the necessary instructions and information one way or another, which made it possible for them to spread agricultural techniques and education among those village women who had organized themselves into groups with the assistance of village notables (village chiefs, delegates, and men supportive of women's emancipation)520. As argued by Daniel Benor and Michael Baxter, who carried out an interesting deep analysis of agricultural extension work, in order to be effective, the principal imperative of agricultural extension is ensuring that its messages reach many farmers and that their problems are in turn promptly and regularly communicated to the supervisory staff521.

The privileging of women over men by female extension officers, was clearly an integral part of the women promoting policy in the ON. More than that, however, this policy was enacted within the framework of local food self-sufficiency objectives and the search for monetary resources in the short term, and towards food self-sufficiency objectives at the regional level and possibly national in the long term. This policy was justified to some extent by the insertion into the female extension officers program of non-farm activities such as culinary demonstrations as well as hygiene and well-being education. In the sub-sections below, we will analyze in more detail the actions undertaken by the extension services in these domains. However, whether they were diffusing messages concerning farm or non-farm activities, it must be noted that the female extension officers were given a difficult task : they were supposed to win over a mass of women farmers who had long been excluded from the extension services and who were accustomed to contenting themselves with the few resources they had, without any possible technological intervention522. Faced with such a challenging situation, and for a better understanding of certain technical themes, the inclusion of volunteer women farmers in each village seemed a necessity.

520 AON, 454b, Bilan de la Campagne 1986-1987, Juin 1987, p.25. 521 Daniel M. Benor, and Michael Baxter, La vulgarisation agricole par la formation et les visites, (Washington D.C: Banque mondiale, 1998), 37. 522 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017.

158

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

In each village, for instance, there were three to five women from one of the existing women's groups in the village who would agree to work with female officers and who would serve as an example for other village women523. What the ON management and its Dutch partners were looking for in this approach, was to spread the maximum of information to the greatest possible number of women farmers. This approach shows that the various actors involved in the Office du Niger rehabilitation programme, the Dutch, the World Bank, the French, and the other international agencies, believed at that time that women should be taken more seriously in the local development process. The response to this approach also shows, that women farmers, far from being locked into the use of out-of-date techniques and resistant to any innovation, were indeed responsible adults, aware that they must alter their traditional farming practices and therefore be prepared to learn new ones. The advantage of the volunteer farmer strategy lay in the demonstration to other women farmers, of concrete results that could encourage them to follow the same path524. As asserted by Daniel Benor, and Michael Baxter, the task of the extension agent is not to benefit the small number of farmers with which he is in direct contact, but rather to increase the use and impact of recommended practices by disseminating them as quickly as possible to all farmers. If contact farmers groups represented the full range of socio-economic and agricultural conditions of all farmers in the village to which they belonged, then the results of the recommended practices they adopted must have convinced most farmers of what could be realized525.

This approach, in addition to its didactic role, allowed these women to surpass the generally low expectations to which they were held, which were often observed in the past by the ON supervisory services. Thus, it is approached here a no less important component of the ON supervisory board: whatever the importance of the extension services program, its ultimate effectiveness depended in women farmers’ participation in its execution. As highlighted by Gwyn Jones, to ensure that the benefits of extension reach the mass of small farmers, it is essential that extension messages (and hence the generation of new technologies) are relevant to farmers' needs and this demands more active participation in the validation of new technologies

523 Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016. For training or transfert of new techniques, it was the group that chose women who could participate. But the criteria for being chosen were based on availability, and love for training. 524 AON, 454b, Bilan de la Campagne 1986-1987, Juin 1987, p.25. 525 Daniel Benor, and Michael Baxter, La vulgarisation agricole par la formation et les visites, (Washington D.C.: Banque mondiale, 1998), 43.

159

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON by farmers themselves526. In the previous chapter, it was discussed in more depth the history and the debate over the appropriate technology approach. Briefly restated, that chapter found that, using village women in female extension work also meant that the relations between the different stakeholders, female extension officers and women farmers, should be considered as equivalent to those between donors and recipients, and between workers who respected each other.

Agricultural themes such as the popularization of new planting techniques, supposed a prior need, either directly expressed by those who would benefit from this popularization, or identified by the extension officer him/herself. Depending on who first identified the need, the approach taken could vary greatly. The vegetable gardening example is illustrative at this level. In a general way, the desire to practice vegetable gardening in the ON zone was born out of women farmers’ own initiative, but, it is important to note that from one village or production zone to another, gardening ventures and techniques were not always the same. The approach used in this agricultural field, even though it did not vary in substance, took different forms according to first the cultivars, then to the necessity of new techniques. The types of vegetables grown in the ON zone were very numerous. There were those familiar to women farmers, but which did not adapt well to local climatic conditions, and those which had previously been unknown. For successful immediate or future cultivation of these new crops, growers needed not only physiological and technical knowledge, but also nutrition, preparation and economic terms527.

In the first case, the approach advocated consisted of organizing demonstration sessions and, bringing together either all the village women, or a more limited group of women according to the theme of the demonstration. Even though outreach work was necessary, its effect seemed to be less in the first case than in the second one, in which it was necessary to convince women farmers of the usefulness of a practice that was foreign to them. This was the case with the introduction of new tuberous plants such as potatoes. Beyond the initial phase of convincing women of the usefulness of the new crop, experience exchange visits and practical training for women were organized, as well as a follow-up with the first producers of the new crop.

526 Gwyn E. Jones, Investing in Rural Extension: Strategies and Goals, Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Center, (UK: University of Reading, 1986), 159. 527 AON, unnumbered document, Ousmane Maiga, Les cultures maraîchères á l’Office du Niger: encadrement et perspectives d’avenir, Décembre 1988, p.26.

160

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

Moreover, as the potato is an off-season crop, support for its adoption throughout the zone was facilitated by the supplying of seed and training in farming techniques528.

Monitoring, which concerned a few agro-economic aspects of potato farming, was also intended to identify problems faced by women in order to better provide the types of support they would need529. It should also be noted that female extension work in the Niono sector was a special case within the ON, distinguished by the physical presence of heuristic material. This was the so-called demonstration garden, which grew the new vegetables and used the techniques that had already proven themselves. Due to this garden, theoretically, female extension officers of the Niono agricultural sector had an important tool that would allow them to take a more practical approach to their work530. Female farmers interviewed knew the value of agricultural extension and wanted more demonstration fields available in each village, as well as the holding of field days to let them see the advantages of the possibilities being demonstrated531.

During field visit, field days were still provided by the ON extension services. From discussion with some women in the villages, however, I realized that demonstration fields were becoming rare in the zone. Many interviewees including ON officials, explained this situation as resulting the lack of financial resources facing not just the ON's rural promotion department, but also the ON in a whole. Since the withdrawal of some donors, such as the Dutch, from the zone in the 1990s, the ON management has continued trying to fund as many and as much of its different services as possible. However, with the many politico-economic crises that Mali has known in recent decades, such as a military coup in 1991and the CFAF devaluation in 1994, to name but a couple, problems can appear at any time in the running of these services. In the previous chapter, for instance, we saw the scarcity or total stoppage of literacy classes in villages due to financial shortfalls.

528 AON, 0368, Plan de Campagne 2001/2002: Version Définitive, Décembre 2000, p.10. 529 AON, unnumbered document, Kongotigui Bengaly, and Raphaëlle Ducrot, Introduction de la culture de la pomme de terre dans les rizières de l’Office du Niger, Unité de Recherche Développement Observatoire du Changement, Niono, Octobre 1998, p.2. 530 It should be kept in mind that the actions of the female extension officers had benefited, for the whole of the ON zone, from the support of projects such as ARPON, Retail, etc. 531 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016; Interview by author with Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly in Siengo, March 29, 2017.

161

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

5.3.2 Testing and the extension program around hulling machines

In the ON rice-growing areas, women were engaged in various activities, including in the fields (plowing, hunting of birds, threshing, winnowing, hulling etc.) and vegetable gardening. For all villages covered by the ON, the volume of rice hulled by women was estimated at about 30 000 tonnes (self-consumption, and the 1986/87 crop year)532. According to the "Study- Diagnosis of Women's Activities" survey, hulling, winnowing and gathering firewood were considered the most difficult tasks for women533. With the liberalization of rice marketing, private initiatives had developed in this sector, farmers began to selling large quantities of hulled paddy. In this context of not only liberalization but also and especially of an increasingly intense agricultural work schedule for the women, the Dutch considered it necessary to include in their ON women promotion policy hulling machines with the twofold goal of alleviating women's workloads and increasing the sale of hulled paddy for money. Meanwhile, a separate analysis of the former extension system of the ON Agricultural Extension Division (DVA) of the Agricultural Service, found that a reorganization of this system was necessary534. For better support of women’s farm and non-farm activities in the zone, especially those relying on small- scale technologies, a more accessible and available extension services was needed.

On the basis of the restructuring proposal undertaken by the DVA and of numerous discussions between the ON functional divisions, the Niono sector, and the ARPON project, a proposal was made to reorganize the Niono sector before expanding services in other sectors of the zone. This proposal, included a distinction between agricultural extension tasks such as assistance to women farmers in the form of skills transferring, and administrative tasks, such as agricultural statistics and monitoring. This proposal also foresaw the creation of competent women's groups which would manage their own affairs with better organization and training. The last, but not least of the proposal’s objective was the provision of outreach and training by agents who specialized in a specific field. The envisioned approach was about better involving

532 AON, 704 Bis, Aperçu sur l’introduction des décortiqueuses à l’Office du Niger, Avril 1988, p.3. 533 AON, unnumbered document, Résultat par Village Etude Diagnostic des Activités Féminines Secteur Niono, “Document XY, not dated (1987)”, “p.n.” The search for firewood was especially important in dry areas such as M'Bewani. According to Aminata Touré, women did this activity during the months of December to February. Preferably women went into the bush looking for wood during the days when they were not in the kitchen for the preparation of the daily meal. After filling a cart of wood, the women went to sell it on the roadside of the village. 534 AON, unnumbered document, Résultat par Village Etude Diagnostic des Activités Féminines Secteur Niono, “Document XY, not dated (1987)”, “p.n.”

162

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON women in the process by making them actors instead of passive recipients, as had been the case in past development efforts. This approach was also based on the assumption that, for women to be able to play a role as actors, they had to be, like the zone’s men, connected with available information as well as with the agricultural and technical know-how possessed by the company. Thus, the proposal provided the general framework within which programs defined by the functional divisions would be implemented535.

This agricultural extension reform came into effect in April 1987 and took over the women's action which was part of the program defined by the Rural Promotion Division (DPR) with a view to elaborating a strategy for their participation in the village structures. Being convinced that any attempt at change merited a study in order to have an objective basis, the DPR536 carried out a study: diagnosis of women’s activities in the sectors of Niono and Kokry in April, May and June 1987. The main purpose of doing so was to understand the main needs felt by women at the time. Thus, out of the 38 villages covered by the surveys, 19 expressed vegetable gardening as the first need, and 18 small hulling machines. According to the groups of women surveyed, the introduction of these machines would alleviate the various tasks assigned to them and allow them to deal seriously with other activities, such as gardening, that yielded substantial income537.

Long before this study, ARPON had begun trials in the zone with Indonesia hulling machines, during July 1987 in Niono zone, at the village of Nioumanké, km 20538. That same year, the large “Nogueira” hulling machines were tested in the village of Séribala 30. Throughout this testing phase, female extension officers were the ones who, with suppport from ARPON and the DPR, did the surveys in the villages which were chosen for the tests on "animation

535 AON, unnumbered document, Introduction sur la proposition de réstructuration du secteur de Niono, “Document XY, not dated, p.1. 536 In this context of self-promotion and empowerment of women, the DPR was in charge of supporting and coordinating between women's groups and external services such as the Agricultural and Mechanization Section (STAM). The STAM dealt with the mechanical aspects of the hullers (performance, yields, hourly capacity, fuel consumption, lubricant, by-product rate, parts wear, and quality improvement of parts). 537 AON, unnumbered document, Résultat de l’étude diagnostic des activités féminines-Niono-Kokry-Volet féminin, DPR, “Document XY, not dated, “n.p.”; Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 538 AON, 704 Bis, Aperçu sur l’introduction des décortiqueuses à l’Office du Niger, Avril 1988, pp.2-3.

163

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON féminine"539. The objectives of these tests were first to know the needs expressed by women, then to help women meet those needs. According to Bintou Kani, she and her colleagues, supported by ARPON and the DPR, conducted studies in the Niono and Kokry zones with the aim of understanding women's needs and finding solutions540.The villages that expressed the need for hulling machines were selected for a demonstration with the small Indonesian huller.

After having identified women’s needs pertaining to hulling machines, ARPON, with DPR collaboration, distributed such machines during the test phase to the selected villages in the Niono and Kokry sectors, in addition to some villages from Molodo sector (five small hulling machines and a large one were brought to the villages). It was now necessary to proceed to familiarizing the women with these machines to enable them to exercise better management and to become better acquainted with these machines. For this purpose, even before the installation of the machines in the three sectors’ villages, the female village agents were trained in management to help female extension officers in their work of supporting and accompanying women farmers. The popularization of machines began with a informational meeting which was led by the female extension officers in the presence of the ARPON and DPR staff. As Astan Keita observe, while the ARPON project was producing small agricultural equipment through local mechanic for distribution to the various women's organisation in the zone, it was the female extension officers who popularized the use of this equipment, for example plows, harrows, and especially small hulling machines541.

This sensitization meeting was followed by a demonstration lasting approximately one and half day at the end of which female officers gathered opinions and explained the conditions to be met by village women before the start of the three-month test. After female extension officers' information distribution, women farmers' remarks showed that most villages in the

539 This type of test was conducted by the DPR in 1987 and had as a priority task to carry out a study diagnosis of women's activities, to choose the test villages (9 villages per sector) with the participation of these sectors, and to discuss at the level of each village possible solutions to the different problems posed by women. The choice of the 18 villages (from the two sectors of Niono and Kokry) was made according to these criteria: agreement within the village, the level of organization of the village, the motivation of the women based on the results of the study diagnosis by village. Thus, in the Niono sector, the following villages were selected: N’Golobala, Kouia-Coura, Niégué, Séribala km 30, Foabougou, Bagadadji km 36, Mourdian km 17, Nioumanké km 20, and Kolodougou- Coura. In Kokry the villages selected were Kononga, Oula, Koutiala-Coura, Tomi, Foulabougou, Médina, Kokry- Bozo, Kokry-Colon, and Ségou-Coura. 540 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 541 Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016.

164

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

Niono, Kokry and Molodo sectors considered hulling machine introduction one of their main priorities. At the end of the informative period, women agreed with the ARPON project to buy the hulling machines and motors. It is impressive that at the beginning ARPON loaned one hulling machine with credit to each women's groups in the three zones named above which made the request. Many women's groups had ended up reimbursing their loans to ARPON, though, did not, because the Dutch project simply gave it to them as gift. Details about hulling and threshing machine purchases in the ON villages were analyzed deeply in the previous chapter. Considered by female extension officers and by the ON village women farmers as a success, this phase of popularization and education was followed throughout the villages by a widespread installation of hulling machines. This enlargement of the program could be done only gradually in the other sectors as the villages met the criterion of good management and under the condition that the sector could guarantee an intensive follow-up.

The introduction of small machines for village women farmers was part of the Dutch partners’ development goals at the time. Those goals were for the use of such machines to allow women to practice other income-generating activities and to allow them to gain more from rice cultivation, maize and millet cultivation, and vegetable gardening than they were already doing. Aware of the positive effects that machines could bring them, women took up their use as soon as possible. Unlike winnowing and threshing machines, which were set up at the rice field for use, women most of the time used the hulling machines in the villages in a room or storehouse, sometimes even in the houses themselves when the machines were privately owned. Winnowing and threshing activities took place from November to May for wintering rice and from July to October for off-season rice, while hulling machines and mills functioned almost year-round to meet the processing needs for self-consumption by local people. Their use year-round probably explains the very large number of hulling machines and mills in the different villages of the ON. During the researcher’s stay in the zone, she was struck by the presence of these machines in every village.

However, women encountered difficulties in managing these machines, in part due to their very low level of education. Many women's groups were obliged to hire a male mechanic in

165

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON order to ensure both operation and technical maintenance542. In ND 2 Sangharéla village, in the N’Débougou production zone, the Sabaly women’s group told me that they had until recently resorted to a male mechanic to assist them in the operation of the group’s huller. It should be noted that despite the presence of this mechanic, each women's group delegated either the president, the vice-president or the secretary to be part of the machine management committee. All these difficulties encountered by women of the villages of the Office du Niger highlight the negligence of which they were victims in the development efforts of the past.

This also explains how difficult and complex was the women promotion policy initiated by international donors and local authorities in an environment dominated by certain ideas and practices irreconcilable with the conception and discourse of women's emancipation. This is all the more so since, at the beginning, some husbands could not understand the usefulness for their wives of having these machines. For some men with whom I conversed, due to polygamy, co- wives could help each other and continue to use the machines owned by the ON management, while still doing their daily chores. The debate was not only about relieving women's daily strains, but also about the fear felt by some husbands who could not stand their wives making money and becoming independent from them. As one saw earlier, one of the first women hulling machine owners in Niono, Maa Diarra, told me that her husband understood her, and better, even helped her manage her business at home543. Maa Diarra, though, did not acquired her machine until the beginning of the 1990s, just a little more than a decade after the first machines were introduced in the ON villages in 1983. Even if, during interviews, many men told me they welcomed the idea of their wives having small machines, one must recognize that in the ON villages it took time for the approach of "every women’s group, a machine" to have a positive effect, namely making women more independent from men544. So, there seem to be two ides here that do not quite blend. One, men’s growing acceptance of women with machines; two, women’s growing independence of men.

542 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016; Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017. 543 Interview by author with Maa Diarra in Niono KL 23 Coro, April 04, 2017; Comments from Ousmane Camara during interview by author with Maa Diarra in Niono KL 23 Coro, April 04, 2017. 544 Interview by author with Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté in Siengo, March 29, 2017; Interview by author with Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly in B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017.

166

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

Some women within the ON administration have made us understand that there was sometimes a certain jealousy in men's behavior arising from the fear that women's promotion would come at the expense of men’s. For this reason, many of these women who worked in the ON as part of the villages’ women promotion policy were passed over several times before getting any promotion in their job. According to Diénéba Diarra, a female agronomy engineer and director of the Niono production zone, there was a farmer delegate who during a workshop with the ON administration said: "You want to promote women but we really do not want it, because when you get to promote these women they would have their own carts, their own donkeys so they would not consider us anymore. Because every time a man would have an argument with his wives they would take their cart and go home quietly. Whereas, if the wives did not have a cart in their possession, they are obliged to ask their husband's cart before doing anything ". This statement shows how men wanted women to always be dependent on them. Moreover, Diénéba Diarra regreted that this attitude unfortunately existed even in her own family as well545.

5.3.3 Rice transplanting technique spreading

During the first half of the 1980s, water management control in the ON's irrigation system began to become a reality little by little. In most rehabilitated areas, maintenance was properly and regularly carried out and farmers started to cultivate their plots. On top of that, the cultivation calendars were very free because most farmers had their own equipment and their own tillage animals546. For the Malian government and the ON management, though, this long- awaited mastery of the water resource was to be accompanied by an intensification of production. As a result, in addition to the agricultural equipment available to farmers, it was also necessary to introducing new cultivation techniques which could increase yields. Thus re- emerged in the zone the debate about the practice of transplanting which had been tried very briefly in the Kolongotomo area during the 1960 campaign, but which was unsuccessful because of the lack of required financial means and failure to popularize it throughout the zone547. In order for the new rice cultivation technique to be adopted by all farmers, the ON management, supported by its development partners, decided to set up an extension policy which would be

545 Interview by author with Diénéba Diarra in Niono, November 18, 2016. 546 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin and Yacouba Coulibaly, Des Paysans Sahéliens engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Cirad, Septembre 1995, p.7. 547 AON, unnumbered document, Office du Niger en 1960, Juin 1994, p.30.

167

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON responsible for its dissemination. With the ARPON project, female extension officers and some agents from the Niono zone were trained in techniques of transplanting using test fields in the villages of Kilometer 2 and Kilometer 20. The tests were done by the Sogoba family in Kilometer 20. After receiving this training, female extension officers were able to introduce the techniques to other women548.

The promoters of transplanting proceeded first with tests and comparisons of the yields, and were followed very closely by the agricultural field agents, especially female extension officers. One female extension officer describes this process549:

One hectare of land was taken where we did transplanting and another hectare was sown with direct seedlings. So, once they arrived at maturity we proceeded with harvesting and threshing. After threshing, we compared the yields of the two fields. The finding was very clear: the field yield with transplanting was greater than that with direct sowing. In addition to yield, it has been found that with transplanting less seed is used. Because for one hectare with direct seedlings, it required two bags of 50 kg of seeds which made 100 kg of paddy, whereas with the transplanting one used only 40 kg of well selected paddy. So already with the seeds there was a net gain using the transplanting. These tests with transplanting were done by female extension officers in the presence of women farmers. The main objective was to convince them of the importance of this new technique so that they, in turn, could make their husbands understand that transplanting was the best thing a rice farmer could do in order to improve his yields. According to one of the most experienced female extension officers, Bintou Kani, until the end of the 1980s (despite the efforts exerted by ARPON and Retail), farmers’ refusal to practice malo tourou (rice transplanting) in the ON irrigated lands was so great that many of them made up the idea that this practice was responsible for back and kidney diseases as well as a causes of their women's miscarriages550. Nevertheless, the fact that women understood the benefits of transplanting through demonstrations and information provided by female extension officers greatly contributed to efforts to encourage their husbands to adopt this technique. Women were also expected to master the transplanting techniques in order to easily meet the significant labor demand of this practice.

548 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016. 549 Interview by author with Fatoumata Coulibaly in Molodo centre, November 24, 2016. 550 Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017.

168

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

In the popularization of transplanting among women, female extension officers attached great importance to the timing of the nurseries. The installation of rice nurseries for off-season cultivation began in the zone from May 1st to June 25th. After this period, farmers could proceed to transplant the nurseries into their fields. After four days, the seeds began to grow. The recommended duration for plants to stay in the nursery was 25 to 30 days. Farmers should not wait beyond this range of time, because if they were transplanted later, they would have already grown to a degree that could affect the yield. Plants transplanted around 25-30 days will give higher yield than those transplanted before or after this period551. In addition to respecting the maturing time in the nurseries, special attention was given to how to plant seedlings in the rice fields. To ensure that the technique was practiced well, female extension officers showed the women how to space the plants (20 cm)552.

These planting guidelines gave the transplanted rice the space and air circulation it needed to grow optimally. Thus, when farmers respected the maturing time of nurseries and the planting rules mentioned above, it was obvious that they could hope for better yields. Interestingly, women showed the greatest respect for these rules, and showed themselves to be the most skillful transplanters in the zone. For Fafré Diarra, women became masters of transplanting in the zone because they respected all the rules that the technique required553. This situation led to the organization of wage labour around this activity. Within villages, the scarcity of irrigated land forced many women to use their strength and know-how to earn a salary. Next to vegetable gardening, transplanting rice seedlings into men's field remained the most profitable activity for women, either individually or as a group.

Due to the efforts made by many development partners through a more comprehensive reorganization of the extension system, the transplanting much desired by the ON management since the early 1960s became almost systematic throughout the zone 554 . However, rice transplanting most of the time was not done in a sufficiently timely fashion to preserve the

551 Interview by author with Oumou Sankaré, Noukhoum Mariko, Aboubacar Koné, and Astan Tamboura in B2 Banisraela, March 21 2017. 552 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Bené Traoré in Ségou, November 06, 2016. 553 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Sankaré, Noukhoum Mariko, Aboubacar Koné, and Astan Tamboura in B2 Banisraela, March 21 2017. 554 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Des Paysans Sahéliens engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Cirad, Septembre 1995, p.7.

169

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON plants’ full potential to tiller after leaving the nurseries. Transplanting, late or not, was done mostly by wage-earning women who were organized in groups to carry out this activity. After giving training sessions on transplanting techniques, female extension officers became convinced of women farmers’ mastery of this practice and incited them to organize themselves into transplanter groups as a way of offering their services and gaining a little income. This idea was very well received by women who saw it as a good source of income, because, the pay rate for transplanting varied between 33 and 41 dollars per hectare. This was a good rate, made possible because the transplanter workforce became increasingly in demand as transplanting was taken up by more and more farmers in the ON555. In addition to being a source of income for many women, the mastery of transplanting techniques also allowed the diffusion of new varieties of non-photosensitive rice with short straw and high yield potential that replaced the old varieties.

A women's group could gain between 420 and 503 US dollars each campaign. In the beginning, women organized parties at the end of rice season to spend money that they had earned by transplanting. Later, female extension officers were able to make them understand that it was better to invest this money in other activities that would bring them even more income that could enable them to cover some of their expenses556. It was with this purpose in mind women’s groups created their own credit union from the funds of which many of them benefited from credit in case of need. For example, during vegetable gardening season, a good number of these women felt the need for credit to meet some small needs such as the purchase of condiments, though it should be noted that women got credit for seeds at the local banks instead 557 . Additionally, women for their daughters' weddings bought furniture, utensils, radios, and televisions, while they also contributed largely to the payment of their sons’ dowries which, according to many interviewed women, could vary between 503 and 669 US dollars558.

555 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016; Interview by author with Astan Keita in Niono, November 18, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Coulibaly in Niéminany, April 04, 2017; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Maimouna Coulibaly in Molodo Centre, April 04, 2017. 556 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 26, 2016. 557 Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017. 558 Interview by author with Maimouna Daou in Molodo Centre, November 24, 2016.

170

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

This regular wage earned through transplanting rice seedlings constituted one of the several factors that helped ON village’ women became more involved in their everyday lives. Decisions regarding their children's (boys and girls) marriages are now taken by both parents, contrary to in the past, when such decisions were taken only by a father, brother, or other male representative of the lineage. Not only do women now have a say regarding their own household’s affairs, but at the village level they run their own associations and organizations which are essential for group solidarity. Results even reveal that there are also among women farmers some leaders who can manage the community interest through the vehicle of women’s economic groups. Very often these women gather and even train other women in their village without any assistance from female extension agents.

Thus, to the Bella workers’ groups were gradually added women's groups whose quality of work was considered better. According to the results of an October 1993 study on the impact of this new women’s activity on agricultural production as ti pertains to organization and, incomes and their uses, women participated massively in transplanting, drawing a substantial income for their needs on the one hand and contributing, at least to some extent, to the development of production and productivity on the other559. Since the early 1990s, transplanting has been the most convenient planting method in the ON zone. Following a sharp increase over the previous three cropping seasons, during the 1993 wintering campaign transplanted rice covered 8,127 hectares or 90% of the Niono surface area.

5.3.4 Supporting women in improving their vegetable gardening productivity

With land impoverishment problem and the irrigation system in a poor state, the 1970s saw low rice yields and insufficient incomes, in response to which farmers, especially women, turned to gardening in order to cope with recurring food shortage in the zone. Vegetable gardening had long been practiced in the zone, but its development throughout the ON irrigated lands increased only during the 1970s. In the first half of the 1980s, helped by their Dutch development partners, the ON management recognized vegetable crops as equal in importance to

559 AON, unnumbered document, Rokiatou Diallo, Djénéba Diarra, Astan Keita, Fatoumata Guindo, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Femme et Riziculture Intensive: Les groupes de repiqueuses á l’Office du Niger, Octobre 1993, p.1. Maa Diarra told me that she was paying the women's groups to transplant her rice fields (about 47 dollars per hectare). She used to take on two women's groups of about 15 members each per campaign to transplant her fields. The women came to the fields between 09 and 10 in the morning and departed in the evening around 17 hours later after completely transplanting a hectare.

171

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON the others. Because the Dutch, as part of their intervention in the zone, were pursuing a women promotion policy designed to provide the basis for improved patterns of living and working, it was to be expected that the ON would get support from the ARPON project. Given the enormous efforts undertaken by women (paying with their own money to rent plot and buy seeds, dig wells, etc.) to cultivate the small plots they attained from renting or from their husbands after rice harvesting even before their gardening activities were recognized by local authorities, the Dutch thought that when supported these women would make great progress with vegetable gardening. In the view of the Dutch, it was always easiest to help those who could help themselves.

The Dutch were concerned exclusively with the problem of helping women improve their situation. This did not imply the view that constructive work done as part of the local development process since the colonial era should be discontinued, and there could be no doubt that it would continue in any case. However, these development partners did believe that, the successes of the development process in the ON were likely to prove illusory unless there was also a healthy improvement or at least a healthy condition of stability and sustainability among the very great numbers of people women whose lives were characterised not only by dire poverty but also by hopelessness560. Following the articulation of this belief by their Dutch development partners, the ON reform program agreed to provide plots for women interested in small-scale, independent agricultural practices.

Although, as mentioned above, vegetable gardening has been practiced in the ON zone for a long time management, apart from a de facto recognition, would not become involved with it until 1984 with the creation in Kokry of the ARPON project’s new vegetable gardening component561. To better monitor this new initiative in the zone, the technical management was supposed to take vegetable gardening activities more into account. Supervision was thus place in the early stages because of the newfound interest of the ON management in vegetable gardening. The new vegetable gardening component gave priority to women. In this context, to better reach its target, ARPON chose as supervisory staff the female extension officers responsible for the

560 Interview by author with Diénabou Touré in Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017; Interview by author with Fatouma Samaké in M’Béwani Centre, April 11, 2017. Many interviewees told me only men had land, but often too little. Women had no land and no prospect of ever getting any. There was no hope for them in the villages and hence they drifted into their husband’s field as a family workforce. Even then, until the end of the 1980s, there was only small remuneration for them in these family fields and, of course, not much income. 561AON, unnumbered document, Ousmane Maiga, Les cultures maraîchères á l’Office du Niger: encadrement et perspectives d’avenir, Décembre 1988, p.23.

172

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON dissemination of technical themes in relation to vegetable gardening. Because women were confronted with problems in their households other than agricultural activities, the activities of these female extension officers also had to cover other concerns of rural women.

It was difficult to address vegetable gardening alongside other aspects of women's lives, such as well-being, and hygiene. These later two concerns will be discussed in the next section. Apart from the two test sectors of Niono and Kokry, the six other ON sectors each had a female extension officer who gradually received training in hygiene and well-being in addition to the training she had received beforehand in agriculture562. Only the Niono sector were three female extension officers directly attached to the sector management to support vegetable gardening, while in Kokry the three officers were attached to the agricultural sector, under the supervision of the person in charge of the sector’s experiemental garden for field demonstrations. These supervisory staff assumed then dual responsibility for the garden and the female extension officers' activities and organization, not only in the garden but also in the villages. Thus, female extension work included twelve female officers divided between the eight sectors, in addition to the manager of Kokry's experiemental garden.

As they had done for rice farming, female extension officers also helped women adopt the best vegetable farming techniques. Previously in the ON zone, women left shallots in the nurseries for more than a month before planting them in their plots. This timing presented a high risk of diminished yields. With the advice and assistance of female extension officers who helped women understand that the nursery period prior to replanting should not exceed 21 days, this inefficiency progressively disappeared in the zone. According to Nana Diarra, replanting nursery plants at a late stage of maturity negatively affected vegetable garden’ yields, whereas if women replanted from the nursery after only about twenty days (that is, when the plant was still young) they were more likely to produce more. Women understood their interest in this process and all of them adopted it in their vegetable gardening fields563.

In their policy of improving women's situation in the ON, ARPON project and its partners created the conditions for women to have access to fertilizers. In the zone the chemical

562 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. 563 Interview by author with Nana Diarra in N'Débougou, November 25, 2016.

173

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON fertilizers most used by women were DAP and urea. A 50 kg bag of DAP cost more than twenty US dollars while one of urea sold at fifteen US dollars564. Because farmers, especially women, lacked the money to purchase chemical fertilizers, agricultural policy-makers advocated cheap credit available to them on a local and regional basis565. Many women were granted credit by local financial instituts such as Caisses d'Epargne and Crédit (CEC), and Caisses Rurales Mutualistes du Delta (CRMD), under the auspices of the Village Development Fund (FDV), which beginning in March 1990 dealt with fertilizers purchasing and distribution to farmers throughout the ON zone. Under the FDV, fertilizer distribution was liberalized, and the ON management facilitated farmers’ access to it by providing technical guarantees which proved that they had available land and that they regularly payed the water fee. This helped to establish trust between farmers and the private enterprises who provided these inputs566. These local financial institutes were both providers of fertilizer credit and played an important role in the organization and supply of financing for seed supplies.

Some scholars have seriously studied this use of technology, in particular fertilizers, in agriculture sector in developing countries like Mali. For Corinna R. Unger, the use of this kind of package of scientifically designed technologies was based on the assumption that modern agriculture would have to be fully mechanized567. While, Marc Frey characterized mechanized extension of cultivated land, and chemical fertilizers as means to increase production in the face of continuing labor deficits568. However, for women in remote villages in the ON, having fertilizers allowed them increased the production of vegetables. For this, very often many of them who lend money in order to purchase fertilizer did not hesitate to reimbursing in kind the amount they used. This situation in turn required large warehouses in the villages569. During field visit, it was noticed that many women's groups usually handed over money to the village female

564 AON, unnumbered document, Assana Sogoba, Le développement des productions maraîchères á l’Office du Niger: atouts et contraintes dans le contexte post-dévaluation, Mémoire de fin de cycle pour l’obtention du diplome d’Ingénieur agronome de l’IPR de Katibougou, Décembre 1996, p.44. 565 Corinna R. Unger, International Development. A Postwar History, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 112. 566 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016. 567 Corinna R. Unger, International Development. A Postwar History, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 112- 113. 568 Marc Frey, “Doctrines and Practices of Agrarian Development: The Case of the Office du Niger in Mali”, in Rural Development in the Twentieth Century: International Perspectives, ed. Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2017), 23. 569 AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, p.54.

174

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON extension officer to buy fertilizers either in Marakala or Ségou, because in most of the villages, there were no fertilizer sales shops 570 . The credits granted to women for the purpose of promoting their vegetable gardening activities are discussed in more detail in the following chapter. In the ON, there was a problem with overuse of chemical fertilizers. Given that the ON had poor natural soils, the deficiency of which was aggravated by poor management and sometimes by damaging soil practices, women chose to use chemical fertilizers. These women, like their male counterparts, were aware of the broad consensus that substantial increases in inorganic fertilizer use were necessary to restore and maintain the fertility of soils and enhance their productivity. However, according to many interviewees, women farmers used-too much fertilizer and this was damaging productivity because vegetables lost their quality after harvesting and many of them rotted571. In order to end this misuse, female extension officers educated women about reducing the quantity of chemical fertilizer they used in their vegetable gardening fields.

These female agents helped women to learn the techniques of making organic manure that they could safely use in the fields. This manure consisted of animal waste, household waste, rice straw, dead green leaves, and grasses572. It drew on all waste except plastics and tin cans. After collecting these waste items, the women watered them so that they could ferment. Nana Diarra, a very dynamic female extension officer working with women from the villages in the N'Débougou production zone, acknowledged to me that in order for the organic manure to be used in the fields it was necessary to let it ferment for at least one year573. However, the effects of this organic manure could endure for up to 5 years and, unlike chemical fertilizers, did not impede conservation of the harvest. During the field visits, I realized that there was an issue with the vegetable production. While there have been warehouse programs, such as those promoted by the Retail project in the mid-1990s, it must be noted that a very limited number of women

570 Ibid., p.54. 571 Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Bené Traoré in Ségou, November 06, 2016. 572 AON, 0368, Plan de Campagne 2001/2002: Version Définitive, Décembre 2000, p.10. Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Bené Traoré in Ségou, November 06, 2016; Interview by author with Nana Diarra in N'Débougou, November 25, 2016. During the 2001/2002 agricultural campaign this action aimed at increasing the production and use of organic manure was completed by training on the basic principles of mineral fertilization and the establishment of a fertilization plan. 573 Interview by author with Nana Diarra in N'Débougou, November 25, 2016.

175

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON benefited from such programs and that the problem of vegetables storage still remains in the ON zone. The spreading of organic manure preparation techniques among women by female extension officers thus served a twofold objective: first, to help these women increase their productivity, second, to contribute, to enabling women to store vegetables at home long enough for them to be sold in local markets at better prices.

5.3.5 Culinary demonstrations, and education about hygiene and well-being

From their first days working with women in the ON villages, female extension officers found that most of the children were malnourished. It was indeed very common to see children with distended stomachs, a sign of vitamin and calcium deficiency. According to Mariam Traore and Bintou Kani, this was due to the fact that the children only ate rice, without any other food intake that could offer additional vitamins574. According to these two female extension officers, it was later, more precisely in the 1990s, that the ON felt it necessary to introduce culinary demonstrations into its extension services. The primary objective was to teach women how to prepare and consume vegetable products they themselves produced, as they were not eating all the types of produce that they cultivated. Unfortunately, many of the vegetables than went uneaten by their producer were among the most nutritious and vitamin-rich (cabbages, carrots, peppers, lettuce, and fresh tomatoes, to name a few)575. In the daily sauces most of the women used only shallots, garlic, and pepper, with all the rest of the vegetables being sold in the markets of such places as Niono, Siengo, or Ségou. With the culinary demonstrations and advices provided by the female extension officers, women gradually began to include these vegetables in their daily consumption.

Female agricultural extension officers began with outreach sessions which often led to culinary demonstrations, especially for the benefit of children but also helped for the village population more generally. The officers first explained to women the benefits of the produce for themselves and other family members, especially for their children. Then they taught them how to prepare these vegetables. For instance, they taught women how to make tomato puree and,

574 Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 575 Interview by author with Bené Traoré in Ségou, November 06, 2016; Interview by author with Diénéba Diarra in Niono, November 18, 2016.

176

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON vegetable salads consisting of cucumber, fresh tomatoes, a little onion and oil576. These culinary demonstrations were done at the village chief’s residence where women gathered to learn how to cook food. After the cooking lesson, the officers invited each local women to taste the dish. Such culinary demonstrations brought dietary changes for women and their children, by allowing them to henceforward prepare some self-grown produce that they could eat before or after main meals. This change contributed to the fight against malnutrition and even helped reduce intervals of hunger during the day. Whereas farmers and their families previously ate only during the morning, noon, and evening meals, now they could prepare at any time a light meal such as a salad, using a variety of new ingredients. These women understood that it was not only necessary to sell their vegetables, but that it was very important to consume them too.

In the 1990s, the Office du Niger zone had already been experiencing a serious wood issue for three decades, largely due to previous droughts (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s) as well as to increasing deforestation. Before female extension officers’ arrival in the villages, it was very hard for women to find firewood for cooking and the little they could find was very inefficiently used. Due to this situation, there were frequent quarrels in the households, because men generally refused to look for or buy firewood for their wives whom they thought were wasting it. From their contact with village women, female extension officers wanted to solve this problem by building improved stoves. These improved fireplaces were intended to allow women to cook in a safe place and, above all, to prevent the wind from disturbing the fire when cooking food, thus reducing the consumption of wood577. Reducing wood consumption was also a way for the ON management to combat desertification in the zone arising from firewood cutting. The fight against drought and the desert’s advance, had also motivated a major campaign to popularize tree planting throughout the zone in late 1987. By the end of this campaign, 27 villages had planted more than 86 various plant species on 62 hectares, among them eucalyptus, niem, date palm, néré, and gomo578.

Building one of these improved stoves was a simple task which involved placing three stones around the pot and covering the whole thing with banco, leaving small holes for air to

576 Interview by author with Diénéba Diarra in Niono, November 18, 2016; Interview by author with Nana Diarra in N'Débougou, November 25, 2016; Interview by author with Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly in ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017. 577 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. 578 AON, 454b, Bilan de la Campagne 1986-1987, Juin 1987, pp.16-17.

177

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON enter. Female extension officers from all production zones were trained in the dissemination of these banco covered "improved three stone". According to many female extension officers, the improved stoves were widely adopted, because women often found them practical, and appreciated the protection against burns and fires, and especially the fact that they did not consume much firewood. Improved stoves thus became a great success among women farmers who found that cooking became a more pleasant activity579. The dual appeal of convenience and efficiency explains the diffusion of these improved stoves in most villages throughout the ON. It also seems that the success of this action among village women was due in large part to DPR staff dynamics and commitment, and to female extension officers who had repeatedly visited villages to identify families and needs, and to train and follow-up housewives. During field visit, I noted the presence of these improved stoves in almost every village and house I visited.

For the welfare and growth of babies in the villages, female extension officers also taught women how to prepare certain baby foods. Porridge for babies aged from 0 to 5 years was one such baby food and was made from cassava powder, fonio, rice, and a little peanut powder. Female extension officers had to invent a few things to really help women who were breastfeeding, because not all the ON villages received help or advice from nurses and doctors. It was necessary to do something to fill this void, which was what the extension workers were trying to do by showing women how to prepare a very nutritious baby food. Additionally, when female extension officers noticed that village women thought they needed to stop giving water to children with diarrhea, the officers taught the women how to make a drink of water, sugar, and salt to treat the condition580.

The ignorance of women farmers in dealing with diarrhea made worse for many infants the dehydration that is a major symptom of the condition. Extension officers’ success in making women understand that it was essential to replace the water lost by diarrheic children, along with other small but useful tips for health and well-being, helped build confidence in and esteem for the officers among village women581. According to Fatoumata Guindo, there even were some

579 Interview by author with Bené Traoré in Ségou, November 06, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Kadiatou Dembelé in N'Débougou, November 24, 2016. 580 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 581 In addition to advice and sensitization on hygiene and well-being, the female extension officers educated women about sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS. They explained to women how the symptomes of these diseases

178

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON women who confused female extension officers with health workers, telling them about some of their sexual health problems, such as white discharge, or small genital pimples. In such cases, said Fatoumata, the usual practice was to reassure the women, while directing them to the nearest health center for care and treatment582.

5.4 Female extension work’s impact on women farmers

Launched late, from the first half of the 1980s, the policy of increasing productivity and production gradually began to achieve success in the ON due to the rehabilitation of irrigated lands. Changes occured in the economic and social environment, particularly the restructuring of technical supervision, which made the ON irrigated lands attractive for farmers, men as well as women. In general, farmers adopted wholesale the technical innovations introduced in the zone by the Dutch development partners and proposed by the extension agents. This situation was also made possible by close collaboration with the ON management. At the coordination and monitoring level, since the 1994 restructuring, gender has been taken into account by the ON management, through the creation of the "Women and Development" unit within the Directorate of Equipment and Rural Development (DADR)583. Beyond its contribution to food security, it opted for a broader focus with the long-term goal of "creating conditions for sustainable, equitable, and participatory development" 584 . Some of the new technical innovations were transplanting, short straw varieties and high yield potential (from the Asian Green Revolution), and proper fertilizer doses, especially organic fertilizer, for vegetable gardening, and other activities585.

manifested. After such explanations, once a woman realized that she was showing signs of illness, she would approach the officers and ask how to seek care. It should be noted that state-level education about STIs only started in 2008. Moreover, when the state health agents came to a village to raise awareness about diseases (malaria, yellow fever, cholera, etc.), female officers helped by the village female extension officers gathered the women at a well- defined place, usually at the village chief's house. During the meeting, the extension officers followed along with the representation and, whenever needed, they explained to women what the health workers really said. 582 Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. 583 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, p.75. 584 AON, unnumbered document, Réné Osté, ARPON IV, Diagnostic Global de Genre et Dévelopment á l’Office du Niger. Rapport provisoire phase terrain, Bamako, Mai 2001, p.3. 585 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Des Paysans Sahéliens engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Cirad, Septembre 1995, p.1.

179

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

The use, for instance, of organic fertilizers can be situated in the framework of the Dutch project, ARPON. The purpose here was to find an alternative for women to the costly and overuse chemical fertilizers, as described above. However, it should be noted that this massive adoption of technical innovations did not mean that a uniform technical standard was imposed in the zone. This reflected the diversity of farms, but also that of plots conditions. This is why in the zone there was a marked heterogeneity of technical itineraries. This situation reflected in particular the existence of very different strategies employed by different farmers' families, whether these strategies were inherited from the past or introduced by the new opportunities offered by intensification. At the social level, despite some hopes raised by women, organization around the center of economic interests, for instance, the hulling and, threshing machines, or the transplanting of rice seedlings, continued to face persistent challenges.

The persistence and even the strengthening of exclusion mechanisms for women from indebted families was noted. Moreover, the women's groups found it a struggle to keep pace with the changes taking place in the zone, and the same was true of the state, which was slow in adopting management tools for the irrigated land suited to the new context of liberalization and, privatization. The state was also slow to adapt to the policy to promoting women, which beginning with the 1994 ON restructuring program, had involved a push for women to be granted land title like their male counterparts. The following sub-sections discuss the technical and economic progress, and the stymieing social dynamics that surrounded women farmers in the ON zone due to female extension work.

5.4.1 A technical and economic success

Different varieties of rice with different cycle lengths were cultivated in different crop years and on different sowing dates. Until the end of the 1990s, farmers obtained these inputs through credits available to them through FDV, also in the ARPON project framework. The major seed supplier since the beginning of the 2000s was the Association of Seed Producers (APS) with 180 producers which produced about 500 tons of rice seed in 2003/2004, representing one third of the ON’s needs. The APS was supported by the Research Development Unit and Observatory of Change (URDOC)586. Through URDOC began as a project to support

586 AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, p.54.

180

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON the rehabilitation perimeters within the framework of the Retail project in the Niono zone, its activities had progressively extended to the entire irrigated area of the Office du Niger. Seed supplies for vegetable gardening were organized at the level of the women's groups, which for certain crop species went as far as the Sikasso region to get them. This was the case, for example, with potatoes. During my stay in the zone, I also observed that some women's groups were giving money to the village female extension agent to buy seeds for them. While women were mostly recognized as being great vegetable garden cultivators and owners, men remained the most prolific rice producers in the zone. The new rice varieties responded very well to the manure and made achievable targets of 10 to 12 tons/ha per campaign 587. Contrary to the widespread use of organic manure in vegetable gardening as advocated for by female extension officers, the use of mineral manure was systematic and important in the rice fields.

Approximately 50 units/ha of PO2, O5 and 100 units/ha of nitrogen were used per agricultural campaign, which was more than triple what had been used before the rehabilitation. It should be noted that in some rice plots, farmers dared to exceed even these doses to be sure that at the harvest, with the good transplanting done by women, there would be no risk of poor yields. A significant increase in rice yields had been one of the results of the technical evolution across the zone. Whereas, before transplanting rice seedlings and intensification became general practices, the average rice yields was on the order of 1.5 t/ha and the best producers did not harvest more than 3 t/ha, the yields during the 1994-95 crop year averaged 5 to 8 t/ha. For the agricultural campaign of 1999-2000 the total production (on and off-season) of the whole zone was estimated at more than 326,000 tonnes588.

Behind the simple mathematical fact of this yield improvement, was hidden economic improvement for farmers and consequently for women. Numerous important signs of a rise in the standard of living for farmers living in the zone have been noted: improvement of the daily diet for one, wider access to consumer goods such as motorcycles, bicycles, household furniture, and more for another. Yet, the most important outcome of this improvement of farmers’ economic conditions was the fact that some household heads were now responsible for the expenses formerly borne by women alone, such as condiments for daily meals. One could also note a

587 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Des Paysans Sahéliens engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Cirad, Septembre 1995, p.7. 588 AON, 0368, Plan de Campagne 2001/2002: Version Définitive, Décembre 2000, p.79.

181

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON variable but significant increase in the capital available to many women (personal income, livestock, jewelry, and so forth)589. In addition to the rice farming system (transplanting rice seedlings, post-harvest machines such as hullers and threshers), which has played a large part in this increase in women’s economic capital, there was vegetable gardening. Women from the Kunawolo group in the M'Béwani production zone told me that they were earning a little more money from the products of their vegetable garden, especially with the rapid expansion of markets since the early 2000s. A good harvest of shallots that was well stored could earn between 189 and 283 dollards. The sale of peppers, meanwhile, could bring provide up to 48 dollars per day. This commercialization of vegetable garden produces preferentially took place in weekly markets within the zone590. The Niono market, earned its reputation due to the numerous varieties of vegetables which arrived there every Sunday.

Thus, presented with the technical innovations introduced from the outside through female extension officers and in the face of greater global economic and political changes that affected the zone until the decade of 2000, women were not left passive subjects of local development. Their own dynamism was expressed in rice fields, vegetable gardens, around the hulling machines and threshers, in the weekly markets, and in the multiple other activities they developed. These activities included local soap making, and fabric dyeing (an activity that remains highly appreciated by local people). The common thread connecting all of these activities was women’s great desire to build sustainable economic capital591. By doing so, many women came trustworthy and eligible for credit by local banks. According to Mariam Diarra, the representative of Farmers Promotion Organization (POP) in the M'Béwani production zone, women of this zone, during the agricultural campaign of 2009/2010, had benefited from a credit

589 Interview by author with Yaya Diarra in Ségou, November 08, 2016; Comments from Fatouma Samaké during interview by author with Salimata Coulibaly, and Nafissatou Coulibaly in Kando, April 13, 2017; AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin et Yacouba Coulibaly, Des Paysans Sahéliens engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Cirad, Septembre 1995, p.8. 590 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016. 591 Most women's groups in the ON had their own savings bank where they kept small sums of money. After each vegetable gardening campaign, each of the group’s members put around 10 dollars into the fund. If a member experienced a money issue, they took from the fund to give her credit. The women had only the sum borrowed, without any interest. If she had taken, for instance, 57 dollars, then she was expected to repay the same amount after the next campaign.

182

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON total estimated at 123 thousand dollars in order to carry out their farm (vegetable gardening) and non-farm activities.

Mariam Diarra continued by telling me that, women were very good borrowers, because they reimbursed their loans time, and that was the reason why financial institutions trusted them with credit. This credit came from financial institutions like the Malian Development Bank (BMD), the National Bank for Agricultural Development (BNDA), and credit unions like Niessigiso. As the saying goes, Mariam told me, good accounts make good friends592. Thus, to summarize this subsection, the technological and economic changes in the zone since the first half of the 1980s allowed women to express objectives other than simply meeting the needs of the family labor force in the rice fields in order to help their husbands avoid eviction from the colonat, as aspiration to which most women had been limited by the situation in the 1960s and 1970s. These earlier objectives remain to some degree, of course, but now exist alongside monetary objectives and the gaining of access to consumer products, as well as debt repayment and capitalization objectives both on the farm―such as the purchase of livestock, hullers, threshers, and agricultural equipment especially for vegetable gardening―and outside the farm, such as the schooling of children, preparation for their children’s marriages, and housing purchases, to name but a few.

5.4.2 More stymieing social and institutional dynamics

Technically, women proved quite dynamic, both in their willingness and ability to adopt innovations and to re-interpret them so as to adapt them to the increasingly global context of their activities. Economically, it was the same, as demonstrated, for example, by the development of vegetable gardening in respond to the increasing openness of local and national markets, or by the use of hulling machines to maximize paddy value and increase income593. However, at the social level, these dynamics proved more difficult to translated or put in place, to the detriment of one part of the population: women. Nevertheless, the analysis of female extension work’s impact on the economic situation of women in the ON zone revealed specific gains that should be sustained and strengthened in order to improve their social situation, and

592 Interview by author with Mariam Diarra in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 593 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Des Paysans Sahéliens engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Cirad, Septembre 1995, p.12.

183

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON these economic achievements have had some positive influence on the social position of women in the ON. These included a gradual fading of prejudices about women’s management capacity. Additionally, more and more men were in favor of women's access to land, to credit, and to extension services and training. As a result of these changes, women's confidence in themselves and their abilities increased; because they were increasingly able to not only analyze their problems, but also to indicate possible solutions594.

However, the innovation movement promoted by the ON management and largely supported by its Dutch development partners through the female extension work did not affect all women in the area because many were excluded. Left out, for instance, were the wives of settlers who had been evicted from their plots in the past due to indebtedness or poor production, as well as women who were unable to gain access to land for rice farming or gardening. As seen during the field visits and as argued by Astou Diop Diagne, the author of a gender assessment study in the ON zone, at the regulatory level women faced no more constraints than men when applying for an irrigated parcel allocation, administrative procedures failed to facilitate following-up on women’s files595. This was because the procedures did not take into account women’s social position.

The issue was, that the request for an allocation of land had to first be sent to the village association, which expressed its opinion before sending it to the joint committee, and only men sat on the village association also the Joint committee. However, given the land pressure that prevailed in the ON, most of the men were not favor women taking plots, which left little chance of a woman reaping the benefits of possessing land. In such a context, women were forced to rent or borrow the parcels of others596. This dependence put them at the mercy of the landowners, limited their productive capacity and especially hindered their social development. This hindrance arose from the fact that such a situation of dependence would not allow women to get rid of family structures that remained inherently patriarchal, granting little decision-making and management power to women in the farming system. On the contrary, in this context, these structures would continue to weigh heavily on the status of women in the family and in society.

594 AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, p.73. 595 Ibid., p.63. 596 Interview by author with Oumou Sankaré, Noukhoum Mariko, Aboubacar Koné, and Astan Tamboura in B2 Banisraela, March 21 2017; Interview by author with Maimouna Coulibaly in Molodo Centre, April 04, 2017.

184

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

They would largely contribute to limiting their educational opportunities, their decision-making abilities and their participation in community life, where they were supposed to share the same opportunities as men in the aftermath of the women's promotion policy promulgated in the zone with the international community’s help.

In the ON zone, Dutch partners helped local management organized village women into women's economic interest groups. In this women's organization process, female extension officers played an important role because it was them who convinced women, who initially knew only traditional forms of group help, to agree to set up formal organizations around income- generating activities such as threshing, hulling, vegetable gardening, and so forth. According to Bintou Kani, to encourage women to organize themselves, female agents spread the idea that if they did not organize as a group they could not benefit from funding or receive post-harvest machines from ARPON or any other donor present in the zone. Female extension officers started with those women who agreed to organize themselves in women's economic interest groupings. With the support of the ARPON project, some groups received a huller, or a mill, and others obtained a threshing machine597. It should be noted, though, that many of these groups operated in the informal sector, especially after the end of the ARPON project in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Very few groups are official acknowledged by the ON management. Interviews we had with some women's groups revealed a lack of mastery of the process and even the usefulness of having this recognition (many members had neither birth certificate nor identity card). Moreover, for many of these groups the level of organization does not go beyond the creation of an office whose members were too few to understand and fill the various roles and tasks required of an economic group. To this must be added the low level of female literacy, which continues to exert a decisive effect on the capacity and skills of group members598. Only with a level of literacy sufficient to enable understanding and master of the ON management’s institutional mechanisms

597 Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017; Interview by author with Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani in Marakala, October 31, 2016. 598 Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016; Interview by author with Bené Traoré in Ségou, November 06, 2016.

185

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON could female extension officers adequately help, prepare, and accompany some women on the given circumstances599.

In the zone, the ON management was strongly involved in the supervision and monitoring of women, as attested by the DPR, which supported the enterprise and its partners in this task. At the level of coordinating and monitoring all activities that concerned women since the 1994 ON restructuring program, the gender approach had been taken care of through the creation of the "Women and Development" division within the Directorate of Equipment and Rural Development (DADR) 600 . There was thus a willingness on the part of the general management of the ON to take into account all the thorny issue of gender in the zone, but there was a weak realization of proposed improvements which appeared mostly related to institutional weakness. In practice it has been suggested that the "Woman and Development" division existed simply to promote women’s interests within their own groupings, without any analogous advancement in the production zones. Given the central position of the ON management this became a handicap for the promotion of equity and equality between men and women throughout the zone, especially in the management of the women’s main interests.

With regard to monitoring, there was a problem in that female extension officers who were the contact persons for this service in the field depended administratively on the services of the zones’ Rural Councils. Even if Zones offered no real mechanism for direct follow-up, though, one must recognize that female officers were doing their best to assist and accompany women as needed. Indeed, the program "Woman and Development" was managed from the DADR, but it relied very heavily on female extension officers for its execution. In this situation, the activities of the "Women and Development" program were often superimposed on the daily program of female extension officers, which, in terms of rural development, constituted a hindrance to in the steady progress of their work with the ON’s women farmers.

599 Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Astou D. Diagne, Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, p.71. 600 AON, unnumbered document, Résultat de l’étude diagnostic des activités féminines Niono-Kokry-Volet féminin, DPR, “Document XY, not dated, “n.p.”

186

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON

5.5 Conclusion

The essential outcome that emerged from women’s introduction into the ON extension services initially by ARPON was that these female extension officers, in direct collaboration with women farmers, were able to help the latter reflect on their problems, organize them, identify solutions, plan actions, carry out the program which was based especially on women's interests and evaluate this program. After the Dutch withdrawal and the ARPON project’s end, female extension agents continued to work with women in the ON villages, now under the direct and sole responsibility of the ON management. The enterprise management felt obligated to continue the women’s development approach in the ON irrigated lands. Indeed, women farmers were increasingly aware of their need for more accessible and open extension services to meet their economic requirements. There was no longer any question that things would go back to as they had been before the arrival of the Dutch. On the contrary and for the better, the changes set in motion needed to continue developing and for that to happen, it was necessary for women to benefit, on the same footing as their male counterparts, from new information and technologies.

Although the female extension officers’ approach to their work throughout the whole zone could scarcely be described as homogeneous, the basic principles remained the same. It was generally a matter of sensitizing women who played important and ever-increasing roles in the rice farming system and gardening, and of persuading them of the opportunity for decision- making regarding the direction of crop diversification for food self-sufficiency. Further, as part of the women's advancement policy, which was becoming increasingly important in the zone’s rural development process, attention was also given to women's non-farm activities, more precisely on their hygiene, nutritional and bodily well-being.

These female extension workers’ services contributed to fostering a climate of trust in women farmers and greater receptiveness to the messages that the ON management and its development partners wanted to convey in terms of rural development. Women felt more and more involved in development actions. For instance, vegetable gardening not only increased their income but also improved the quality of their cooking and daily food. While these innovations led to technological and socio-economical advances, a number of limitations have also been detected. In order for the female extension agents’ work, regarding the promotion and empowerment of women in the ON, to be more visible and complete, they required more time

187

Chapter 5: Women Entry into Extension Services in ON and freedom of action. Despite the few success stories here and there, women in the ON villages remain absent from all of the enterprise management’s structures of consultation. Thus, they do not participate in the decision-making that concerned them directly (allocation of gardening parcels, payment of water fees, etc.). There remains a lack of specific mesures adopted to promote better gender parity in the local development process.

188

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

6.0 Development in the Office du Niger within the context of privatization and structural adjustment programs, 1990-2010

6.1 Introduction

During the 1970s (1973-1974) and early 1980s (1984-1985) periods, many Sub-Saharan Africa countries were faced with a chronic economic crisis, that almost brought their economic development process to a halt. One of the main causes of this crisis was the droughts of the early 1970s and 1980s. Some scholars, however, listed other political and economic reasons to explain the crisis the continent was facing. For these scholars, the problem of under-development in Africa cannot be explained outside the impact of colonialism, neo-colonialism, Cold War, and dependency601. While these factors are of undeniable importance, drought as already argued had a prominent place in the popular understanding of the continent’s poverty602. These droughts' consequences have caused much hardship for the economies of some African countries. In Mali, like many other Sahelian countries, the early 1970s and 1980s droughts caused a very discomforting political and economic situation, pushing countries to resort to taking on international debt to try to satisfy the national budgetary and international aid requirements necessary to feed people and fill the void left by very low agricultural production. In the following sentences Robert Mazeyrac, ambassador of France in Bamako, described the political and economic situation in Mali in 1977603:

The Malian economy is characterized by its vulnerability in two respects: (1) the productive apparatus, mainly agricultural, is very sensitive to drought and is dependent on links with coastal countries, including ports, railways, and roads which respond only imperfectly and without giving any priority to Malian needs. 2) Both productive and administrative state apparatus operate in a defective and deficient manner because of the disorderly management of state enterprises and the pressure of job applications from graduates of various levels. The government is thus led to practice a recruitment policy that is incompatible both with the demands of profitability of the productive sector and with the state budget's possibilities. Mazeyrac here highlights how, in the aftermath of the early 1970s drought, the country experienced difficulties not just in the agricultural field but also in the administrative field. The

601 Alumona M. Ikenna, Understanding the crisis of development in Africa: Reflections on Bedford Umez’s analysis, 2009, pp.354-355, https://www.researchgate.net › publication › 25558347, (accessed: 04-10-2019). 602 Michael Mortimore, Adapting to Drought. Farmers, Famines and Desertification in West Africa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p.3. 603 AMAEF, Robert Mazeyrac, ambassador of France in Bamako, Conférence de Dakar, Les atouts et les handicaps de l’economie Malienne, 23 Mars 1977, “Document XY “n.p.”

189

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 loopholes in administration led to an amplification of the crisis, thus creating a malfunction in several areas of the state apparatus. In such times of crisis, however, Mali could no longer afford to waste its natural resources and had no reason not to restructure its economy. As mentioned in the previous chapters, the restructuring program of the Office du Niger, considered the granary of Mali, took place in this context of crisis.

For Mali, the 1970s were labelled as the lost decade for development since its main agricultural area, the Office du Niger, failed to increase productivity and production in order to help the government achieve its food self-sufficiency policy. In response to this economic crisis, the government had little choice but to “adjust” in a serious effort to stop the disastrous trend604. Like several other countries in the region, between June 1986 and July 1987 Mali was rushed or forced to adjust its economy including the ON, with or without pressure and support from the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the Germany Development Bank, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW), and the other international donors (i.e. the Netherlands and France) already engaged in the country’s development process605. Therefore, as Patrick Allan Sharma and others argues, while the specifics of structural adjustment programs varied from one country to another, some of the policies adopted included a greater reliance on market forces, and privatization, and less on direct state intervention and control606. In the case of the ON, the government was forced to reform. As argued by Marc Frey, the ON constituted an excellent case for the implementation of the new market-oriented, coercive development doctrines and practices607.

During the enterprise restructuring program, reforms took place in a context of privatization and structural adjustment policies which intervened in most Sub-Saharan Africa countries. Many discussions and meetings were held between the Malian government, the ON

604 Ali Musa, Privatisation in Africa. The Experience of Soudan and Eriteria with an introduction by Eckhard Dittrich: Privatisation-Lessons from Africa, (München: Wissenschaftsedition im Rainer Hampp Verlag, 2000), p.44. 605 It should be noted that in 1978 the World Bank provided to the ON a technical assistance project. However, this project had failed to demonstrate the feasibility of rehabilitating 35, 000 hectares. For more information on this see Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a Large Irrigation Scheme Work. A Case Study from Mali, (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 2005), 32-33. 606 Patrick A. Sharma, Robert McNamara’s Other War. The World Bank and the International Development, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 155; Devaki Jain, “Looking Back at the South Commission”, Economic & Political Weekly vol lI, no. 9 (February 2016): 64. 607 Marc Frey, “Doctrines and Practices of Agrarian Development: The Case of the Office du Niger in Mali”, in Rural Development in the Twentieth Century: International Perspectives, ed. Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger, (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2017), 30.

190

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 officials, and the donors in order to determine the way in which such a restructuring program could be implemented. The ON's restructuring program included actions such as re-development and support for agricultural development. This support for agricultural development could only be achieved in a reorganized ON re-focused around its essential missions: project management, water management and maintenance of developed land, land management and allocation of plots, and support to farmers608. So, the ON management itself was to be restructured by redefining the enterprise's different missions. To achieve this restructuring program, international donors agreed to take over the financing of certain parts.

The Netherlands was supposed to continuing the ARPON project, the World Bank was to guarantee the ON consolidation project including the rehabilitation of the Siengo storage locker, the Gruber-Nord Canal, the reorganization of the ON, and various interventions. The Central Economic Co-operation Fund (CCCE) had to finance the rehabilitation of the Retail storage locker and support the financial restructuring of the ON, the European Community (FED) was to finance the rehabilitation of the Macina zone and support the village associations, while the Federal Republic of Germany was to rehabilitate the N'Débougou zone, and so on. Rehabilitation works financed by the Agence Francaise de Développement (AFD) covered 1395 hectares in Niono (Retail 3 Project) and 2100 hectares in Molodo. It should be noted that rehabilitation work in Molodo would only start in 1999. In the N'Débougou zone, out of 2300 hectares financed by the KFW and the World Bank, 1154 were rehabilitated in 1996 and 972 in 1997, about 2126 hectares in total or 92.43% of what was forecast. In the Macina zone, none of the planned 2000- hectare rehabilitation was realized. The rehabilitation of 700 of these hectares was to be supported by the IDB, while the remaining 1300 were to be supported by the FED. The rehabilitaion of secondary networks in the Kouroumari zone was carried out on-5450 hectares using financing from ARPON project609.

However, it must be noted that it took quite a long time before the Malians came to an agreement with donors about reforms. Aw and Diemer assert that it was only in 1992 that the

608 AON, 33, Présentation de l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1993, p.7. 609 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants Agricoles 1996-1998, Tome 2: Evaluation Des Engagements, Septembre 1998, p.20.

191

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 government made a commitment to consolidate the reforms610. This delay was not surprising because restructuring the ON implied that government and the enterprise management would depart from policies and procedures applied for many years and also supposed that adequate incentives would be given to farmers in order for them to participate in the development process 611 . Not all rehabilitation projects have been completed. This failure to achieve the rehabilitation objectives was linked to the low capacity to mobilize funds from the Malian government services, in particular the ON, and the heavy and lengthy procedures for awarding public contracts. The performance of the irrigated perimeter renovation works for the period of 1996-1998 is presented in the following table 5.

610 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 87. 611 WBGA, Folder 807349, Claude Blanchi to Files, Office du Niger (ON), Discussion with Malian Delegation in Washington, 28 February 1983, p.1.

192

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Table 5: Office du Niger irrigated lands rehabilitation's situation.

1996 1997 1998 Total Zones/ PA RA R PA RA R% PA RA R PA RA R Project (ha) (ha) (%) (ha) (%) (ha) (ha) (ha) (%) (ha) (ha) (%) Niono Retail 3 600 0 0.00 795 632 79.50 0 763 0.00 1395 1395 100.00 N’Débougou N’Débougou & 1600 1154 72.12 700 972 138.85 0 0 0.00 2300 2126 92.43 Siengo projects Macina 400 0 0.00 300 0 0.00 400 0 0.00 700 0 0.00 BID project 0 0 0.00 500 0 0.00 400 0 0.00 1300 0 0.00 FED project Molodo CFD project 500 0 0.00 800 0 0.00 800 0 0.00 2100 0 0.00 Kouroumari ARPON 1800 1800 100.00 1800 1800 100.00 1850 1850 100.00 5450 5450 100.00 project Total 4900 2954 60.28 4895 3404 69.54 3450 2613 75.73 13245 8971 67.73

Source: AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants Agricoles 1996-1998, Tome 2: Evaluation Des Engagements, Septembre 1998, p. NB: PA=Planned areas, RA= Realized areas.

193

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Coordination with donors was substantial in particular on sectoral issues, even though the Malian government continued to favor bilateral negotiations over separate projects in the ON rather than multilateral negotiations for a single investment plan. This approach was much criticized by the WB representatives in meetings and discussions with the local authorities and ON officials. The WB representatives felt that this approach was not only inefficient and costly but also risky, as each donor insisted on implementing their own technical approach for restructuring investment, extension, water management, cultural practices, and so on. According to the representatives of the WB appraisal mission, which took place from June 16 through July 10, 1986, the risk was that the ON was going to undertake an investment program beyond its implementation capacity, and that an unmanageable diversity of technical approaches would be introduced612. However, it should be noted that this controversy was only on the surface about the different approaches of different donors. The Malian government in fact stalled for years on implementing the reforms the WB desired in the hope that it could, by talking to the individual donors on an individual basis, play them against each other. Once the donors formed a ‘united front’, the Malian government had two options: a) to not engage in reforms proposed by the bank but to receive no money or b) to swallow what the donors demanded. The Malian government chose the second option, some seeing this as a severe infringement on the country’s sovereignty.

The restructuring resulted in the promulgation of the Law 94-004 of 09-03-1994 establishing the new ON. This law defined the new missions and authority of the ON, fixed the amount of the initial endowment from the state, and specified the resources which were to ensure its functioning613. As the new ON no longer had the capacity to carry out commercial and industrial activities, the activities of transport, processing, agricultural credit, mechanical work, and the manufacture of agricultural equipment were to be taken over by farmers themselves or by the private sector. The ON was effectively being dismantled as a parastatal. Indeed, the new role of the ON defined by the government was supposed to make it an enterprise provider of services for the benefit of farmers, of an optimal water supply of, and of technical extension614. Thus, the Niono Works Center, the Village Development Fund, the Assembly Workshop of

612 WBGA, Folder 807354, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project-Issues Paper, 1986, p.10. 613 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.38. 614 AON, unnumbered document, Réhabilitation de l’Office du Niger. Réunion des Bailleurs de Fonds, 9 et 10 avril 1986, avril 1986, p.20.

194

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Agricultural Materials, the Agricultural Training Center, the Seed Farm, and the industrial mills were removed from the administration and management of the ON. Those organizations which were to be privatized were removed from the ON’s ownership, while those to be leased out were retained by the ON, even though the zone’s management would no longer have any control over them615.

The restructuring was intended, according to the enterprise officials and their international partners as well as the Malian government authorities, to creating the optimal conditions for the ON zone to become a development tent pole based on irrigated rice cultivation. The guiding principles for restructuring were set out in the letter No.00012/MDRE/CAB/SP/C of 15 January 1993 with regard to the development policy of the national rice sector616. The restructuring also entailed redefining the missions of the enterprise by disengaging it from all activities of a directly industrial and commercial nature that the private sector was likely to better control. In Africa, the political context of structural adjustment was marked by the idea that the state was not the best driver of development. Some of the conditionalities imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions reflected the determination of the donors to encourage the dismantling of the entrepreneurial state by promoting the private sector.

Some scholars interested in the politics of structural adjustment in Africa have stressed the prominence of this trend. Thandika Mkandawire and Adebayo Olukoshi referred to it when they wrote: “public utilities deemed viable were privatized to strengthen the private sector to the detriment of the state”617. The main argument for pursuing this course was to reduce protectionist trade policies and the governments’ monopolies in order to allow the competition which is so vital for increasing productivity and encouraging investments. However, many saw these reforms as not beneficial to a large part of the African population, specifically, the poor. As argued by Finn Tarp, the attention drawn to the human dimensions of structural adjustment has shown that

615 Ibid., p.94. 616 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.31. 617 Thandika Mkandawire and Olukoshi Adebayo, Between Liberalisation and Oppression: The Politics of Structural Adjustment in Africa, (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1995), 112.

195

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 conventional programs of the Bretton Woods institutions were not only inadequate, but had in fact made matters worse, rather than better618.

Under the influence of these Bretton Woods institutions, the ON, as Simeon Ibi Ayayi has explained, was moving towards greater privatization and export orientation619. Thus, the four main ON restructuring program components were as follows: (1) the progressive disengagement of the ON from certain activities that could be performed by other economic agents in line with the government’s policy of limiting the role of public enterprises; (2) policies concerning pricing and marketing of paddy and rice that aimed to determine prices through market mechanisms and to limit the role of the public sector; (3) securing farmers’ land rights by giving them land occupancy permits; and (4) the establishment of agricultural credit providing farmers the required means for rice intensification620.

In order to arrive at an understanding of what happened during the 1990s in the ON, why it happened and which challenges these developments entailed for the furthering of the women promotion policy, some questions are being raised by this chapter. Who introduced the new policies in the ON and with which arguments? How did the new policies play out for women? What did the new policies mean for women’s lives? How did ON women position themselves within the new policies and the way they played out in practice? Analysis in this chapter will demonstrate that by the 1990s the donors were collaborating in their efforts to support the ON in continuing its development process in a way which included better involving women. By better involving women, I mean ensuring their access to ressources such as water, land, agricultural credit, and agricultural extension services, among others on equal terms with their male counterparts, as well as a commitment to ensuring that women benefited from the technologies which donors had make available or easier to access. During the restructuring process these ON women benefited from a promotion policy which simply followed that started by the Dutch during the first half of the 1980s.

618 Finn Tarp, Stabilization and Structural Adjustment. Macroeconomic Frameworks for Analysing the Crisis in Sub- Saharan Africa, (London: Routledge, 1993), 143. 619 Simon I. Ajayi, “The State of Research on the Macroeconomic Effectiveness of Structural Adjustment Programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa”, in: Van Der Hoeven and Fred Van Der Kraaij, (eds), Structural Adjustment and Beyond in Sub-Saharan Africa, (The Hague, The Netherlands: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS), 1994), p.54. 620 WBGA, Folder 807350, Dominique Lallement to Jacques Guillot-Lageat, Office du Niger-Appraisal Mission. Back-to-Office Report/Debriefing, 18 May 1984, “p.n.”

196

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

When in the 1980s the World Bank accepted responsibility for supporting the irrigation scheme restructuring program it was obvious that the financial institution was going to take into consideration women's concerns. This was to be expected because, firstly, already in the 1970s the women in development approach was in full swing within the United Nations, which organized conferences about it and made recommendations urging development agencies, including the World Bank, to pay attention to women in development621. Secondly, the WB’s focus on women could also be explained by the fact that earlier in the 1980s, the WB had already adopted into its agenda, the objectives of WID in order to take into account women’s interest. According to Nüket Kardam, the objectives of WID policy are phrased to fit the objective of the bank, that is, the efficient and effective use of bank loans622. However, contrary to what some scholars have said concerning the ON restructuring program, one shall see that not all was rosy for these women.

6.2 International donors acting for the Office du Niger restructuring program

The critical situation that prevailed in the ON before the restructuring program was characterized by the degradation of the basic tool of production (hydraulic network, irrigated surfaces) entailing the abandonment of nearly 30% of the zone; a significant decline in production and productivity; a precarious food situation for farmers; and financial problems which resulted in an operating deficit estimated to be about four million dollars in 1991, and which affected a large number of staff623. The government, concerned about this situation, appealed for international aid. Donors reacted favorably by encouraging Malian authorities and the ON management to undertake reforms, through the latter parties often judged the suggested reforms to be restrictive. These reforms included measures such as the liberalization of paddy marketing, the abolition of the economic police, the establishment of village associations, the adoption of a contractual system for securing land tenure, the establishment of a joint secondary network maintenance management, and a land management program, among other

621 Nüket Kardam, “The Adaptability of International Development Agencies: The Response of the World Bank to Women in Development”, in Women, International Development and Politics ed. Staudt Kathleen (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 137. 622 Ibid., p.138. 623 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants Agricoles, Tome 1: Introduction, Synthèse et Recommandations, Septembre 1998, p.8; AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.31.

197

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 suggestions.624 The main goal of these measures was to allow the majority of farmers, men as well as women, to have the means and the freedom of action necessary to increase their income in a sustainable way.

In 1991, popular protests led to a military coup against the Malian president, General Moussa Traoré625. Since then, the new slogan of the government has been democratization and development. A new page in the history of the country was turned with a civilian government that identified itself with a democratic and liberal approach, the opposite of what the country had known in the 1980s under an authoritarian military regime which placed the interests of its political party before those of the people especially those who lived in rural areas. The commitment of the new government to democratization and development following the coup afforded farmers in Mali in general and in the ON in particular a previously unheard of measures of constitutional protection and political legitimacy626. In 1993 the government of Mali, in line with its donors’ policy, specified its orientations concerning the ON restructuring program in a letter known as “the Policy of Development of the National Rice Industry". Malian authorities set up a government General Delegation in charge of the ON restructuring under the authority of then Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who is the current president of Mali. Some rescue measures from that program were: the withdrawal of the ON from all commercial activities, and the redefining of the new functions of the ON, i.e. the rehabilitation and maintenance of the hydraulic system, water management, and the rural councils627. Therefore, the question one is asking here is what ideas did donors put forward to reach agreement with the Malian side about the ON restructuring program?

624 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants Agricoles, Tome 1: Introduction, Synthèse et Recommandations, Septembre 1998, p.8. 625 Susanna D. Wing, Mali’s Precarious Democracy and the Causes of Conflict, (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2013), 3. 626 James R. Bingen, Cotton, democracy and development in Mali, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 268. 627 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants Agricoles, Tome 1: Introduction, Synthèse et Recommandations, Septembre 1998, p.9; WBGA, Folder 807363, Dominique Lallement to Jacques Guillot-Lageat, Mali-Consolidation of the Office du Niger-Appraisal Mission June 15-July 7 1986-Summary of Conclusions,1986, “p.n.”

198

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

6.2.1 Donors and their main arguments about the Office du Niger restructuring program

When donors, (i.e. France, Germany, and the World Bank) in 1986 decided to support the restructuring program, they definitely realized that the state of the hydraulic system, the working and living conditions of farmers especially that of women, and the financial and administrative situation of the ON were very alarming. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Dutch involvement in the zone through the ARPON project, some important development measures had already been taken into account. In 1982/83 about 1,500 hectares were rehabilited in the sector of Niono, among others628, farmers’ organization especially women’s associations enable more profitable management of growers’ farm and non-farm activities, and post-harvest machinery was introduced, among other improvements. In 1986, at the beginning of negotiations, the World Bank mission in the ON mentioned the organization of maintenance functions, the financial restructuring, and the management sector as being the most difficult areas to resolve629.

As a result, before starting negotiations with Malian authorities and the ON officials, the WB mission indicated that its clients had to first nominate a general manager of the enterprise. For the World Bank it was very difficult to appraise a project without the management team in place. Here is how David Steeds, chief of the Division of Agricultural Projects Region West Africa, described the donors’ position about negotiations630:

The government is fully aware of our position. We should proceed as rapidly as possible to the loan committee but maintained the appointment of a satisfactory director general as a condition of negociations. The government’s failure to appoint a director general within the next two months would undoubtedly delay project processing. In fact, bank representatives could scarcely conceive that an enterprise like the ON, then in a most complicated situation, had only an acting general manager who had no decision-making power631. What seems to have been in evidence here is the perception that the recipient country’s public administration was too weak and inefficient. Trying to reforming the administrative

628 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.33. 629 WBGA, Folder 807353, Dominique Lallement to Jacques Guillot-Lageat, Office du Niger-Appraisal Mission. Back-to-Office Report/Debriefing, 05 August 1986, “p.n.” 630 WBGA, Folder 807363, David R. Steeds to T. Mc. Lallement, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project-Issues Paper, October 1986, “p.n.” 631 Ibid., “p.n.” Other conditions set out by the donors before the beginning of the negociations with Malian officials were the audits of accounting and the financial statement of the ON, establishment of the team of consultants for organization and training, and an approval of a draft “contract-plan”.

199

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 structures in place in order to make them more efficient was part of the structural adjustment policies followed by this financial institution in many developing countries. According to the bank’s beliefs, the smaller a state was, the more efficient it became632. Further, we can also learn from this statement that the agricultural minister did not want to appoint a director, because it suited him well that he could control the ON. This meant a steady flow of funds into his personal coffers and those of the ministry. Moreover, so long as the agricultural minister held the ultimate authority, he could give jobs and promotion to whomever he chose. Donors saw this arrangement as facilitating corruption in the country. Eventually, the Malian government nominated a general director and discussions between the WB, the others donors, and the local authorities were opened. Also in early 1986 liberalized rice marketing in the ON and let the hullers come in, in addition to permitting the Cereals Market Reform Project (PRMC) to stimulate the private sector by guaranteeing credit to traders and village associations, especially women’s economic groupings633.

The appraisal mission led by the WB noted sectoral reforms that would make it possible to streamline the use of ON resources and stimulate production and productivity. What the donors wanted first was to bring the existing system in order, then consider a possible enlargement (investment). The Malians wanted both at the same time. In the end, the stakeholders agreed that investments in the hydraulic network could not be undertaken unless all network and plot rehabilitation works were finished and executed according to the norms guaranteeing the durability of works, and there was an increase in productivity sufficient to ensure the profitability of those investments 634 . The word “stakeholder” is the WB and development terminology. In the 1990s, in its poverty reduction policy process, the bank frequently used words like “governance” or “stakeholders” in order to highlight the period’s focus on the strength of managerial institutions and personnel and the quality of governance635. Also, in the ON case, the World Bank’s use of such terminology shows how its policy in the area was determined by a multilateral approach through the ON restructuring program. In other

632 Franco Moretti and Dominique Pestre, Bankspeak. “The Language of the World Bank Reports”, New Left Review 92, (Mars-April 2015): 88. 633 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 34. 634 WBGA, Folder 807363, Dominique Lallement to Jacques Guillot-Lageat, Mali-Consolidation of the Office du Niger-Appraisal Mission June 15-July 7 1986-Summary of Conclusions,1986, “p.n.” 635 Franco Moretti and Dominique Pestre, Bankspeak. “The Language of the World Bank Reports”, New Left Review 92, (Mars-April 2015): 81.

200

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 words, by “stakeholders” the bank meant the other development partners, donors or actors which were ready to help the Malian government and the ON management rehabilitate the irrigated land and allow local development processes, through the lens of the ON, to go on. It was in this context that donors formed a "united front" which led the Malian government to engage in reform.

In the donors’ view, the ON restructuring program was conceived as the first phase of a long-term project aimed at rehabilitating the ON and at increasing the agricultural production and productivity in the Inner Niger Delta region. This vision seems to be at the heart of the WB policy. However, in order to ensure the financial and economic viability of the rehabilitation investments, donors, especially the bank, called for continuing a series of policy reforms which included the gradual divestment by the ON of some of its activities. These reforms included the liberalization of trade and introduction of market-determined pricing for paddy and rice, increased security for farmers’ land tenure rights, and the provision of credit to farmers and traders. These are the conditions the WB wanted to introduce in order to achieve a more participatory development approach in the zone. In other words, the WB identified the ON’s problem as stemming from heavy-handed and excessive management involvement. The ON management was required to withdraw from certain activities that should instead be supported by the farmers themselves. This change was expected to lead to the emergence of a private sector in charge of industrial, commercial, supply, and engineering activities―all activities abandoned by the ON. What the WB and the others donors were seeking was greater inclusion of farmers in the development process.

After several discussions and meetings between stakeholders, this donors’ approach was generally well received by the ON and by the local government636, despite some reticence on the part of the local authorities. This reticence came from the fact that the ON management wanted an individual negotiation with each donor, while donors like the WB preferred to set up a multilateral discussion with all stakeholders interested in the ON. Local authorities were seemingly just being stubborn, having not provided any valid reasons for objecting to some of the interventions. However, the most crucial task at that moment was to save the ON lands, and

636 WBGA, Folder 807363, David R. Steeds to T. Mc. Lallement, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project-Issues Paper, October 1986,“p.n.”

201

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 for that the only important thing was to have a guarantee of the donors’ collaboration. The week prior to the donor meeting, the government announced that it would not increase producer and consumer prices in 1984/85 in order to contain inflationary pressures caused by the conversion to the CFA franc, but that it was committed to the policy of maintaining incentive prices for producers. This position was reiterated at the donors meeting. As argued by Aw and Diemer, not until 1988 did the donors achieve a united front which helped them negotiate formal goals637. After the formation of this united front, the stakeholders (donors as well the government and the ON officials) came to a general agreement on the approach to take for the rehabilitation of the ON, and on approaches to the main issues.

Of course, that the bank mission was intended to not only secure a commitment from the Malian government but also to get other donors interested in supporting the ON restructuring program to commit to a coordinated project. Coordination between the various donors would avoid problems, such as that mentioned by Aw and Diemer of different social and environmental values in the choice of structures that controlled water in the distribution system in the ARPON and Retail projects638. According to these authors, ARPON saw irrigation water as a common resource to be shared fairly among users. Its division structures—operated with little or no need for ON personnel—automatically gave each tertiary canal in its command area its share and offered little potential for conflict and illicit tampering. In contrast, Retail saw irrigation water as a commodity to be sold according to the volume consumed and water distribution as a service to be paid for639. The approach advocated by the ARPON project seems to most embrace the idea that farmers and especially women should be more included in the business of the company, in order to better participate in the process of local development. It should be noted here that it was this ARPON approach that had been practiced on the ON irrigated land, because not only did the farmers maintain the tertiary canals, but they also paid for their water consumption, with the water fee.

At the April 1986 meeting in Bamako, an agreement was to be implemented as it would become a vehicle for all donors to agree on the contract-plan, including the investment plans and

637 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 37. 638 Ibid., p.34. 639 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 34-35.

202

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 the performance indicators. After this agreement was reached the plan envisaged major rehabilitation works on the largest dam, the Marakala Dam, on the Sahel irrigation system, and on the Macina system, as well as the consolidation of the maintenance system640. During a signing ceremony on Friday, June 17 that same year, Nouhoum Samassékou, ambassador of the Malian Republic to the United States, signed the documents whereby the WB group approved 36 credits to Mali totaling over four hundred million dollars. Of these operations, 13 addressed agriculture and related activities, including some notable successes, such as cotton and cereals in the southern region641. The ON was in a position to guarantee a significant portion of Mali’s food and to substitute domestic products for import and for food aid. After a lengthy discussion and negotiations between stakeholders, the enterprise also became one of the major beneficiaries of funds and support from France, Germany, Netherlands, and the European Union’s Development Fund (EDF) in the framework of the restructuring program, all of these, despite the fact that though until 1992 the government of Mali was still stalling on consolidation of reforms642.

6.2.2 The new Office du Niger and the zone’s decentralization

According to its previous status, the ON was an “Industrial and Commercial Public Enterprise” (EPIC) which included land development, creation and management of processing plants, wholesale marketing of commodities produced in the area under its jurisdiction, and the carrying-out of studies and research to achieve all of these objectives. During the negotiation between local authorities and donors, the WB mentioned its concerns about the large number of functions assumed by the ON. The WB representatives saw this accumulation of functions as having caused the enterprise to develop a very heavy and inefficient bureaucracy643. In other words, the Malians saw the ON problems as resulting from a lack of foreign aid, whereas the donors saw them as a result of Malian deficiencies. This difference in perspectives would go some way towards explaining, the length of the bargaining process leading up to the agreement between the two stakeholders. With discussions started in the second half of the 1980s, the

640 WBGA, Folder 807363, David R. Steeds to T. Mc. Lallement, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project-Issues Paper, October 1986, “p.n.” 641 WBGA, Folder 807363, Dominique Lallement to E. V.K. Jaycox, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project- Signing Ceremony, June 1988, “p.n.” 642 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 41. 643 WBGA, Folder 807353, Dominique Lallement to Jacques Guillot-Lageat, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project-Updated Project Brief, May 1984, p.3.

203

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 agreement between the Malian Government and donors only came into play in the first half of the 1990s. It was in January 1993 that the government of Mali finally committed to the reorganization of the ON, and even then, under very high pressure from donors.

Donors had from the beginning encouraged and demanded that the Malian government and the ON authorities redefine the ON’s role and function. Whereas the ON was originally a production organization, mainly in the rice sector, in the future its main function was to be that of a service provider for the benefit of independent farmers who would pay for services rendered in kind (rice) for a short period of time, and thereafter in cash. According to the chairman of the donor co-ordination meeting, what the donors were looking to do was to oblige the ON to motivate and help the peasants and allow them to obtain an incentivizing price for their production644. It was pointed out by donors that the producer price was just one factor among others in encouraging farmers to increase their output, and a whole set of factors must be taken into consideration. These factors were including marketing, royalties, status, tenure security, and farm size, among others. The main goal of the structural reform of the Office du Niger was to create a new structure whose missions would be limited to delegating management of studies and control of works, to the maintenance of hydraulic system, and to the management of water and the rural council645.

At first, it was judged that this refocusing of the ON would lead to its transformation from an Industrial and Commercial Public Enterprise (EPIC) into an Administrative Public Enterprise (EPA). However, after further consideration it appeared necessary to carry out an in- depth analysis of the contracts to determine the adequate status for the new Office du Niger. Ultimately, it was decided to set-up an ON with EPIC status based on the means and patrimony of the former enterprise646. The new ON would have two main types of financial resources: water fees and state subsidies. In 1993 state subsidies were intended to cover missions such as the rural councils for an amount of about two thousand dollars, while about seven hundred thousand

644 AON, unnumbered document, Gouvernement du Mali, Ministère de l’Agriculture, Commentaire du Gouvernement du Mali sur les Conclusions du Président de la Réunion de Concertation entre Bailleurs de Fonds Tenue les 14 et 15 Mars 1983 á Paris sur l’Office du Niger, Mars 1983, p.2. 645 AON, unnumbered document, Etude juridique pour la restructuration de l’Office du Niger. Termes de Référence, “Document XY, not dated”, “p.n.” AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la Mission d’évaluation d’ARPON (Septembre 1990). ARPON II á mis chemin, Wageningen, Novembre 1990, p.8. 646 AON, unnumbered document, Plan de Restructuration de l’Office du Niger. Programme d’appui téchnique et financier, May 1993, p.1.

204

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 dollars were supposed to cover water management in the primary network, maintenance of primary equipment, and the delegated project management647.

The water fee, which represented a financial resource of about two hundred thousand dollars per annum, would henceforth be used for the management and maintenance of secondary networks and the support costs at the headquarters to the tune of four dollars per hectare per annum, a total annual outlay of approximately two thousand dollars648. With decentralization the payment of the water fee by farmers became a necessity because it ensured the health of the zones' budget. This strategy was fundamental part of the World Bank’s approach during the structural adjustment period. It rested on the idea that if farmers had to pay for water they would use it more efficiently and take better care of the irrigation canals. In other words, a private understanding (instead of public ownership) was tied to a more efficient use of the land. It should be emphasized at this point that, in the ON, the water levy rate was never completely stable and largely depended on the marketing conditions of paddy and rice, it was almost impossible under these conditions to forecast the levy rate. With the ON reorganization, donors and local authorities were seeking to establish viable financial and economic management of the enterprise. As part of this reorganization, a policy of decentralization was pursued, because stakeholders’ understanding was that the only way to make the enterprise more efficient was to give some decision-making power to the several zones it contained to the benefit of the farmers, especially rice growers649.

When reforms started in the ON during the early 1990s there were five zones, all of which were directly dependent on the general management of the enterprise. These five productions zones Kouroumari, N’Débougou, Niono, Molodo, and Macina, were the organizational basis of the rice industry 650 . Since its creation the ON had been run very authoritatively. All decisions regarding the ON’s activities were taken at headquarters with only

647 AON, 239, Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Organisation du nouvel Office du Niger, Septembre 1993, pp.3- 4. 648 Ibid., p.5. 649 Mamadou Diawara, "Development and Administrative Norms: The Office Du Niger and Decentralization in French Sudan and Mali." Africa 81, no. 3 (2011): 448. 650 The sugar activity was separate from that of the rice which was managed by the Office du Niger. Producing sugar was overseen by the Sukala enterprise with two production zones one at Seribala the other at Dougabougou.

205

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 little or no input from or consultation with field staff and farmers651. Along with the low salary scale and lack of incentives, this system made it difficult for the ON management to attract good technicians, making all operational procedures extremely cumbersome. With the reforms, each zone became responsible for the preparation and execution of its budget, work program, production and marketing objectives, in consultation with headquarters. As observed by Mamadou Diawara the company’s administrative zones have become more and more autonomous since restructuring, because the establishment of a proper budgets at the level of each zone are amongst the measures taken to deconcentrate the responsibilities of the Office du Niger652. However, this transfer of decision-making power to the production zones causes some management problems of its own.

The management system in the zones required strengthening, because the heads of the production zones had not yet been fully trained in their new managerial responsibilities, although, on average, they were of much higher technical and managerial caliber than headquarters staff and new management instruments needed to be introduced. These deficiencies were real, and donors, especially the WB, clearly understood what was going on in the ON. To remedy these deficiencies a management strengthening component was included in the ON restructuring program. This component was to help bring about an improvement in management and specially to allow for adequate support of each zones’ finances. The new ON gave each zone control over its own finances, thus enshrining a very real degree of autonomy for the zones653. The zone directorates therefore needed qualified staff to manage the finances. With the zones thus enjoying a genuine delegation of management power, their remaining link with the headquarters was the approved reform program to which the ON was henceforth committed, as well as the budget for its implementation.

Decentralization meant that the production zones no longer required authorization from the headquarters in Ségou extra expenses. In practice, the production zones’ financial autonomy stemmed from their direct management of all resource’s royalties and of budget allocations for

651 WBGA, Folder 807353, Dominique Lallement to Jacques Guillot-Lageat, Mali-Office du Niger Consolidation Project-Updated Project Brief, May 1984, p.4. 652 Mamadou Diawara, "Development and Administrative Norms: The Office Du Niger and Decentralization in French Sudan and Mali." Africa 81, no. 3 (2011): 448. 653 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.42.

206

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 the rural council. This management took the following form in each zone: an account for the maintenance of the secondary network would be set up and funded by 50% of the water fee and used exclusively for the financing of the maintenance works, and an operating fund account consisting of the remaining 50% of the water fee. It was agreed that the fee must be sufficient to cover the maintenance costs of the water system, while still being bearable for farmers. That is to say, the fee should represent a reasonable share of production (about 10%, maximum 15%)654.Of course, donors thought this was realistic if and only if there was good management of these funds obtained from water fees, and that the ON management ensures that farmers are not disadvantaged. During field work, the importance to farmers of paying for water fees was apparent.

Many farmers I met told me that they always made sure to have the full amount of money needed for water fees because they were aware that if they did not pay, their eviction from the land was obligatory. There were some positive aspects to the decentralization system in the early 1990s. For instance, after the 1993 agricultural campaign, the Molodo zone, about seven kilometers from Niono, had a positive balance of about 27,000 dollars, meeting 100% of maintenance requirements. These needs, however, represented only 40% of the water fee, thus allowing the zone to cover all the rural council needs as well 655. The headquarters in Ségou received from each zone a contribution representing approximately 10% of the water fee656. However, in accordance with the rules established by the ON restructuring program, each zone would have to prepare a monthly financial statement to keep headquarters informed of the zone’s balance and to facilitate accurate compensation for expenses.

6.3 Privatization in the Office du Niger

The government, after the promulgation of Law No. 94-004 of 9 March 1994, decided to withdraw from the administration and the management of the ON and to privatize the so-called autonomous structures, such as: the hydraulic network maintenance center based in Niono, the Niono Works Center (CTN), the workshop for the local production of small agricultural

654 AON, unnumbered document, Réhabilitation de l’Office du Niger, Réunion des Bailleurs de Fonds, 09-10 Avril 1986, Avril 1986, p.20. 655 AON, 239, Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Organisation du nouvel Office du Niger, November 1993, p.86. 656 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.46; AON, 239, Restructuration de l’Office du Niger. Organisation du nouvel Office du Niger, November 1993, p.61.

207

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 equipment, the Agricultural Equipment Assembly Workshop (AAMA) and the fund put in place in order to provide agricultural credit to ON farmers, the Village Development Fund (FDV). As argued by Aw and Diemer, the law on the ON restructuring stipulated that activities other than public services were to be carried out either by farmers―as individuals or in organisations―or by the for-profit private sector657. The transformation of the autonomous structures to private status was entrusted to the General Delegation of the government responsible for the ON restructuring program and to the provisional administration of the units to be privatized658. It must be emphasized that previously none of these structures had their own legal status, but had legal existence only through the Office du Niger. It was this state of affairs that led Pierre Bonneval et al. to note that the ON had immense prerogatives and had often been described as a state in the state659. The assets and structures privatized in the ON during the 1990s will be analyzed in this section.

6.3.1 The Niono Works Center

The Niono Works Center was set up with the support of the Dutch partners as part of the Office du Niger restructuring program. The redevelopment works in the Niono sector was therefore carried out by this center. Until the end of the 1980s, emphasis was placed on redevelopment away from routine and periodic maintenance. In the very early 1990s, arrangements were made to secure the improvements, as part of which it was decided to empower the Works Center on a tes basis. In March 1990, the center was decentralized and given autonomy over the management of its own finances660. The center's resources initially came from inputs from the ON and the ARPON project, and receipts from refurbishment work, maintenance work, and various other services. Aside from the overall management, the center consisted of six units including the Administrative and Financial Cell, Maintenance and Works, Maintenance Buildings, Maintenance, and so on. As a result, the Office du Niger management had assigned to the Niono Works Center the network maintenance, refurbishment, and maintenance of buildings,

657 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 56. 658 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.94. 659 Pierre Bonneval et al., L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mali. Succès économiques, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement, (Paris: Cirad, Karthala, 2002), 93. 660 AON, unnumbered document, Programme ARPON, Phase Transitoire ARPON II, Plan d’Opèration, 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, Ségou, Octobre 1991, p.25.

208

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 vehicles maintenance, and etc. 661 . Beyond the Niono zone, the center carried out major maintenance works in Molodo in 1990/1991 and 1991/1992, and later did works in the Kouroumari and Kokry zones as well.

Since these resources failed to ensure the optimal functioning of the center, the solution to save it was to privatize it. Government authorities, the ON management and their development partners studied various options and proposals for the privatization of the Niono Works Center. The Malian side had expressed the wish to see the ON and the Center staff each take on a minority stake in the future enterprise, the state wishing to avoid supplying capital. The Dutch side, conversely, had expressed the wish to see Malian nationals, either individually or as a group, put up a significant share of the capital of the future enterprise. In May 1996, a call for tender was issued by the Malian Ministry of Finance and Trade (after the transfer by the Netherlands of the Works Center's goods to the state of Mali) and it was sold to a Malian private company an amount estimated at 900,000 dollars662.

In 1997, the new Center began operating conditons which were felt to be satisfactory for privatization, and, the WB, the ON management, and the others donors saw a high likelihood of selling some parts of the ON to private actors. They expected that all the technical works needed to better maintain the hydraulique system (primary and secondary networks) of the ON would be carried out by the Center, which, indeed happened. In 1994, streamline operations, activities outside network maintenance were abandoned by the Center, in particular refurbishments and the management of the Marakala electric power station. In 1995 the Center’s staff benefited from training provided by the Dutch, while the World Bank provided funding to the Center for its transformation into a structure exclusively responsible for the maintenance of the primary and secondary networks663.

661 AON, unnumbered document, Programme ARPON, Phase Transitoire ARPON II, Plan d’Opèration, 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, Ségou, Octobre 1991, p.25. 662 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.97. 663 AON, unnumbered document, Avant projet Sommaire de la troisiéme phase du programme ARPON, Août 1992, p.5.

209

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

6.3.2 The Agricultural Equipment Assembly Workshop

The Agricultural Equipment Assembly Workshop (AAMA) was a favorite resource for farmers working the ON’s irrigated land, who could stock up locally with agricultural equipment and spare parts. The AAMA functioned as a unit of the ARPON project until 1990 when its management was transferred to the Malian side as an autonomous unit within the ON. Its main purposes were to provide farmers with low-cost, cost-effective materials, to introduce new materials better suited to farmers’ needs, to promote village blacksmiths’ activities, and to provide after-sales service. During the 1990s, some blacksmiths close to the Niono production zone had already received technical assistance and training from the Dutch for assembling cart tables664. The small agricultural equipment that the workshop had been able to develop played a very important role in the intensification of rice production and the withdrawal of the ON from operations that had been a source of deficits. In addition, the workshop contributed a lot to providing women with small threshing and hulling machines such as Ricefan and Twinfan models. In February 1990, 17 blacksmith shops were equipped with basic mechanical tools such as vice, and anvil for maintenance and repair of threshing and, hulling machines and mills. Since that year blacksmith members of the "Action Forgerons" have also been grouped in a new non- profit association called the "Association of blacksmiths of the Office du Niger" (AFON).

The day-to-day affairs of this workshop were overseen by the workshop management, which was responsible for all of the AAMA’s divisions: Production and After Sales, Association of Village Blacksmith, and Administration and Finance 665 . At the level of the workshop’s organization, much effort had been made to develop a profitable business. Its area of intervention was no longer confined to the ON zone alone, but extended to other areas of Mali where irrigated rice cultivation was also practiced. In 1996, the AFON was reorganized as a cooperative, the Artisanal Cooperative of Blacksmiths of the Office du Niger (CAFON). CAFON replaced the AAMA in the field of small agricultural equipment, especially women’s postharvest machines

664 AON, unnumbered document, J.W. Dogger, and A. A. Wanders, Promotion fabrication locale matériel agricole. Action Forgerons région Office du Niger. Compte rendu mission d’appui IMAG-DLO, mars 1994, p.3. 665 AON, unnumbered document, Programme ARPON, Phase Transitoire ARPON II, Plan d’Opèration, 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, Ségou, Octobre 1991, p.28.

210

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 and after sales services insurance 666 . Later, the cooperative was reorganized again as a cooperative society (So-CAFON).

The central workshop of So-CAFON is located at the company's headquarters in Niono, about 500 meters outside the Niono production zone. In order to achieve a viable business, subsidies have been removed. However, one does not consider this approach to be viable, because, it seems that it would put a lot of farmers under a lot of pressure, seeing that the ON had been built on and stabilized by subsidies for a very long time. Although the expectation was that the workshop's resources would consist of inputs from the ON, and revenues from sales of agricultural equipment, and so on, it would be very difficult for the workshop to continue operating on these bases alone without any help from outside. Exemption from import duties on equipment and parts was to be guaranteed until 1998667. However, it should be noted that in 1997, before a private investor could be found, the workshop was placed under the supervision of the National Budget Directorate (Ministry of Finance and Trade).

6.3.3 The Village Development Fund

Coverage of credit requirements was an essential component of the Office du Niger's restructuring program. To fulfill this obligation, the ON management and its Dutch partners set up the Agricultural Input Fund (FIA) at the start of the redevelopment work 668 . However, farmers' organization into Village Associations and, above all, the experience with the women's economic interest groups showed that these farmers, men and women alike, had need of credit for uses beyond agricultural inputs. These needs included, but were not limit to, construction of storage warehouses, acquisition of hulling and winnowing machines. With these additional needs, it was obvious that the FIA was no longer suited to the new credit policy that was on the

666 AON, unnumbered document, Nyeta Conseil, CAFON (Coopérative Artisanale des Forgerons de l’Office du Niger). Prospection de Nouveaux Débouchés pour les Matériels de la Cafon, Avril 2003, p.2; Interview by author with Ousmane Djiré in Niono, November 18, 2016. According to this director of CAFO, whom I found very open vis-a-vis blacksmiths of the central workshop in Niono, the objective of this cooperative was to pursue the ideology of the promoters of the ARPON project who wanted to relieve women of certain agricultural tasks. It was in this context that the So-CAFON workshop in the late 1990s put on the market threshing-machines, choppers, dryers, grinders for shallots, and other such equipment. As an example of these machines’ usefulness, the setting up of the grinder enabled the women to stop the shallot preparation, which was very painful work. According to Djiré, this grinder has a capacity of 100 kg per hour. 667 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.97. 668 AON, unnumbered document, Programme ARPON, Phase Transitoire ARPON II, Plan d’Opèration, 1er Décembre 1991-31 Décembre 1992, Ségou, Octobre 1991, p. 36.

211

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 horizon. In 1990, after a deep analysis of these new credit needs, the ON management and the ARPON project decided to create the Village Development Fund (FDV) in the place of FIA. The FDV dealt with promoting credit in the zone, ensuring the financing of inputs, equipment and any project contributing to the economic and social development of the population, and contributing to the improvement of the financial management of farmers’ organizations and other target groups.

In 1991 the FDV bought about 6,100 tons of urea, 3,550 tons of ammonia phosphates669 and almost 600 tons of Tilemsi rock phosphate. These purchases represented at that time an estimated value of two million dollars670. However, it was the failure of the FDV experience that led to the idea of its privatizing it. Indeed, the agricultural credit fund had ended 1992 with outstanding debts to the order of 1.1 million dollars, the consequence of a very low recovery rate671. Despite the use of muscular methods, such as the withdrawal of any access to credit for farmers who were delinquent in repaying their debt, an improvement in the recovery rate did not take place. The root of the problem was the noninvolvement of the farmers in mobilizing savings to acquire resources and in the management of the credit system. They did not feel obligated to repay money offered from the outside672. In order to achieve a lasting solution to the problem, it was necessary to try and involve farmers in the agricultural credit fund from the beginning to the end of the loan process. For the World Bank staff, and obviously the other development partners as well, the farmers were agents of their own local development who were supposed to be involved in the process. They are involved, the more productive they are.

669 The use of ammonia phosphate and urea phosphate was generalized throughout the ON, with the only difference being that farmers attached much more importance to urea than to phosphate, probably because of the difference in response from the soil to these fertilizers. The doses recommended by the ON management were 75 kg in non- redeveloped areas and in ARPON and 100 kg in Retail. In the 1990s the price of a kilogram in credit was 0.316 USD. These fertilizers, which were granted on credit by the FIA and after by the FDV, came under the management of the village associations following the 1994/95 crop year. 670 AON, unnumbered document, Proposition pour le transfert de l’approvisionnement d’engrais aux organisations paysannes, Octobre 1991, “p.n.” 671 AON, unnumbered document, Observation sur le document d’étude du projet intitutlé: transformation du Fonds de Développement Villageois en société mutualiste, Septembre 1994, “n.p.” 672 From 1984 the FIA was constituted with the administrative agreement concluded between Mali and the Netherlands. Its main objective was to ensure the permanent availability of funds to guarantee the supply of agricultural inputs to ON farmers in a system of adequate credit. The Netherlands provided technical assistance and undertook to pay-on a provisional basis-the cost of Malian loan officers and other project implementation costs. It was with the fund of the former FIA that the FDV would continue its credit activities with farmers.

212

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

As part of the donors-assisted ON privatization process general, and with the specific aims of gradually transferring procurement activities into private hands, and empowering farmers' organizations, the FDV withdrew from certain activities previously undertaken on behalf of farmers’ associations. Specifically, the FDV ceased purchasing and distributing fuel for women’s threshing and hulling machines; and the purchase, sale and distribution of bovine feed products (rice by-product, and salt licks). Additionally, the FDV also withdrew from supplying the village associations with fertilizer. During the years 1994-95, the FDV was re-established as a financial institution with the status of an anonymous company. Besides the permanent technical assistance, the Dutch supported the FDV’s change of status and provided funding for the training of certain of its staff673.

In January/February 1992 the Fund had in stock 5960 tons of urea and 3550 tons of phosphate. Of these quantities, 70% was distributed in the zones of Macina, Molodo, N’Débougou, and Kouroumari, with the remaining 30% distributed in the Niono zone674 Limited consultation and the call for tenders were chosen as the solution for improving the functioning of fertilizer management by farmers, because the ON management and its development partners judged these approaches as being the most flexible, transparent and objective. The main goal sought by the stakeholders was a more objective accountability of farmers who would thus become the sole guarantors of their own economic interests. The question one wants to ask here is whether all these policy reforms had any impact on women in the ON.

The privatization of the assets mentioned above (the Niono Works Center, the Agricultural Equipment Assembly Workshop, and the Village Development Fund) was a significant determining factor in stimulating structural changes. Farmers’ responsabilisation policy in progress throughout the zone resulted from this privatization process, prompted Mamadou Diawara to arguing that these people are becoming more involved in their interests’ management by taking on more and more responsibilities675. With the withdrawal of the ON from fertilizer supply, farmers were able to get fertilizer on time through the village associations

673 AON, unnumbered document, Avant projet Sommaire de la troisiéme phase du programme ARPON, Août 1992, p.6. 674 It was decided that the remaining 30% for Niono should be covered by self-financing from village associations, and financing from financial institutions such as the National Bank for Agricultural Development (BNDA). 675 Mamadou Diawara, "Development and Administrative Norms: The Office Du Niger and Decentralization in French Sudan and Mali." Africa 81, no. 3 (2011): 444.

213

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 which could now buy them from suppliers who were chosen according to prices and reliability. In addition, entrusting farmers especially women within the framework of village associations and women’s economic groupings with the purchase and distribution of fuel and livestock feed increased their ability to receive agricultural credit from local financial institutions such as the Malian Bank for Agricultural Development (BNDA). Farmers became more organized in how they managed their agricultural credit, and grew better prepared for the conditions of reimbursement of these credits. This led to some confidence in their relationship with local financial institutions. These reforms, combined with new proposals on farming practices and the organization of producers in the perimeters, led to the achievement of one of the objectives targeted by local stakeholders and its development partners: intensification of production in the ON zone.

6.4 The ON restructuring program’s impact (gender roles and relations)

Since the early 1990s the ON, facing the challenges of a restructuring program imposed by donors (reorientation of missions, new approaches for farmers, increased production and productivity, drastic reduction of the workforce staff) has been engaged in participatory planning of processes for achieving objectives. First, a global diagnosis identified the main constraints on the improvement of performances within the new partnership framework, referring to as a performance contract, between the state-the Office du Niger and the-farmers676. Second, the findings of fact-finding missions and studies such as the ARPON annual report from January to December 1997, led to the addition of a mission statement alongside that assigned to the ON enterprise by the Malian government of serving “to contribute to the food security of the country. This new goal was that of promoting sustainable, equitable, and participatory development in the ON zone”. In line with this mission, emphasis was placed on strengthening the capacity of management, improving the performance of farmers' organizations, and especially the strengthening of women’s socio-economic position677.

Improving women’s situation in the villages was a concern of Dutch aid starting shortly after the beginning of their intervention in the zone. The actions undertaken by the Dutch at the

676 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 71. 677 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport annuel programme ARPON III (période du 01 janvier 1997 au 31 décembre 1997), Janvier 1998, p.4.

214

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 time were aimed at reversing existing trends and laying the groundwork for more participatory development, thus correcting the imbalances resulting from the traditional approaches to development that were in effect in the region. These actions included organizing women into economic interest groups, distributing threshing and hulling machines, promoting literacy, and the use of female extension agents to provide training and monitor women's agricultural activities. These efforts have been discussed in in depth in the third chapter. However, in Mali in general and in the ON zone in particular, very old socio-cultural factors (the lack of education for young girls, a low level of female involvement in social life, women's duties towards their husband, and so forth) were the main obstacles to the desired economic emancipation of women, which could therefore not be achieved by an exclusively voluntarist and legislative approach. Colonial and postcolonial legacies also played a role in this situation. For instance, the Malian marriage code of 1962 stipulated in title 1, chapter 8, article 32, that the husband should guarantee protection to his wife, while the woman must obey her husband678. This part of the Malian marriage code made the woman a permanent minor and dependent, thus making all her decisions and actions subject to the authorization of the husband, who had the power to abuse this right.

Thus, the colonial and post-colonial periods have weighed heavily on the recognition of women's role in both economic and social terms. Despite efforts exerted here and there since the International Women's Year in 1975 and the United Nations Decade for Women, 1976-1985679, there was a growing need not only for consolidating what the Dutch had achieved, but particularly for pursuing a women’s promotion policy in the region. It was in this general atmosphere that the September 1990 ARPON evaluation mission recommended that the project continues to strongly support actions to alleviate women's tasks and increase their incomes.

678 ANM, Journal Officiel de la République du Mali, No 62-17 A.N.-R.M.-Loi Portant Code sur le Mariage et la Tutelle en République du Mali, février 1962, p.4. 679 Margaret Snyder, “Women: The key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 20. See also Ruth Pearson, “The rise and rise of gender and development”, in A Radical history of development studies. Individuals, institutions and ideologies, ed. Uma Kothari (Garfield Road : Claremont 7700, 2005). In this chapter, the author analyses in much greater detail the origins of Gender and Development from critical intervention to mainstream policy.

215

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Furthermore, the same mission also, stated that it was necessary to avoid marginalizing women by focusing on activities specific to women680.

Accordingly, the ON restructuring program coordinated by the government, ON's officials and donors went further on to reserve in its agenda a very significant place for the interests and concerns of village women. Moreover, the restructuring partners also understood that the women promotion policy in the ON which would be followed in the restructuring program would be an extension or continuation of actions already undertaken by the Dutch in this domain. Aware of the limits of "Women and Development" policies in the area, the ON management with the support of its development partners, particularly the Dutch, decided to privilege the adoption of a "Gender and Development" approach based on the search for more equity and justice in the relationship between men and women681. This decision was part of a larger trend. For a more comprehensive and exhaustive approach to the role of women in production and reproduction, the development community began moving in the 1980s from the Women in Development (WID) approach born in the 1970s to the more open Gender and Development (GAD) approach.

As argued by Ruth Pearson, the transformation of a clear WID approach into a GAD approach occurred because of the recognition that gender is a social relation, and issues of inequality need to address the relationships between men and women and not focus exclusively on women, meaning that women's relative as well as absolute disadvantage in development terms must be addressed682. Garner went further, arguing that, contrary to the WID approach which merely perpetuated women’s subordination by integrating them into existing modernization and development strategies, GAD projects placed women at the center of planning and activities683. What these authors’ work shows, is the fact that by the 1980s issues affecting women demanded more consideration and prominence in development projects. Any development project henceforth initiated in developing countries and with the support of the

680 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la mission d’évaluation d’Arpon (Septembre 1990). ARPON II á mi- chemin, Wageningen, Novembre 1990, p.11. 681 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport annuel programme ARPON III (période du 01 janvier 1997 au 31 décembre 1997), Janvier 1998, p.8. 682 Ruth Pearson, “The rise and rise of gender and development”, in A Radical history of development studies. Individuals, institutions and ideologies, ed. Uma Kothari (Garfield Road : Claremont 7700, 2005), 8. 683 Karen Garner, Women and Gender in International History. Theory and Practice, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 177-178.

216

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 international community had to take this new understanding into account. The local development project of the ON was not to be exempt from this rule. The ON management and donors were now planning to consider gender considerations in each activity which took place in the zone. Part of this approach was ensuring farmers’ access to the factors and means of agricultural production. In the specific case of the ON, these factors and means of production concerned land, water, inputs, agricultural equipment, and the rural council and all that went directly into agricultural production. Actions promoting women’s vegetable gardening and access to land, credit and increased incomes were undertaken throughout the 1990s.

6.4.1 Promoting women’s vegetable gardening in the Office du Niger

For a long time considered an annex activity by the ON management and the agricultural supervisors despite being the second major activity in the zone after rice cultivation, vegetable gardening benefited in the 1990s from the growing support of local authorities. Indeed, while vegetable growing was going through a difficult phase in its evolution due to bans on the ON irrigated perimeters, arising from the ON management’s desire to promote only rice cultivation, it seems necessary to promote these crops next to rice. The choice to develop market gardening and horticultural crops in the ON zone and in Mali more generally, followed the need to diversify food production in order to achieve food self-sufficiency objectives as well as the development of fresh and/or processed commodity experts. The ON irrigated perimeters offered unparalleled off-season vegetable gardening potential with huge tracts of land suitable for a wide range of speculations 684 . This new gardening policy resulted in a training and information program for management staff and women, support for the organization of women to facilitate access to credit and the marketing of products, and a policy of expanding vegetable gardening areas by developing parcels of land. Regarding this last point, the acceptance of gardening on the irrigated land by the ON management was a real land innovation in favor of women.

During the ON restructuring period, some plots were allocated to farmers especially women, for the first time in the enterprise’s history. For instance, in 1994 the women of the village of B2 in the N'Débougou production zone benefited from a ten hectares plot that they

684 AON, unnumbered document, Assana Sogoba, Le développement des productions maraîchères á l’Office du Niger: atouts et contraintes dans le contexte post-dévaluation, Mémoire de fin de cycle pour l’obtention du diplome d’Ingénieur agronome de l’IPR de Katibougou, Décembre 1996, p.1.

217

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 shared between them for vegetable gardening685. It is perhaps true that these ten hectares did not constitute a very large are, but it was the act that was of great importance. This act showed that one of the women’s primary concerns was now being taken into account by local development actors, the ON management had never before officially allocated to farmers gardening areas. Plot distribution started in 1986 with the Retail project, when the ON and its partners entrusted the lands to be distributed to village associations, which had in turn entrusted to family heads the responsibility of redistributing the lands to their wives. However, this system of land allocation based on the discretion and monopoly of family heads, greatly disadvantaged women, as shown by the fact that a mere 27% of the lands were used by women against 73% by men. The following table shows the areas of each the five zones in hectares, as well as the size of the areas cultivated by women and their business values. The direct allocation of gardening parcels by the ON which took place during the rehabilitation process, as well as the size the practice of gardening in rotation with rice, reveals the importance of these areas in the ON zone. In the non- rehabilitated areas, vegetable gardening continued to be practiced in villages’ extension lands and in the hors-casiers plots, which were typically watered manually686.

As part of its responsibity to disseminate information, the Niono local chamber of agriculture was specifically requested to ensure the correct and regular distribution of all relevant information (available stock, level of demand, price, and so on.) relating to vegetable gardening products, especially shallots. The different actors (traders and producers) were asked to communicate the prices at that time and to use this information only as a reference when negotiating prices. Thus, for the setup of an effective information system the collaboration of the ON technical services and the local radio operators was requested and established687. In addition, some women's groups had benefited from the few storage rooms adapted to the preservation of shallots, which enable them to introduce this crop into the market at the right time.

The main vegetable crops found in the ON zone and cultivated by all farmers, women as well as men, were shallots, garlic, tomatoes and potatoes. The table below describes the different

685 Interview by author with Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly in B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017; Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 686 AON, unnumbered document, Assana Sogoba, Le développement des productions maraîchères á l’Office du Niger: atouts et contraintes dans le context post-dévaluation, mémoire de fin de cycle, Institut Polytéchnique Rural, Katibougou, Décembre 1996, p.10. 687 AON, unnumbered document, Laurence Pupier, Importance socio-économique du maraîchage dans le fonctionnement des exploitations du projet Retail, Décembre 1992, p.11.

218

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 vegetables grown in the Office du Niger. Chili, cabbage, eggplant, and okra were mostly grown by women, while potatoes were mostly of interest to men. The choice to cultivate according to the sexes was conditioned partly by the possibility of conserving it. Most of the women were interested in crops that could be stored until they increased in value. Women preferred to keep some money for the shortage period. The income they earned through the sale of vegetables also covered a number of domestic expenses (health, clothing, and condiments among others), financed the expenses of the wintering campaign and made possible investments in agricultural equipment (oxen, and plows, for example)688. Potatoes were not stored (more than 80% of production was sold immediately), which explained why it was mostly men that were interested in it.

688 AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, pp.36-37.

219

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Table 6: Evolution of areas (ha)/zone―areas cultivated by women/business figures

Campaigns 1995/1996 1996/1997 1997/1998 1998/1999 1999/2000

Zones ON Women ON Women ON Women ON Women ON Women

Niono 677 315,9 655 404 908 426 1224,05 950 1594 1036,1

Molodo 233 172,2 322 151 505 209 550 328 69 44,85

N’Débougou 185 64,3 702 120 705 456 618,83 458 805 523,5

Macina 320 169 455 208 282 296 614,5 183 678 440,7

Kouroumari 300 122,8 385 195 583 250 597,7 379 658 427,7

Total 1715 844,2 2519 1078 2983 1637 3605,08 2298 3804 2472,85

Estimated business 16,272,683.85 21,755,151 34,334,539.088 35,913,433.607 37,595,359.283 figures (USSD) Source: AON, 1166, Bilan de la campagne maraîchère, Juillet 2000, p.3.

220

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Men were more interested in selling and marketing, only the profitability of vegetable gardening interested them. In addition, potatoes demand less upkeep work than many other crops, and were therefore better suited to men who were already very busy with their rice fields. On the other hand, shallots and garlic, which were stored for a relatively long time, were extensively cultivated by women. This distinction in the choice of crops was also partly attributable to the fact that women had a twofold interest in vegetable gardening: the contribution of a primary or secondary income, according to individual circumstances, but also the supply of products for self-consumption689. For this reason, many women also cultivated okra, cabbage, pepper, and eggplants whose fruits and leaves were used in the preparation of the daily sauces.

Table 7: Name of the most common vegetables in the Office du Niger

English name Bambara name Scientific name shallot diaba allium cepa tomato tomati solanum lycopersium (esculentum potato wosso ipomoea batatas garlic layi allium sativum maize maagnon (kaba) zea maïs okra guan hisbiscus esculentus chilli pepper Kélékélé (foronto)690 capsicum frustescens carrot caroti damus carota eggplant N’goyo solanum esculentum cowpea cho vigna unguculata cassava banankou manihot esculentum tobacco sara (sira) nicotiana tabacum lettuce salati laituia sativa apple cabbage chou pomé brassica oberacea (var. capitata) Source: AON, unnumbered document, Laurence Pupier, Importance socio-économique du maraîchage dans le fonctionnement des exploitations du projet Retail, Décembre 1992, p.33.

6.4.2 Actions to improve women's access to land and credit

689 AON, unnumbered document, Laurence Pupier, Importance socio-économique du maraîchage dans le fonctionnement des exploitations du projet Retail, Décembre 1992, p.39; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré in Hérémakono, November 03, 2016. 690 In Mali the two most used types of chili are the large chili, generally rounded in shape called "forontobani" and the stretched chili known as "forontomiséni". These two types of peppers lend themselves well to drying, this is also the reason why in the ON women generally did not encounter many problems regarding the storage of this product.

221

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

In the ON, in the past, men’s access to land had been based largely upon social factors such as family size and labor availability. Because women were part of the household head's labor force, they were not included in land allocation. They needed to depend upon husbands, friends, and neighbors to provide them with land. Land tenure security became a genuine state concern only with the management letter no. 89-90 / PGRM in 1990. Detailed re-reading of and reflection on this decree by the government’s General Delegation in charge of the ON restructuring program led to the 1996 creation of a new decree on the organization of the ON’s land management691. What those in charge of the ON restructuring program opted to achieve with this new decree on land management was the improvement of the institutional framework for the participation of the farmers in land and soil management. This improvement was to be affected by setting up in each zone a Joint Committee for Land Management (CPGT) in accordance with Article 5 of the management decree. The CPGT’s focus on better management and use of the ON’s irrigated lands, responded to the concerns of donors such as the World Bank, who wanted to establish a rational management of the lands towards the rehabilitation of which they had contributed. However, these committees did not function well and their decisions were in most cases ignored by farmers who were members. It could not have been otherwise, given that the members of these committees were not educated in their function and very often lacked understanding of the issues discussed in the Join Committees692, not to mention the fact that women farmers had to seat on these committees from which to defend their interests.

Access to land had quickly emerged in the ON restructuring program as a fundamental indicator of the improvement of women’s status. Decree no. 96-188 P-RM of 01/07/ 1996 organizing the management of lands assigned to the ON, in its spirit and its letter, gave the same rights to male and female farmers693. Following the promulgation of this decree, women could officially benefit at their request and according to the availability of land from a piece of land for rice or vegetable farming. Because of the persistence of discrimination, the restructuring program

691 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants 1996-1998, Tome2: Evaluation des engagements, Septembre 1998, p.11. 692 Ibid., p.16. 693 AON, unnumbered document, Decret no. 96-188/P-RM Portant organisation de la gérance des terres affectées á l’Office du Niger, Juillet 1996, p.6. In the article 20 of this decree it was written that the annual farming contract is the contract by which the Office du Niger attributed to a natural or legal person, a group or an association, a piece of land irrigated in casier or hors-casier for agricultural purposes. It was also stated that no distinction was made between men and women as far as the farmers were concerned.

222

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 through the ARPON project funded the development of rice and vegetables plots for the exclusive benefit of women. Thus, more than a hundred hectares were set aside for this purpose including thirty-two hectares in Macina, seventeen in Molodo, and thirty in Kouroumari694. In the M'Béwani production zone, where development work started in December 1996 with the financing from the World Bank695, more than a thousand hectares (1185) were developed in three tranches during the 1998/99 crop year at a total cost of around four million dollars.

Almost all families in the production zone received a parcel for rice cultivation. The size of these plots was proportional to the number of male workers in each family, and all the family members’ shares belonged to the head of the family. The lot that was attributed to him therefore included his own share, as well as those of his wives and working age children. All of these people carried out rice farming on the land together696. In addition, seventy hectares were also developed for women’s vegetable gardening. These lands reserved exclusively for vegetable gardening were distributed to women's groups of the villages of the zone. The Kunawolo women's group from the village of Plaine Amont or Kémou, for example, practiced vegetable gardening in the land they had received from the ON management after the development works697.

Like in M'Béwani, women in the N'Débougou production zone benefited from the distribution of land for their gardening activities. It should be noted that in this zone, unlike the other production zones, vegetable gardening was first and foremost a vegetable supplement, absolutely determinative of the quality and diversity of the family's diet before being used as the sole source of income for women. This difference could be explained by the fact that in this production zone the allocation of gardening parcels by the ON management was carried out by entrusting to the head of each farm a plot to re-distribute to the different members of his family.

694 AON, AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.81; AON, unnumbered document, Rapport d’Avancement programme ARPON III (période du 30 Juin au 31 Décembre 1995). Vers un systéme de suivi et d’évaluation du programme ARPON, Janvier 1996, p.19. 695 AON, unnumbered document, D. Sissoko, Analyse du fonctionnement des exploitations agricoles du perimetre rizicole de M’Béwani Office du Niger, mémoire d’ingénieurie, Institut Polytéchnique de Formation et de Recherche Appliquées, Décembre 1999, p.14. 696 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, November 10, 2016. 697 Interview by author with Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016.

223

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

The size of this initial plot was calculated using the same criterion as everywhere else in the ON (i.e. the number of male workers living in the family). When distributing vegetable gardening parcels, family heads gave priority to their young sons at the expense of their own wives and daughters. This allowed the young sons to have larger gardening parcels than women and to be able to sell all the production and obtain virtually all the money they would have available throughout the year.

Women’s parcels, in contrast, were smaller, thus forcing them to prioritize contribution to their family’s consumption before they could think of selling in the markets of Siéngo or N'Débougou. Most of the women in the N'Débougou production zone had a great responsibility to feed their family members with the paddy that their husbands gave them, with the paddy they earned through winnowing, and finally with the vegetables they cultivated on their plots. It was only when the household food supply was assured that they sold surplus produce698. Given these circumstances, it was surprising to note that in many families the bulk of money available to women came from the marketing of vegetable products (after feeding their families). Paddy gained through winnowing or the mechanized processing of paddy into rice managed by women's economic interest groups represented only a smaller, secondary income. Even though the size of their plots was not very significant given the number of women who were supposed to share these few hectares of land699, one should recognize that it was at least a small improvement for women who had never before benefited from such attention. An official allocation of land to women in the ON for vegetable gardening was a big first in the zone. Thus, in terms of women's access to land it should be noted that the terms of the decree on management were more favorable that what had existed before, even though they still considered women as dependent actors, compared to men who were considered independent actors. By 1995, there was also some progress in the ON with regard to women's access to rice plots.

The number of female farm managers (i.e. those with rice plots allocated on the irrigated perimeters) increased from 31 in 1990 to 154 in 1996, as shown in the table below. In addition,

698 AON, 615, Réhabilitation casier N'Débougou, Rapport final Volume II, Aménagement général, AGRAR-und Hydrotechnik GMBH, Août 1990, p.50. 699 The women judged the parcels that the ARPON project allotted to them at the time to be very insufficient. According to most of these women the researcher met during her field visits, not only many of the women who had benefited from these plots, but also those who owned them, were obliged to resort to renting from privates to be able to cultivate the crops they prefer or borrow rice plots from their husband during the off-season in exchange for a contribution to the payment of the water charge.

224

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 many male farm managers allocated rice fields to their wives in a discreet way especially in the production zone of Kouroumari700. Admittedly this was a form of corruption regarding land distribution in the zone, but in view of the growing land pressure in the ON, especially since the restructuring program, it was mainly a way of allowing a certain number of women to acquire arable land. Most of the women who benefited from land allocations were early-retirement volunteers, or unemployed graduates. That was another form of corruption, because village women should have been the first to receive these lands and not the opposite. Still, it must be recognized that the mere fact of official recognition that women could like men, have access to the land to carry out agricultural activities was nevertheless a very important break with the ON management’s old practices.

The fact was that this break portended significant changes in the attitude of both the ON leadership and especially the men and women who lived and worked in villages. The system of land allocation in the ON had long been implicitly based on the conception of the farmer as the head of a family head bore the social and moral responsibility of all the other members of his family. With the 1996 land management decree, however, the standards for awarding land began to take women-workers (TF) into account when deciding the size of the plot to assign to a farm manager.

Table 8: Evolution of the number of female farm managers in the Office du Niger

Zone 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 Macina 14 16 19 21 29 35 57 Niono 17 22 25 25 36 40 43 Molodo 0 1 4 0 2 2 9 N’Débougou 0 2 5 10 15 19 30 Kouroumari 0 0 0 0 2 10 15 Total 31 41 53 56 84 106 154 Source: AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.82.

Like access to land, women's access to credit remained very low until the reforms resulting from the ON restructuring program became effective. This situation of very low access

700 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.82.

225

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 to credit was due partly to the criteria for allocating loans but especially to the lack of effective strategies to change the situation. In accordance with the legislation governing the ON’s general contract and annual operating contract for irrigated land, farmers could access campaign credits for their agricultural inputs and medium-term credit for their livestock equipment. In practice, this system of supply permitted the postponement of credit repayment to the following campaign if a farmer did not end the campaign in a position to repay all his charges701. Over time, from one campaign to another, farmers accumulated arrears of unpaid credit owing to the ON management. This situation plunged the zone into a crisis which affected production and productivity. It is important to point out that this credit crisis affected men the most, since women did not yet have equivalent access to land and therefore credit, thus credit access did not concern them directly. In the 1970s, to settle the credit crisis in the zone and clean up the sector, activity around credit was transferred to the National Bank for Agricultural Development (BNDA).

During the earliest stage of the restructuring program in the 1980s, actions carried out in the area of credit by the rural councils through sensitization and consultations with the financial institutions had resulted in a little improvement regarding the ability of women and their economic interest groups to access credit702. This improvement could also be explained by the fact that the Caisses d'Epargne and Crédit (CEC) were strongly encouraged by local authorities and their development partners through the activities of the Niésiguiso networks (funded by Canadian partners) and Caisses Rurales Mutualistes du Delta (CRMD), supported by the Dutch703. In fact, in 1996 the CRMD set up by the FDV, had joined together to form the Federation of Mutualist Rural Banks of the Delta (FCRMD) for the better coordination of financial institutions and disturbing credit to women farmers. It must be emphasized that the set- up of these financial networks was what made credit more or less accessible for women704.

701 AON, unnumbered document, Zana Diourte, and Dramane Mariko, Etude sur l’Endettement des Exploitants de l’Office du Niger, Rapport Principal, Novembre 1988, p.1. 702 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport d’Avancement programme ARPON III (période du 30 Juin au 31 Décembre 1995). Vers un systéme de suivi et d’évaluation du programme ARPON, Janvier 1996, p.20. 703 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants 1996-1998, Tome2: Evaluation des engagements, Septembre 1998, p.19. 704 AON, unnumbered document, Réné Osté, Diagnostic Global de Genre et Développement á l’Office du Niger, p.17.

226

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

In 1995, approximately twelve women's economic groups benefited from credit in the Macina zone, while three other groups were eligible in the Molodo production zone. These women’s groups were informed about the availability of credits by female extension agents working in the zones. It was also these agents who helped them fill out the credit application form. Many women's groups benefited from credit, and this was one of the reasons why, when they started their intervention in the zone, ARPON project advocates encouraged women to organize themselves into groups. According to them, it was the best way for these women to find support. For example, the women’s group from Kérouane benefited from, in addition to a parcel of land, an agricultural credit. At the village of Plaine Amont or Kémou in the production zone of M’Béwani, the Kunawolo women group like the other groups in the zone benefited annually from an agricultural credit from the Malian Agricultural Development Bank. In Kokry, village women grouped in the caisses received a small credit estimated to be about nine thousand dollars financed by the FDV (through the caisses), and three thousand dollars by the caisses themselves. Credits were granted to finance vegetable gardening activities. The credit term was four to six months at an interest rate of 1.5% per month705. Even women who were too poor to pay the membership fees had been helped to pre-finance their membership fees of CFAF 1,750 (about three dollars) per woman.

Additionally, the plan for the 1996 agricultural campaign included the goal of doubling the number of women's economic groups with access to credit from local financial institutions by raising awareness through media such as radio and consultations with financial partners706.The establishment of savings and credit funds across the zones of the ON towards the end of the first half of the 1990s allowed women's groups to access credit which amounted to 24,000 dollars in 1995/96, and more than 100,000 dollars in 1996/97, against only about 5,000 dollars in 1994/95 as shown by the following table707. It must, however, be pointed out that while in the period following shortly after their establishment financial institutions easily granted credit to women's groups, sometime later these institutions became rigorous in granting credit because they realized

705 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport d’Avancement programme ARPON III (période du 30 Juin au 31 Décembre 1995), Janvier 1996, p.10. 706 Ibid., p.20. 707 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants 1996-1998, Tome2: Evaluation des engagements, Septembre 1998, p.19; AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.82.

227

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 that some women's groups purely and simply passed on their loans to men who were no longer eligible for credit.

Table 9: Women and credit: granted loans during three agricultural campaigns (USD) Agricultural Campaigns Zones 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 Macina 933,158 7,361,657 31,313,013 Niono 3,368,981 12,426,02 67,420,216 Molodo 1,007,90 2,052,157 4,717,463 N’Débougou ― 1,922,664 4,478,457 Kouroumari ― ― 18,725,923 Total 5,310,039 23,762,498 126,655,072 Rate of increase % ― 447,39 533 Source: AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.83; AON, unnumbered document, Rapport annuel programme ARPON III, (période du 01 Janvier 1997 au 31 Décembre 1997), Janvier 1998, p.64.

6.4.3 Actions to improve women’s income

Actions to promote women's access to land and credit, actions to improve their control over resources and benefits, and improvement in management quality all had a certain impact on the improvement of women's income in the ON. According to Cheibane Coulibaly, income in rural Mali had evolved in general, as the share of agricultural products had risen to 43% of the country’s GDP in 1995708. Through specific and coordinated support from the ON management, local government authorities, and international donors, efforts were made to provide women with income security. Measures taken or pursued to secure women's income had mainly concerned the promotion of vegetable gardening, especially for women, and credit distribution to women's economic interest groups 709 .These measures contributed to increasing rice production and productivity and had provided women with substantial income from vegetable gardening, and above all from rice cultivation. Because women were the most involved in transplanting rice

708 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités a l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 198. 709 AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants 1996-1998, Tome2: Evaluation des engagements, Septembre 1998, p.9; AON, unnumbered document, N’Fagnanama Koné, G. François, F. Onimus, and Aly Diallo, Evaluation du Contrat-Plan Etat-Office du Niger-Exploitants Agricoles 1996-1998, Tome1: Introduction, Synthèse et Recommandations, Septembre 1998, p.20.

228

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 seedlings, they were the ones who earned most income from this activity. Early rice intensification tests in the ON zone had not been very successful, but one of the projects initiated by Retail project was premised on the belief that a strong and rapid intensification would be an effective way to raise incomes. The aim of this project to increase rice production was the rapid adoption by farmers of very intensive cultivation techniques (from the Asian Green Revolution), particularly the transplanting rice seedlings710. To achieve this goal, the project made the practice of transplanting rice seedling mandatory in the fields. However, notwithstanding its late adoption by farmers, it must be recognized that rice transplanting had a long history in the ON zone.

First practiced in the colonial era from 1947 to 1953 in the Kayo Research Station, rice transplanting was also experimented with the Chinese in the 1960s711. The technique was met with general refusal from the farmers because of their lack of the financial means it required, the considerable amount of time and manpower it required, and the absence of an effective popularization campaign. During the 1962/63 agricultural season, the ON management attempted to introduce transplanting in most of the sectors (Kolongo, Kouroumari, Molodo and Niono) through collective fields. In Kouroumari, the farmers deliberately botched the work with the intention of demonstrating the inefficiency and unprofitability of the new technique. At Niono, results were quite good, but a calculation of manpower requirements made it clear that, under the conditions of the time, the same farmers could not simultaneously transplant rice and grow cotton on a large scale712.

It is true that transplanting rice seedlings required a great deal of work and time (an average of more than 18 days of labor for one hectare). Farmers carefully prepared the seeds in planks before transporting young plants for transplanting into rice fields. This practice was slow, but it ensured a good distribution of plants and ease of maintenance. Moreover, despite the discouragement and even the repugnance felt by settlers about the adoption of this technique, the ON authorities continued to believe that it should be accepted and practiced by farmers of the

710 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Yves Jamin, and Yacouba Coulibaly, Des paysans Sahélien engagés dans la revolution verte: les riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger (Mali), Séminaire CIRAD, Septembre 1995, p.3. 711 ANM, M.D. Diallo, l’Office du Niger face au savoir local de ses exploitants, Working Papers on Local Knowledge, no1, Point Sud, Muscler le Savoir, 1999, p.12. The farm of Kayo was built by the French colonial administration in 1935 to serve as an agronomic research station. This was why rice transplanting, which was practical in this farm, was to remain in use only at the research station. The purpose of these replanting trials was not to make a comparison between transplanting and direct seedling. At the time, the colonial administration was carrying out trials with soil manure and green manure. 712 AON, unnumbered document, Djibril Aw, Compte rendu de la campagne agricole 1963-64, Juin 1964, p.5.

229

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 zone as was done in the major rice producing countries such as China, and Vietnam. Rice transplanting was thus imposed on farmers by Retail project in the early years in order to ensure intensification713. To ensure compliance, the French project required farmers to apply it as the sole condition for obtaining irrigated land for rice cultivation, the ON management could only support its partners by organizing sessions through extension services to show women how to better transplant rice. According to Diallo, it was the lack of manpower needed for this new technique which was the basis of its adoption and monopolization by women in the zone. The author also notes that the income these women could derive from rice transplanting explained their growing interest in the practice714.

Due to the income that could be derived from this activity, the ON assisted with the organization of rice transplanting labor force in the production zones. To the Bella worker’s groups were gradually added the women’s groups, whose quality of work was judged better. The quality of the work was measured especially by how closely transplanters respected the planting intervals recommended to farmer. The recommended spacing was 20 cm on all sides, which women did better than others715. These women transplanted a hectare for between 15 and 28 dollars, without meals, and very often took payment after the harvest. The Bella, on the other hand, transplanted a hectare for between 28 and 37 dollars with immediate payment at the end of the working day. Thus, affordable pricing combined with quality work, as well as the regular yearly increase of the area to be transplanted (the Bella alone could no longer manage all the work in time) helped to make village’ women the main practitioners of this activity in the zone. By the 1997 crop year these women transplanted an estimated 63% of the rice growing area 716.

In the vegetable gardening domain, actions concerned not only the extension of production techniques, but also the setting up of marketing and supply channels, and support for product valorization. To make vegetable gardening a profitable activity, it was essential to master the entire sector. To doing so, in 1995 the rural councils were working to help women

713 AON, unnumbered document, Jean Michel Jung, and Paulette Tailly Sada, Objectifs, stratégies, opinions des riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, CIRAD, Octobre 1992, p.18. 714 ANM, M.D. Diallo, l’Office du Niger face au savoir local de ses exploitants, Working Papers on Local Knowledge, no1, Point Sud, Muscler le Savoir, 1999, p.31. 715 AON, unnumbered document, Rokiatou Diallo, Diénéba Diarra, Astan Keita, Fatoumata Guindo, Yacouba Coulibaly, Femme et riziculture intensive: les groupes de repiqueuses á l’Office du Niger, Octobre 1993, p.8. 716 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.83.

230

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 improve the commercialization of production. As part of this effort, the rural councils facilitated the conclusion of two agreements with customers which made it possible to sell the first buyer (SAMACO-SA) 900 tons of fresh tomatoes. The agreement with the second customer (PROMA- DELTA) involved 60 tons of fresh shallots, two tons of dried shallots and one ton of peppers717.

This action had the effect of stabilizing shallot prices in the local market, thus enabling women to benefit from significant financial income. The lowest price during the 1996 crop year was 75 CFAF per kg against 40 CFAF per kg in previous seasons. Women were able to sell at higher prices because the improvement in the quality of stored shallot made possible by the setting-up of storage rooms by Retail allowed them to keep their products until November, when seeding took place, in order to sell at a much more advantageous time718. Also, as part of the effort to master the vegetable gardening sector, the ON rural council, through PROMA-DELTA, assisted in the opening of seed sale points in the Niono and Macina zones. Support for the valorization of vegetable products, meanwhile, mainly concerned the diffusion of drying techniques (80 women across all the zones received the training) and the construction of hangars for storing onions. Eighty women was a very tiny percentage of the thousands of women working and living in the zone. Nevertheless, through the impact of these two activities on incomes was limited, it was an impact nonetheless.

What can be said with certainty is that improvement in women's incomes has contributed to a change in their socioeconomic situation, even if there are some conflicts between different approaches, and with cultural norms and traditions. The income women received through rice marketing and vegetable products helped them to improve their purchasing power. Many of them even bought animals, including highly valuable oxen, which they rented to men. They took care of themselves, their children, and in many cases also their husband719. On the other hand, the

717 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport d’Avancement programme ARPON III (période du 30 Juin au 31 Décembre 1995). Vers un systéme de suivi et d’évaluation du programme ARPON, Janvier 1996, p.21. 718 The high cost of the construction of the storage room and the maintenance difficulties (the repair of the wire netting and the renewal of the plastic of the roof) were the main constraints to the diffusion of the storage rooms initiated by the Retail project. During the field visits the researcher noticed that there was a significant lack of storage facilities in the villages, while the traditional storage techniques that some women without financial means used did not have the conditions and the capacity for good storage of shallots. This situation constitutes a major handicap to the marketing of vegetable gardening products in the ON zone. 719 Interview by author with Sinany Thiero in Ségou, October 25, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Lamine Traoré in Ségou, October 26, 2016; Interview by author with Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya in Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016.

231

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 husband has seen his purchasing power remain stable or decrease. The difficulty of feeding the family had very often led him to sell animals, and if oxen were lost (to disease), the average farmer felt himself unable to buy others come plowing time.

In many villages, men considered women to be a connecting factor within the family and within the community. In these villages, many were also convinced that development required understanding between man and woman and understanding of the complementarity between the two. However, during the field visit, I found that in some villages certain deeply-rooted values had not changed and that mistrust between men and women remained an obstacle to a real agreement. This distrust was emphasized by both men and women, and was due to jealousy and polygamy 720 . Among young couples, this problem seemed less accentuated, which is understandable by the fact that there was no third person to disturb the couple, and the man's responsibilities were less heavy (he too, always depended upon the household head). Tables 10 and 11 clearly illustrate the income generated by the activities that were largely practiced by women in the ON.

Table 10: Women and incomes from vegetable gardening, 1995/96 season Products Generated incomes (USD) % Areas exploited by women Shallot 9007,391 61 Tomato 181,539,65 87 Garlic 828,531,296 49 Pepper 527,223,792 100 Source: AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.84.

720 Interview by author with Oumou Sankaré, Noukhoum Mariko, Aboubacar Koné, and Astan Tamboura in B2 Banisraela, March 21 2017.

232

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Table 11: Women and incomes from transplanting rice seedlings during three seasons (USSD)

Season Macina Niono Molodo N’Débougou Kouroumari Total % Growth

1996/97 253, 136,731 15, 073,10 216, 747,853 59, 709,317 296, 313,288 544, 667,001 112.05

1995/96 236, 925,839 10, 715,28 185, 074,15 57, 043,505 212, 828,153 702, 586,927 262.75

1994/95 20, 018,157 19, 968,761 61, 191,572 33, 323, 021 132, 829,25 267, 330,761 ―

Source: AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.84.

233

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

6.4.4 Institutional impediments to emancipatory aspects The 1994 restructuring program, completed in principle by the adoption of Law no. 94.004 of 09 March 1994 establishing the new ON, was the culmination of a relatively lengthy process. In the atmosphere of liberal economic reforms, the fight against poverty was to be guided by the struggle against socio-economic differentiation and social inequality. Concerted interventions by donors and local authorities were instrumental in reviving farmers’ productive activities, especially those of women. Restructuring by narrowing down the scope of ON intervention had opened to farmers for the first time a margin for maneuver. At the same time, it encouraged the emergence of private enterprise and, especially, farmers' initiative. To realize these changes, a program for improving agricultural productivity and rural promotion was put in place. As such, the ON management led various interventions aimed directly or indirectly at improving and guaranteeing the land status of women and promoting their groupings with a view to making them directly responsible, for instance, for acquisition and autonomous management of some agricultural equipment (i.e. hulling and threshing machines)721.

However, a critical look at the series of reforms undertaken in the zone leads to the assertion that the mode of land tenure that was in force in the ON was not satisfactory in that it did not respond to the issue of land tenure security for women, even if it had contributed to the increase in production and productivity 722 . Despite the setting-up of the first tripartite performance contract (state-ON-farmers) during the second half of the 1990s―which was to ensure that all production became competitive in order to further the emergence of the free market that was now seen as an essential―women’s production and productivity security was not taken seriously. The very spirit of liberalization and privatization that the reform policy produced, sometimes, had an effect opposite to that expected from the actions in favor of strengthening women’s socioeconomic situation. In fact, the private sector would have a monopoly on the market for women's post-harvest activities (paddy hulling), while the rehabilitated land distribution system increased women's distress in terms of access to land.

721 AON, unnumbered document, Contrat-Plan 1988-1990 Etat-Office du Niger, “Document XY, not dated”, p.3. 722 AON, unnumbered document, Abdrahamane Touré, Sjoerd Zanen, and N’Fagnanama Koné, La Réstructuration de l’Office du Niger. Contribution de ARPON III Coopération néerlandaise, 1997, p.128.

234

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

6.4.5 Technology and the market around the hulling machines The introduction of small Ricefan threshers represented the first task transferred by the ON management to women, creating a cooperative activity for the latter which required them to organize around this "center of economic interest". These small threshers would be followed very quickly by hulling machines. Women received these, too, not just for the purpose of becoming involved in the development process underway in the zone, but also and especially to obtain other sources of income more secure than working in the family fields and the small-scale trade in rice and vegetables that they had practiced at times in the past. This reform was part of a liberalization process initiated in the second half of the 1980s and was fatal to the ON industrial rice mills. They ceased operating in the 1990s because they had been progressively replaced by small "village" machines belonging to women’s groups or to some individual723.

Parallel to the "women small hulling machines and threshers" action, the liberalization of the marketing of paddy as well as the process of privatization accelerated the growing establishment of large machines in villages. These machines belonged to private individuals or companies and their number varied from one village to another. As mentioned by Cheibane Coulibaly, by putting farmers in direct contact with the rice market, the reforms from the structural adjustment program also put them in direct contact with other groups of better-armed actors such as the private sector724. A competition then began between the machines managed by women's economic interest groups and those under private control725. However, this competition was much more visible with hulling machines than with women's groups’ threshers. One of the main reasons for this difference in visibility was that women had more hulling machines than threshing machines.

723 AON, unnumbered document, Michel Havard, Conseil de gestion aux petites et moyennes entreprises de décorticage de riz auprés de l’Unité Recherche-Développement et Observatoire du Changement (URDOC). Rapport de mission á Niono, Mali 20 Avril au 03 Mai 2003, Mai 2003, p.27. 724 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités a l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 202. 725 AON, 755, K. Dioni, D. Dembelé, and M. J. Niesten, Rapport sur les Décortiqueuses dans Douze Villages du Secteur Kokry. Une Comparaison de Fonctionnement entre les Décortiqueuses GIEF et les Décortiqueuses Privées, Mai 1991, p.3. It was in order to better guarantee and safeguard the interest of the women's groups and to make their machines more competitive that a study of the situation had proved useful in the Kokry sector. The study touched twelve villages and dealt with: the organization of women's group machines, the problems, the level of competitiveness of the machines, and the proposals for improvement of their use.

235

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

A bystander would not necessarily have expected the privately-owned machines to outcompete those of the women’s groups 726 . However, it must be recognized that the mismanagement and poor functioning of women’s machines were to be the main causes of the collapse of women's groups in the face of competition for market share with private owners who were better organized and more prepared for their tasks. The functional literacy provided by the ON management and its development partners had not been able to make up the education shortcomings which impeded women’s efficient management of machines. According to a mission carried out from 9 to 26 January 1990, the lack of time available for training due to agricultural work, particularly the participation of women in rice farming and vegetable gardening, often interrupted the learning process and consequently question about the achievements of these training courses727. In addition to mismanagement, it is necessary to acknowledge technical constraints faced by women's machines.

Machine breakdowns remained very common, especially for hullers during the period of peak paddy volume (February and March). Some pieces such as the blade and the sieve decayed very quickly728. These technical problems were the origin of the lower quality of white rice that these hulling machines produced. To avoid being inconvenienced by these malfunctions many customers, especially the big rice traders, preferred to go to private companies or individual to have their paddy shelled, thus allowing this sector to monopolize the activity in the whole ON zone. This dynamic spelled the end of women hulling machine operations. Aw and Diemer have analysed the breakup of the ON management’s hulling machine monopoly in the face of the zone’s emerging hulling market. They found that by creating a critical mass of individuals with a commercial stake in threshing and hulling, donors and the Malian government had made it all but impossible for the ON to reestablish its monopolies729. These authors, however, failed to mention

726 Interview by author with Fafré Diarra in Ségou, November 05, 2016; Interview by author with Fatoumata Guindo in Niono, November 23, 2016. According to Fatoumata Guindo, in the 1990s, the hulling machines of the women's groups lost their purchasing power because more efficient hulling machines came on the market against which women could not compete. Private hullers had seized dominance in this activity from the women who had been using it to earn small incomes since the mid-1980s. 727 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui femme et développement á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.21. 728 Interview by author with Ousmane Djiré Niono, November 18, 2016; AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui femme et développement á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.33. 729 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 26.

236

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 in their analysis that women groups’ hulling machine operations also faced failure in the face of private competition.

The private companies’ hulling machines strong point was their high working capacity (1 bag of paddy in 3 minutes), the good quality of white rice they produced, and the low price of about one dollar per bag (employing a women's group hulling machines cost almost two dollars). However, the economic consequences (low incomes) for women of losing the hulling market were heavier than the social ones (alleviation of their daily tasks). The return of a heavier workload was nevertheless a very real consequence; during the field visits I observed that some women were hulling rice by hand. The cost of the hulling machines and their accessories was a factor that aggravated these consequences of competition. In order to better compete with private hulling machines, it was necessary to reduce the costs of hulling, but this was not a realistic option for women’s groups. As long as the price of the hulling machine and spare parts did not decrease, it was impossible for them to reduce the costs of the hulling.

With regard to the technical issues mentioned above, the restructuring program also required that the ON management and its partners provide solutions to such frequent technical problems, even though the head of So-CAFON, Ousmane Djiré, told me during our interview the Dutch had already put in place a good system of technical monitoring730. In the new environment of liberalization and privatization where any competition was possible, the decision makers of the ON restructuring program had to be aware of the fact that it was insufficient to simply put machines at the disposal of women. In order for their activities to be profitable and sustainable, it was also necessary to accompany this initiative with a more effective monitoring and assistance policy. According to the 1990 mission, the system of technical monitoring was very limited. Indeed, the mechanic in charge of it was neither associated with the training of the operators nor even with the testing of the machines731.

6.4.6 Legal issues about land tenure

For donors, action to improve agricultural policy had to be based on four main points, including the primacy of small farms. Convinced of the merit of this new tenure policy, for the ON management "the improvement of exploitation" depended on first reducing the parcel size of

730 Interview by author with Ousmane Djiré in Niono, November 18, 2016. 731 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d’Appui femme et développement á l’Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.34.

237

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 each farm. The ON management therefore reduced the minimum area of farms from 3 to 2 hectares. This reduction makes sense in light of the large-scale introduction of transplanted rice. Transplanting is more labor intensive, but greatly increases yields. Growing transplanted rice on 2 hectares therefore offered higher yields than traditional sowing on 3 hectares, and the smaller farm size partially ameliorated the extra workload. According to Cheibane Coulibaly, the ON management and its partners were motivated by the argument that in terms of investment it was more profitable (given the cost of investments and the returns obtained) to promote small-scale farming because it used proportionally more work and less capital732. In the resolution No. 96 MDRE-S.G it was stipulated that the exploitation of the rehabilitated lands was done under an annual contract of exploitation or a license of agricultural exploitation. However, the most striking feature in the ON’s new tenure security system was the reduction in the size of the plots that farmers would now receive. Did the ON management agree to reduce the parcels for the purpose of improving exploitation or was it only concerned about the interests of its former staff who claimed irrigated land?

Most of the ON staff who was laid off claimed irrigated land, and there were a lot of them. As argued by Bonneval et al., one of the immediate consequences of the new reforms was a significant reduction of staff, which reduces the number of ON staff to 350 in all categories733. In 1991 alone, 500 ON employees were laid off. In 1993-94 it was planned to lay off another 645 and to retain only 541 for the new ON. In the end only two-third of the latter number were actually retained, and even more of the ON's staff were laid off. Laid off staff were given 36 months of net salary as a severance allowance after lengthy discussions between the local authorities, the workers' union and donors734. The ON management also promised to give them irrigated land. In the zone, it was the start of a land distribution that will benefit the former employees of the entreprise more than the farmers themselves. To fulfill this promise, the ON managers not only installed former employees on free irrigated land but even reduced the

732 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités a l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 161-162. 733 Pierre Bonneval et al., L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mali. Succès économiques, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement, (Paris: Cirad, Karthala, 2002), 95. 734 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités a l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 206; Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a Large Irrigation Scheme Work. A Case Study from Mali, Washington, D.C. 2005, p.49.

238

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 holdings of farmers who had been established since 1983-84735. This land tenure reform has taken a turn that Frederico Neto has described as political interference, in the sense that land is allocated for speculative rather than productive purposes736.

It was women in the villages who suffered most from this situation. That the most successful action of the ON and its “Women and Development” component, within the framework of the restructuring program, was undoubtedly the organization of women's access to vegetable gardening lands and, to a lesser extent, to rice lands. Yet in 2000, only 293 women were rice farm owners737. Individual village women even less frequently had access to rice plots, and cases of women farmers being married to a farming chief were very rare. It was the widows who became rice field owners, in terms of filling the role of farming chef, and also women who did not reside in the villages (usually city-dwellers). These latter had become owners of land either by redeeming the land title from a former ON worker who no longer interested in keeping land that was at a distance from where they lived, or from their husbands who were themselves former ON workers.

To these landowning formers ON workers, it was necessary to add the large number of senior officials, traders, pensioners, craftsmen and young graduates living either in the neighboring villages or in the chief towns of Ségou and in Bamako. Cheibane Coulibaly asserts that the beginning of the socialist regime’s "return to the land" programs in 1962 initiated the movement of townspeople towards the lands promoted by the state, such as those in the ON. He also asserts that the incursion of non-farmers, so-called “divers”, in the ON lands increased during the rehabilitation period738. Representing 28% of the settlers, and therefore more than 3000 farmers at the end of the 1980s, the "divers" occupied about 20% of the total irrigated area. In the following years their number increased as the result of the rehabilitation and the reduction of public services. In the Kolongo sector they accounted for 55% of settlers, in Kouroumari 37%, and in Molodo 34%.

735 AON, unnumbered document, Rapport de la mission d’évaluation d’ARPON (Septembre 1990). ARPON II á mi- chemin, Wageningen, Novembre 1990, p.3. 736 Frederico Neto, “Innovative approaches to rural development: Moving from state-controlled towards market- based land reform”, Natural Resources Forum 28, 2004, 53. 737 AON, unnumbered document, Réné Osté, Diagnostic Global de Genre et Développement á l’Office du Niger, p.15. 738 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités a l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 166-169.

239

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

Again, in this situation of reduction of farmers’ parcels and increasing allocations of land to the "divers", village women were most likely to have difficulty accessing land for vegetable gardening, and especially for rice cultivation. Consequently, increasing land pressure in the ON zone, particularly in Niono and Molodo, was a major constraint for women, because the scarcer that available land was, the less likely women were to have any. In keeping with tradition, priority was given to men because they were the heads of the family who were responsible for the care of it. Despite the contracts that stipulated equal access to land for men and women, it was found at this level that women individually were not generally beneficiaries of rice plots. Only widows recognized as heads of households and the city-dwellers not living in villages had the opportunity to be heads of farms. In the perimeter of M'Béwani in 41 villages only 4 widowed women were heads of farms 739 .The land allocated to women's economic interest groups, meanwhile, represented only 10% of the developed land. According to Bintou Kani, this situation of land scarcity compelled many women in the ON villages to practice vegetable gardening during the off-season in men’s rice fields740. Other women resorted instead to renting land at a cost of between 187 and 280 dollars per hectare, to be able to do gardening. Such went against resolution No.96 MDRE-S.G, which stipulated that the holder of the farming permit must himself farm his land, assisted by his family members and occasionally by employees, and that these lands cannot be ceded or subleased741.

It was in view of this situation that in 1990 the support mission "Women and Development" recommended making the rehabilitation an opportunity to submit decisions concerning the allocation of parcels to women to the communities. This mission also asked key stakeholders and donors to pay particular attention to women in feasibility studies and in rehabilitation programs742. According to Aw and Diemer, with the ON restructuring reforms farmers would be granted land-tenure, control over the use of the water fee, and good quality water through formalization and refinement of the land use rights and the joint management

739 AON, unnumbered document, Astou D. Diagne, and Jean Samaké, Evaluation du Genre dans la zone de l’Office du Niger. Rapport de synthése, Octobre 2005, p.62. On the death of her husband in 1997 Diénabou Touré, who resides in Molodo with her children, received her deceased husband’s 3 hectares of land, even though in such case the land number is transferred under the name of the eldest son of the deceased man, rather than under the name of his wife. 740 Interview by author with Bintou Kani in Marakala, April 13, 2017. 741 AON, 0225, Loi no. 94―004 Portant Creation de l’Office du Niger, Février 1994, p.12. 742 AON, unnumbered document, Mission d'Appui Femme et Développement á l'Office du Niger, Janvier 1990, p.47.

240

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 committees743. However, what these authors omitted was the land concerns that had always existed among women in the ON. Communications were established with stakeholders and farmers were consulted informally in the fields and officially through meetings with their elected representatives, but, women did not participate in these meetings and their concerns seemed not to be taken into account at this level744. This lack of engagement with women explains why instead of giving individual parcels to women for rice cultivation and vegetable gardening, the ON management’s efforts mostly stopped at satisfying its former employees by reducing the size of men’s parcels.

These issues ensured that land right issues were discussed a lot in the ON during the restructuring program. Many farmers did not easily accept management’s solutions. Farmers in some zones (i.e. N'Débougou) went further by saying no to land rehabilitation. In their view, upon completion of rehabilitation works the ON management would take the opportunity to reduce their plots for the benefit of other people who had nothing to do with the colonat. Such fears were not unreasonable, because, as emphasized by Aw and Diemer in order to stimulate intensification of rice farming, a reduction in plot size accompanied rehabilitation of the irrigation infrastructure745. The ON management deflected these criticisms by claiming that the plots of certain farmers had been reduced because they were in difficulty, for example because of excessive debts or failure to reach forecasted yields. However, the reduction of land could be interpreted as an action which turned a struggling farm into one that could not economically survive746. Reducing the meagre resources of a poor farmer was of no help to him, on the contrary, it could be fatal for him.

A farmer who had his parcel reduced still needed to feed his family with his few resources, and still needed to pay the water fee, though the water charge was at least less for a smaller area. Moreover, this full debt burden remained747. In a power relationship the strong always end up imposing their law on the weak. However, as argued by Cheibane Coulibaly,

743 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 46. 744 AON, unnumbered document, Réné Osté, Diagnostic Global de Genre et Développement á l’Office du Niger, p.19. 745 Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Making a large irrigation scheme work. A case study from Mali, (Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2005), 56. 746 AON, unnumbered document, Opinions et objectifs des riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger, Avril 1988, p.42. 747 Ibid., p.42.

241

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 despite the firm positions of farmers’ organizations against the introduction of this new reform on land tenure in the ON, farmers nevertheless did not rule it out in certain areas where it would be the best option for securing their land rights. According to Coulibaly, the acceptance of the land reforms was based on a realism characterized by two strands of thinking. First, a correct appreciation of its advantages, especially in terms of securing rights for farmers who had worked for decades in the developed zones without land security. Secondly, a clear awareness of the dangers, that could arise from the commodification of land or the corruption that could result from it748.

6.5 Conclusion

Some authors (Djibril Aw and Geert Diemer, Cheibane Coulibaly, and Pierre Bonneval, Marcel Kuper et al.) agree that a combination of different factors was at the origin of the ON restructuring program. It was in fact the creation of a favorable macro-and micro-economic environment (market liberalization, privatization, etc.), the introduction of a set of technical and social innovations (transplanting of rice seedlings, high-yielding varieties, fertilizers, campaign credits, training of farmers and agents), and good coordination between donors and institutional reforms (including the initiative of a partnership between the ON management and farmers). With regard to women promotion policy in the area, the donors continued the policy begun in the early 1980s by the Dutch partners. The sometimes "spectacular" results in the ON zone were due in large part to the successful completion of the restructuring, with the stalwart support of development partners such as the World Bank, the Dutch cooperation, the European Union Development Fund (EDF), the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW) from Germany and numerous other. It all began with the questioning of the role of the state, and then its partial disengagement from the enterprise. With this formula the majority of rice farmers and especially women had again found the means and the freedom of action to increase their incomes in a somewhat sustainable way. Achieving this improvement, required a strong commitment and willpower from the government that led the process, backers who would demande, advise, and fund the process, and the involvement of field agents and farmers who followed the process.

748 Cheibane Coulibaly, Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités a l’Office du Niger, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014), 224-225.

242

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010

The ON restructuring program included actions and interventions (access to land, agricultural credit, and agricultural equipment, support for women’s vegetable gardening, etc.) that produced positive effects in the form of more dynamic and sustainable involvement of women in the process of rural development through the ON. Women's economic groups were involved in diversification and management, while women throughout the villages became aware of the need to participate in land development (as happened in the M'Béwani production zone), and in production, processing and marketing. The introduction of rural radio made it possible for women to access necessary information on vegetable gardening techniques.

However, in all domains the achievements remained fragile and insufficient. It should be remembered that women, contrary to the commitments made by the Malian state and the ON management (who did not respect the clauses concerning, for instance, legal access to land), did not benefit from direct access to land. The irrigated land of the ON continued to be distributed under the sole name of the head of the family, whose responsibility and privilege it was to distribute the lands as and to whom he wanted, not to mention the fact that many lands were held by people living outside the ON villages to the detriment of women farmers. This iniquitous distribution system greatly disadvantaged women because, in an agricultural production area such as the ON, it is imperative to have access to natural resources such as land first and then be able to hope for other necessities such as water, fertilizers, and agricultural equipment. This important gender gap clearly shows that not everything was achieved by the ON restructuring program.

By the end of the ON restructuring program in 1994, a consultative structure had emerged between farmers and the Office du Niger management as a result of the empowerment of farmers, especially women, among other factors. This empowerment had in turn resulted in women taking on a more involved role in the ON development process. In addition to seeing their income improve with greater economic opportunities (rice cultivation, vegetable gardening, petty trading), women benefited from better participation in social life. With regard to women's participation in village-level dialogue and community affairs, the situation was indeed evolving, although it should be noted that it was a chameleon footstep. Women were not at all aware of the things that happened at the management level, or the joint committees. Some of the reasons for this lack of awareness were that women were not interested enough, that they had other priorities

243

Chapter 6: Developmental Programs in ON, 1990 - 2010 than participating in management committees, or that they did not feel capable. To remedy this problem, it would be important that there be sufficient follow-up and advisory-support to ensure that women could effectively accumulate experience and evolve in business. However, this follow-up was missing or insufficient everywhere in the different ON villages.

244

Chapter 7: Conclusions

7.0 Conclusions

The main purpose of this research is to compile a historical study on women’s situation in the ON in Mali and the role they have played in the rural development process initiated through this enterprise, from 1960 to 2010. In general, in the ON villages, despite women’s important role as mothers and housewives, they must obey their husband, who throughout the duration of the marriage, had authority over them, had the say and the decision-making power within the household. During the two first decades that followed the country’s independence, women’s situation in the household simply mirrored their situation in the village or the―public sphere. Women had no responsibility in public life, from which they remained very distant, because this domain was largely reserved for men. Analyzing the historical situation of women and their role during the study period came down to asking whether there was a possible change to their position over time, or whether they remained in the background. In other words, asking this question will help us understand what was particular about rural development efforts directed towards women in the ON.

The study tried to answer this question by drawing on a diverse variety of primary and secondary sources. The data thus collected led to some conclusions about what was the situation of women in Mali’s ON between 1960 and 2010 and what this means in terms of their role in the rural development process, by focusing on women’s place within the economic system, the conditions under which they lived and worked, and the social relations resulting from those conditions. Additionally, a focus on their contribution in the agricultural sector in particular and in the local economy in general, as well as on their economic potential, helps highlight the role women played in the rural development process through the lens of the Office du Niger.

In the Office du Niger, historians, anthropologists and others are still exploring, reconstructing and debating the postcolonial history of the irrigation scheme. However, no scholar has yet address in their analysis the situation of women within this scheme, especially the role that they have always played in this development project. This present study takes a different approach, because it analyses and debates women's situation and role in economic activities and the public sphere in the ON during the post-independence period. By doing so, this work contributes to current scholarly efforts to understand the status and situation of women in

245

Chapter 7: Conclusions the ON as development actors in their local community in their own right, not simply as mothers, or wives as they were primarly viewed by other scholars who have already worked in the area. By analysing these women farmers’ distinctive relationship to production and development, this study illuminates not only their social and economic conditions, but also the perception of their value in the whole society, and in rural development. This study therefore adds to the few existing studies on the topic because rural development and women are still politically and socioeconomically meaningful in the contemporary Malian development process. Also, examining in detail how Office du Niger women farmers constituted a very large workforce in the rice, cotton and vegetable fields, as well as the several survival strategies they put in place, confirms an existing theory which stated that, if they are involved in development programs, women can contribute considerably to efforts to end hunger and reduce poverty in rural areas.

During the 1960s and 1970s political changes as well as the different ideological preferences of different ruling authorities in Bamako (Modibo Keita’s regime was marked by a collectivist approach to rural development, while the government of Moussa Traoré was more favorable to agrarian reform through coercion and interventionism) meant much change in women’s socio-economic situation in the ON. Certain continuities, such as a men-based agricultural policy, nevertheless remained a strong influence on women’s situation and role in the zone. During these two decades, the ON management officials concentrated all resources in men’s hands. Land was distributed only to male household heads, and because it was they who owned the land it was up to them, and to them alone, to decide on access to water, fertilizers, agricultural credit, and agricultural materials (plows, seeders, oxen, etc.). Although, in the country in general, there was a system of land purchase which women were able to access, still only men inherited land. In sum, most rural women farmers depended on men for their principal resources of production, while petty trade practiced here and there did not remunerate them enough to supplant agriculture as the main source of food. Because of this situation, women saw themselves obliged to work on behalf of their husbands and on the family farm. The majority of those who wanted to engage in agricultural activities outside the family sphere had to borrow their husbands' rice fields, or rent the land as well as setting-up wells in order to water the land they used for gardening, because they lacked access to irrigated water. Additionally, agricultural extension services did not reach women, who were in the eyes of the ON officials and management only a labor force at the disposal of the household head.

246

Chapter 7: Conclusions

This study reveals that women in the ON villages participated actively in agricultural activities. They worked in the fields of cotton, rice, millet, and vegetables as a family labor force and then as self-employed workers. The very important economic role played by these women in the ON did not, however, afford them a privileged position either in the household, in the public sphere or in the village where they lived and worked. In addition to the Malian marriage code of 1962 and the Constitution of 2 June 1974, both of which contributed to the inequality between men and women, there were some social customs and values, such as division between girls and boys in the very early age and later between men and women within the family, marriage, dowry and polygamy, which served to increase the difference between the sexes during the 1960s- 1970s. For instance, polygamy was a sign of the private appropriation of women by reminding them of their dependence on men as well as of their non-responsibility in the household, even if some women farmers considered this social phenomenon to be a means of achieving economic autonomy.

In the 1960s and 1970s, while the ON management was marked by a severe technical and financial crisis in terms of production and water management, many farmers were in debt and some of them could not even ensure a sufficient yield for their own daily consumption. This food crisis and the constraining factors on paddy collection during this period motivated women to put in place strategies to find alternative sources of income. These strategies utilized agricultural activities carried out in the fields, both those of their husbands and those of other households, and also the marketing of their female know-how through manual hulling. The ability of these women to organize themselves for work in service of their goal of securing the means of survival for themselves and their households shows how their contribution to the needs of the household was direct and indispensable. For many of the women questioned, the whole family contributed towards the upkeep of the household, including the men's income. Nevertheless, also clear from their remarks is that many husbands only supplied the basic commodities, that is to say rice, millet or corn, fish and sometimes meat. All the rest that was necessary to prepare daily meals was provided by wives.

This situation left women to support their families from their personal earnings (from the use or the sale of the products of their vegetable gardening, of rice, fruits, and soap). This was possibly the reason why many of them, in the production zones of M’Béwani and Molodo, stated

247

Chapter 7: Conclusions that they had no personal possessions (such as livestock, or jewellery). The few women who told me that they had these kinds of possessions bought them by their own means. Only one woman, Oumou Kalssoum Cissé at B2 Banisraela, explained to me that her husband, who enjoyed a very good financial situation, often bought her valuable jewels and financed her small retail trade in textiles and soap. Thus, women’s earnings were an important part of the family income and upkeep. Without women and the labor they perform, it seems that a family subsistence in the ON villages would be considerably more difficult. They did not merely react and obey, but acted independently even if they had only a very limited range of freedom and economic potential. This shows how women were not passive objects of the Office du Niger policies, but active participants in the rural development process initiated through this enterprise.

In the ON women not only had to work in the fields during the sowing and harvest periods, but also had an enormous workload in the house. The sole “traditional” relief for them from this workload was the help of a co-wife, or the arrival of daughters-in-law who joined the household and shared the work with them. From Modibo Keita’s regime in 1960 to the end of the 1970s, no development policy initiated within the framework of the irrigated land of the ON officially took into account the interests and needs of women farmers. When women were asked how they themselves see their work and their situation, the majority did not regard their work as a burden although they all recognized that they were doing hard work. Women were aware of the existing difference in the distribution of the work between them and men, as well as of men preferential acces to resources (land, water, credit, etc.,), but they considered this situation to be normal or natural. These perceptions women had of their own status and position within society reveal the importance of social values and customs, as well as the limits of rural development policies in terms of favoring women throughout the area.

In sum, during the entire period between 1960 and 1970, in terms of access to means and resources which could allow their effective involvement in agricultural activities and provide an improvement of their working and living conditions, the situation of women in the ON villages did not change. During this period, they were family members, a family labor force, and observers of the development process that was underway in their community, without any recognized and official initiative coming from them. Rural development policy at the time did not take into account women's interests and concerns. The results of this research reveal a

248

Chapter 7: Conclusions continuity of what the French colonial administration was doing in terms of agricultural policy regarding women in the ON. It was only from the first half of the 1980s that changes started to occur among women farmers due to the international community's influence in Mali's rural development policy. The intervention of development partner countries like the Netherlands, which in turn were influenced by a rural development agenda marked by a women promotion policy which dominated development efforts led by international institutions like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, has created in collaboration with the ON management a new environment in terms of rural development. The Netherlands initiated in the ON an aid program in which they decided officially to integrate women farmers in order to improve their situation in the villages.

The Dutch undertook several actions aimed at helping women farmers to better value and take care of their interests. As part of the ON rehabilitation program agreed between the Malian government, the ON authorities and the Dutch partners during the first half of the 1980s, it was planned to give farmers, especially women, more responsibility. The goal of the Dutch's intervention was to give farmers more decision-making power. As I have it written, it sounds like the goal is to change farmers’ attitudes and work habits so that they will act more responsibly. Through the ARPON project, literacy sessions have been given to women farmers, fertilizers and pesticides have been distributed, women's economic interest groups have been set up, and agricultural machines such as hullers and threshers have been allocated to women's groups, to name but a few initiatives. In order to more effectively pursue their efforts, the Dutch development partners started paying special attention to the implements they were using, such as the means of processing paddy rice and millet; to the effectiveness of such implements; the degree to which they could relieve women of their physical burdens; and the questions of to which women to provide such equipment, and how these implements could be acquired. Women receiving such tools frequently repaid the purchase cost with their own earnings.

This situation reveals a positive and more or less successful integrated rural development project. In the ON, small-scale projects were applied in ways that allowed the small-holders, including women, to act as development participants, with external agents acting as facilitators and sources of funds. The rehabilitation program which materialized out of the original excitement of development partners contributed to helping the Malian government overcome the

249

Chapter 7: Conclusions food crisis with which the country was faced after the droughts of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Food production and the quality of ON village residents’ diets increased as a result of this program, due to improvements to irrigated land, as well as to the allocation of agricultural equipments and the water supply, which combined to make possible an increase in rice production. Greater involvement of women farmers in the agricultural sector also helped by increasing vegetable gardening productivity.

This study also analyzed the immediate impact that using technologies had on women’s production and productivity. Their earnings increased a bit, even as their quantity of work was decreasing due to the use of postharvest machines. After allocating them those postharvest machines, the ARPON project deemed it necessary to grant women's groups land for vegetable gardening, (this was especially the case in the M'Béwani production zone) and some women even received plots in order to grow rice. This development made, women’s vegetable gardening, formerly prohibited by ON rules, into a permitted activity alongside rice cultivation. For the first time in the history of the irrigation scheme, women became landowners (many women's groups have been allocated plots), and for the first time they were involved officially in a development program in the ON. In groups or individually, for the first time they developed mechanical postharvest activities supported by machines dedicated to this purpose. An essential development which must be emphazed here, is that these women could now, for a fee, access water from the irrigation system for their vegetable gardening activities and rice cultivation.

Extension services programs and their impact on women’s farming system is another point discussed in this study. Among the most important actions undertaken by the Dutch partners in the framework of the women promotion policy within the ON villages, was the recruitment of women as extension agents in order to support women farmers in their activities. Most of the women encountered during field visits (female extension workers as well as female farmers) felt that women worked better than men, because they better understood the concerns of women farmers. Female extension agents educated women in order for them to improve their production and earnings in the rice farming system and through gardening, as part of an effort to persuade them of the opportunity for decision-making in the context of crop diversification for food self-sufficiency.

250

Chapter 7: Conclusions

Much attention was also given to women's non-farm activities, more precisely to their hygiene, food and bodily well-being. These women extension workers’ services contributed to fostering a climate of trust with women farmers and thus increased the latters’ receptiveness to the messages that the Malian authorities, the ON management and their development partners wanted to convey in terms of rural development, while the women themselves felt more and more involved in development actions. An in-depth analysis of the dynamic of extension services in the ON zone since 1960 and the impact that female extension officers’ work had on women farmers' activities confirms what has long been argued that if agricultural research and extension systems paid more attention to gender issues there would be more successes.

The international community intervention from the 1990s through support and political economic―intervention from financial institutions like the World Bank, and from bilateral partnerships with the Dutch, French, and Germans has been analyzed in this study. This analysis shows the continuity of the women promotion policy initiated by the Dutch in the zone. The new perspective began with the questioning of the role of the state, and then its partial disengagement from the enterprise. In this situation the majority of rice farmers, especially women, found the means and the freedom of action to increase their income in a more sustainable way. However, one must recognize that this situation required the strong commitment and willpower of the Malian government that led the process, and of the funders who had demanded, advised, and funded the process, as well as the involvement of field agents and farmers (men as well as women) who took part in the process. It was this policy, resulting from the international community intervention, that created the actions and interventions (access to land, to agricultural credit, to agricultural equipment, support for women’s vegetable gardening, etc.) that made possible a more dynamic and sustainable involvement of women in the rural development process through the ON. Women economic groups were involved in crop diversification and the irrigation system maintenance, while women in the villages of every production zone became aware of the need to participate in land development, production, processing and marketing.

What the findings summarized in the paragraphs above make clear is that, changes brought about through development aid measures delivered as part of structural adjustment programs were not mostly to the disadvantage of women, as other scholars have claimed. For many interviewees, women in the ON were becoming more active development actors in their

251

Chapter 7: Conclusions community as well as more active participants in their families, due to the successes of the ON development policy in the 1990s in improving women’s economic empowerment through access to land and, credit, agricultural extension, the number of women working at the Office du Niger’s institutions, and so on. Due to the improvement in their economic situation, women began to be more involved in decision-making concerning family affairs. Additionally, there is a process of behavior change in almost all the production areas visited whereby men are becoming more and more favorably disposed towards the involvement of women in family management.

Decisions about their children's marriages (both boys and girls) are increasingly undertaken by both parents, whereas earlier, such decisions were undertaken only by the father, a brother, or another male representative of the lineage. Also, women now have the right to participate in family meetings for planning and reporting on agricultural campaigns. Moreover, not only do women now have a say regarding the affairs of their household, but at the village level they run their own associations and organizations which are so essential for group solidarity and activities. Results even reveal that there are among women farmers some leaders who are capable of managing the interests of community through the lens of the women’s economic group. Usually, these women gather and even train other women in their village without any assistance from female extension agents.

However, one should not overlook the shortcomings that followed these changes in women farmers’ situation. After the withdrawal of some international development partners in the late 1990s, the Malian authorities and the ON management no longer took women’s interests seriously. For example, women still retained the right to land they had obtained during the 1980s, but in most cases they did not benefit from it anymore. Land is redistributed to the state and the ON officials to the detriment of women farmers, while big companies that have settled down, in the framework of the ON agro-business policy, have deteriorated their situation. The collective use of land by women is the most widely used formula in the zone, to the detriment of women's access to plots on an individual basis. This situation does not allow for the consolidation of women’s economic potential, and in the ON conferring the title of "farm manager" is the only way to give women the opportunity to access the means of production and guarantee their presence in decision-making and management bodies in place in the zone. In the future, local authorities and the ON management are expected to give more importance to the allocation of

252

Chapter 7: Conclusions individual plots to women, while with regard to women's collective plots, the ON will also have to find a more suitable formula in the face of the growing threat of the granting of land to multinationals. Women's collective plots have to be saved and more opportunities to allocate individual plots have to be created in order to ensure land tenure for women farmers.

With regard to the postharvest activities which the women carried out in the villages, market liberalization brought competition between the privately owned hulling machines and those owned by women. Faced with the proliferation of private machines with more favorable prices for service in almost all villages in the zone, women’s group agricultural machines could not stand because of a lack of financial and technical means. After the withdrawal of certain donors such as the Dutch who had greatly assisted women's groups in their postharvest activities, women no longer benefited from the assistance of the ON management to carry out their activities. They were abandoned to their fate in the face of private individuals who had the material and financial means to compete with them, as many people I have met told me in the villages. For an effective revival of these activities, the ON authorities must set up a good monitoring and evaluation system for the machines, but also work to better train women in female agricultural entrepreneurship. The agricultural extension system that existed around women's grouping until then in the ON zone focused mainly on agricultural technical advice and statistical monitoring (the cultivated areas, and the number of planted hectares) and much less on the organizational and capacity building of the members and especially leaders in order to make them real engines of local self-promotion.

In the area, there is almost no structured system for supplying vegetable seeds. As far as the shallots produced by women are concerned, the supply is entirely managed by women themselves. Some manage to keep part of the harvest in specially designed rooms due to a project to build a shallot seed storage site supported mainly by URDOC. However, I noticed during my field visits that the majority of women were forced to buy shallot seed on the local markets, through the goodwill of female extension officers. It would be very important to set up an organized system of seeds’ distribution not only for the shallots but for all the vegetable species grown by women in the zone. By an organized system, is meant the establishment, for example, of a rural council and assistance to women in the supply of agricultural inputs and materials. Also, to make the seeds needed by women available and accessible, the authorities

253

Chapter 7: Conclusions should continue the project to build vegetable storage rooms, which can not only be used to store crops for good marketing of production but also and above all for the seeds' storage.

Within the framework of women promotion policy in the area, special emphasis was placed on women’s literacy. Sessions were funded, and village female extension were trained. The effect of this activity was certainly very limited, however, because the number of women who are actually literate in a village and who use the written word in the management of personal or collective activities are, with some ready exceptions, to be counted on the fingers of one hand, but what is most striking is that in the zone there is no longer any training or literacy activity for women. The functioning or not of women’s literacy in the villages of the ON seems still to depend entirely on the donors. Local authorities should, first, take the initiative to organize training in the village, and then take care of the financial and material expenses that this would imply. Local authorities should not depend on foreign aid to train and educate women to enable them to benefit from all the advantages, for example that current technology can bring to them. In the majority of the villages I have visited, women farmers expressed me their intention to want to follow literacy and training sessions. It is now more than necessary for the local authorities to boost literacy in the area for a better continuation of the achievements brought about due to the ON women's promotion policy since the early 1980s. However, for this situation to be effective in the zone, a mobilization of the state’s financial contribution must be made sufficient and available.

The empowerment of farmers, after the 1994 restructuring program, resulted, among other things, in the establishment of a more or less structure between farmers and the ON management throughout the Office du Niger zone, while at the level of each production zone was noted the joint committees of water and land management. The effective participation of women in these decision-making and management bodies of factors of production and society has not been noted. Many women were unaware of what was going on in these bodies because they had not been well represented. All the important positions were thus directed by men. Should women be more involved in these bodies? Proponents of the gender approach would certainly say yes, it must be done. Indeed, it is a very strategic interest to be able to defend your own interests. To start well, it is appropriate to define well the interests that women would have to defend through

254

Chapter 7: Conclusions the ON various management bodies. Obtaining and consolidating vegetable gardens' plots are two of the important interests that women would be well advised to defend in these bodies.

During the field visits, I noted the men and young people growing interest for vegetable gardening in which they saw a considerable source of income which could well make them independent from rice for the repayment of agricultural debts. In this context of race for land, women who have acquired the right of access to vegetable gardening land may well lost it, and this has already started in some production zones, due to the lack of negotiating power. Many women did not benefit from the extensions of land managed under the Master Plan, a large part of which was intended to gardening. To change this situation, it is therefore important that women are informed in time, that they are organized and trained to make requests, so that they can better compete with other interested parties. Women have to own well their autonomy because what was accepted for decades when it is said that the husband takes care of his interests and those of his wives can no longer hold in an environment where not only the resource becomes scarce but it is coveted by both sexes.

This study also reveals that, despite some changes in their economic situation and their position in terms of houshold affairs, and in the zone's agricultural production system which has evolved considerably, women do not, or do so only to a certain degree, participate in dialogue or decision-making at the village level or in the public sphere and in the management bodies for community affairs. This situation is not due to a lack of sufficient interest in their community’s affairs, to their having other priorities than participating in management committees, or to their not feeling capable, as some observers have suggested. In fact, one of the major reasons for this lack of involvement in public decision-making is that these women have, for the most part, been ignored by decision makers and local authorities for whom men’s opinions and views were more than sufficient. Additionally, in society, traditional values and customs persist which indicate that the place of women is below men and that men are fully responsible for all expenses relating to themselves, their wives, and their children, that is to say their whole family. In this context, it is perceived very badly for a man to request assistance from his wife, while dialogue or collaboration between man and woman was practically impossible. This situation has in turn rendered almost nonexistent the help that a husband must provide to his wife in order for her to gain economic and financial freedom, even if it is possible to cite some exceptions like in Niono

255

Chapter 7: Conclusions where I saw very entrepreneurial women being supported in their agricultural and economic affairs by their whole family including the husband. Maa Diarra's case is a clear example.

Women's opinions count very little with regard to a decisions, such as whether or not technical innovations or improvements should be introduced which would alleviate women’s daily routine or allow them to improve their working conditions. During the field visit, the researcher tried to take into consideration the women’s point of view, noting replies received during the interviews which prove that women were interested in such improvements, such as : mills for millet and maize ; winnowing, hulling machines and threshers for rice ; implements for processing vegetables ; up to roads and storage room installations. When, some of the women who still did not yet have access to new technologies were asked how they would want to use the energy they would save and the time they would gain with the introduction of such technical facilities their answer was that they would like to do other work : work that would bring them, and thereby their families, more money, and thereafter, financial autonomy. This last point shows that women, in addition to being interested, are ready to invest time and energy in activities that they consider beneficial.

It remains only be added that, for things to go as well as they possibly can, it will be very important for the Malian statesmen and the ON management’s officials to set-up an integrated monitoring and support-advisory system to ensure women in the villages can effectively gain experience and evolve in business. From what I noticed during my field visits, this monitoring was missing practically everywhere. Nevertheless, women farmers remain aware that any change of their social position is likely to emerge first through improvement of their economic and financial situation. Thus, any change in women's situation in the villages would imply, an improvement of the whole zone’s economic indicators. Essential to such development is that the technical improvement and innovations should better meet women’s needs, be of benefit to them, and not change over into men's hands. As numerous scholars interested in the approach "Women and Development" have made clear, any project or resource intended to promote women's interests has to be utilized by women.

256

Sources Consulted: Archival Materials

Sources Consulted

Archival Materials

World Bank Group Archives (WBGA) WBGA, Office du Niger Consolidation Project-01, 1997 WBGA, Office du Niger Consolidation Project-03, 1997 WBGA, Office du Niger Consolidation Project-04, 1997 WBGA, Mali Program Management and Monitoring-Status of Projects under Implementations, 1996

WBGA, Correspondance 1989-January 1971, 1995 WBGA, Office du Niger Consolidation Project-08, 1997 WBGA, Office du Niger Consolidation Project-09, 1997 WBGA, Office du Niger Consolidation Project-10, 1997 Archives of French economy and finances ministry (AMEFF) AMEFF, Folder number Z-16365, Dettes maliennes: paiement, applications des accords Franco maliens du 13 février 1967, échéancier, note pour le ministre, 1967-1972 AMEFF, Folder number 73225, economic affairs of Mali, 1959-1986 AMEFF, Folder number B-73230/1, Office du Niger, 1982-1986 AMEFF, Office du Niger 1960-1961 AMEFF, Aide au Développement, 1982-1986 AMEFF, Folder number B-0054723, Situation du budget et de la monnaie au Mali, 1940-1971 Archives of French foreign affairs ministry (AMAEF) AMAEF, Folder number B-0059585/15, Mali 1989-1990 AMAEF, Folder number 54, Mali Questions Politiques et Diplomatie-Questions Economiques et Financières-Industrie-Mines-Agriculture-Transport-Tourisme, 1973-1975 AMAEF, Folder number 57, Questions Financières et Economiques AMAEF, Folder number 61, Mali/3.1, Politique Intérieure, Dossier général: constitution, sureté de l’Etat, 1976-1977 AMAEF, Folder number 69, Social affairs, labor and health, 1975-1978

257

Sources Consulted: Archival Materials

Senegalese National Archives, Dakar (ANS) ANS, Folder number 325, Conseil Assemblée Général- Lois et Ordonnances. 1959 ANS, Folder number 326, Assemblée Général-Lois no 59 du 7/4/1959, no -60-11 du 18/06/1960 ANS, Folder number 327, Assemblée Général. Courrier Président avec délégation du Mali a Paris. 1959-1960 ANS, Folder number 1G/19 (104), Bernard Maupoil. L’époque des Coutumiers Juridiques de l’AOF. (Présentés sous Coutumiers juridiques de l’AOF I) ANS, Folder number 1G/30 (104), Renseignements sur les habitations au Soudan et pour le Canton de Bambelebougou par Emmanuel Bancal ANS, Folder number 1G31 (104), Soudan-Coutumiers

Malian National Archives, Bamako (ANM) ANM, folder number 55/D144, Commission Sociale des Femmes, 1959-1968 ANM, folder number 58/D158, Convention Juridique de la femme dans la famille, 1967 ANM, folder number 77/D247, Confèrence des femmes Africaines a Konakry ANM, folder number 147/ D569, Section de Ségou. Fiches de Renseignements-Commission Sociale des femmes, 1968 Echos Hebdo, 19/06/09: Dossier: Union National des Femmes du Mali (UNFM) Echos Hebdo, 24/07/09: Dossier: La Lutte des femmes Echos Hebdo, 27/08/2010: Dossier: Les Combattantes de la liberté Jamana, Numéro special Mai 1985: Femmes Maliennes Emancipation ou Alienation? Office du Niger Archives, Ségou (AON) AON, Folder number 136, Situation de l’Office du Niger, divers rapports AON, Folder number ONC0027, Rapport de mission á l’Office du Niger AON, Folder number 33/2, Organisation de l’ON AON, Folder number 73, Commission Nationale de la Planification de l’Economie Nationale, zone de Office du Niger, 1969-1979 AON, ON/Programme ARPON, Divers, 1982-1985 AON, ON/Programme ARPON-Enquete de demande de prêt et conventions d’ouverture de crédit 1986-1988 AON, Office du Niger, Programme ARPON. Rapport Femmes et Développement, 1987-1991

258

Sources Consulted: Archival Materials

AON, ON/Ségou, Programme ARPON. Plan Bilan de campagne 1985-1992, 1994-2008 AON, ON/Ségou, Contra-Plan Etat-ON-Exploitants Agricoles, 1988-1998 AON, Folder number, 239 Restructuration de l’ON-Organisation du nouvel ON, 1993

259

Oral Sources Used

Oral Sources Sinany Thiero, Ségou, October 25, 2016 Aminata Yacouba Touré, Ségou, October 26, 2016 Fatoumata Lamine Traoré, Ségou, October 26, 2016 Youssouph Sidibé, Ségou, October 26, 2016 Marie Odile Dougnon, Ségou, October 27, 2016 Mariam Diarra, Marakala, October 31, 2016 Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani, Marakala, October 31, 2016 Mariam Traoré, and Bintou Kani, Marakala, October 31, 2016 Adjara Daou, Ba Minata Fofana, Minata Coumaré, Kasso Djiré, Mariam Samaké, Tata Nanakossé, Kotimi Diallo, Maimouna Dembelé, Worokyatou Samaké, Nana Samaké, and Kotimi Dougnouya, Plaine-Amont, November 02, 2016 Oumou Traoré, Kadia Togo, Batoma Diarra, Tama Traoré, Rokia Coulibaly, Kadiatou Malé, Djénébou Coulibaly, Maimouna Tangara, and Laya Traoré, in Hérémakono, Hérémakono, November 03, 2016 Fafré Diarra, Ségou, November 05, 2016 Bené Traoré, Ségou, November 06, 2016 Yaya Diarra, Ségou, November 08, 2016 Sinany Thiero, Ségou, November 10, 2016 Diénéba Diarra, Niono, November 18, 2016 Astan Keita, Niono, November 18, 2016 Ousmane Djiré, Niono, November 18, 2016 Fatoumata Guindo, Niono, November 23, 2016 Aissatou Doumbia, Fatoumata Diarra, and Ramatoulaye Keita, N'Débougou, November 23, 2016 Fatoumata Drago, N'Débougou, November 23, 2016 Kadiatou Dembelé, N'Débougou, November 24, 2016 Maimouna Daou, Molodo Centre, November 24, 2016 Fatoumata Coulibaly, Molodo centre, November 24, 2016 Nana Diarra, N'Débougou, November 25, 2016 Fafré Diarra, Ségou, November 26, 2016 Amidu Magasa, Bamako, March 01, 2017

260

Oral Sources Used

Boubacar Sow, Ségou, March 10, 2017 Oumou Sankaré, Noukhoum Mariko, Aboubacar Koné, and Astan Tamboura, B2 Banisraela, March 21, 2017 Astan Diassana, Niono KL 23 Coura, March 23, 2017 Karamoko Kalosy, B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017 Oumou Kalssoum Cissé, Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, Mariama Cissé, and Bama Coulibaly, B2 Banisraela, March 24, 2017 Aminata Traoré, Bintou Traoré, Aissatou Tangara, Oumou Barry, Binta Kouraïchi, and Fadily Coulibaly, ND 2 Sangharéla, March 24, 2017 Youssouph Dembelé, ND 2 Sangharéla, March 28, 2017 Kadia Sougouba, Bintou Coulibaly, Séné Tréta, Oumou Coulibaly, and Oumou Coulibaly, Siengo, March 29, 2017 Yacouba Coulibaly, Niono, March 29, 2017 Zoumana Coulibaly, and Ibrahima Konaté, Siengo, March 29, 2017 Sina Dembelé, and Zoumana Coulibaly, B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017 Rokia Malé, B3 Médina Coura, March 30, 2017 Korotimy Kalosy Fofana, B2 Banisraela, March 30, 2017 Oumou Coulibaly, Niéminany, April 04, 2017 Maimouna Coulibaly, Molodo Centre, April 04, 2017 Maa Diarra, Niono KL 23 Coro, April 04, 2017 Diénabou Touré, Molodo Centre, April 05, 2017 Diénéba Tangara, B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017 Diénéba Sangharé, B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017 Ba Lamine, B1 Niobougou, April 06, 2017 Anassa Bouaré, B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017 Aminata Tangara, B2 Banisraela, April 07, 2017 Fatouma Samaké, Oumou Diarra, and Yaya Cissé, M’Béwani Centre, April 11, 2017 Fatouma Samaké, M’Béwani Centre, April 11, 2017 Mariam Touré, M’Béwani Coro, April 13, 2017 Salimata Coulibaly, and Nafissatou Coulibaly, Kando, April 13, 2017 Bintou Kani, Marakala, April 13, 2017

261

Bibliography

Aw, Djibril and Diemer, Geert. Making a Large Irrigation Scheme Work. A case study from Mali. Washington: World Bank, 2005. Anderson, Jock R., and Feder, Gershon. “Rural Extension Services, Agriculture and Rural Development Department”. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2976, (February 2003). Ashley Caroline and Maxwell Simon, “Rethinking Rural Development”, Development Policy Review, 19, no.4, (2001): 395-425. Ajayi, Simon I. “The State of Research on the Macroeconomic Effectiveness of Structural Adjustment Programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa”. In, Structural Adjustment and Beyond in Sub- Saharan Africa, edited by Van Der Hoeven and Fred Van Der Kraaij. The Hague, The Netherlands: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS), 1994. Albert, Ethel M. “Women of Burundi: A Study of Social Values”. In Women of Tropical Africa, edited by Denise Paulme, 179-215. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Bélime, Emile. “Problémes Nigériens”. France Outre-mer Bulletin de l’Ifan, nο. 283, (Mai 1953): 1195-1204. Boserup, Ester. Women’s Role in Economic Development. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970. Boserup, Ester. La Femme Face au Développement Economique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983. Beusekom, Monica M. van. Negotiating Development. African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920-1960. Oxford: James Currey, 2002. Bocquier, Philippe, and Diarra, Tiéman. Population et Sociéte au Mali. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999. Barbier, Jean-Claude. Femmes du Cameroun. Mères pacifiques, femmes rebelles. Paris: Karthala-ORSTOM, 1985. Bingen, James R. Cotton, democracy and development in Mali. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Bazin-Tardieu, Danielle. Tardieu, Femmes du Mali. Statut, image, réactions au changement. Ottawa: Lemeac, 1975. Ba Ch. Daha. “Marginalité et Exclusion au Sénégal, les Comportements Délictuels et Criminéls dans la Vallée du Fleuve Sénégal (1810-1970)”, PhD Diss., Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, June 2002. Bonneval, Pierre et al. L’Office du Niger, grenier a riz du Mali. Succès économiques, transitions culturelles et politiques de développement. Paris: Cirad, Karthala, 2002. Burrill, Emily S. States of marriage: gender, justice, and rights in colonial Mali. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2015.

262

Bibliography

Brondeau, Florence. “La gestion de l’eau á l’ON, bilan, enjeux et perspectives”. Bulletin Association des Geographes Français, Les Territoires de l’eau, no. 3, (2003): 269-286. Bennett, Valerie P. “Military Government in Mali”. The Journal of Modern African Studies 13, no. 2 (June 1975): 249-266. Benor, Daniel M., and Baxter, Michael. La vulgarisation agricole par la formation et les visites. Washington D.C: Banque mondiale, 1998. Ba Konaré, Adam. Dictionnaire des Femmes Célèbres du Mali (des temps mythico-légendaires au 26 Mars 1991) précédé d’une analyse sur le rôle et l’image de la femme dans l’histoire du Mali. Bamako (Mali): Editions Jamana, 1993. Carl, Eicher K., and Baker, Doyle C. “Research on Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Survey”. Food Security International Development Papers 54071, no. xi, (1982). Coulibaly, Cheibane. “Intérêts de classes politique alimentaire et sujétion des producteurs: le cas de l’Office du Niger au Mali”, in Politiques alimentaires et structures sociales en Afrique noire, ed. Maxime Haubert. Paris: Presses Universitaires Françaises, 1985. Creevey E. Lucy. Women Farmers in Africa. Rural Development in Mali and the Sahel. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Caldwell, John C. and Caldwell, Pat. “The Cultural Context of High Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa”. Population and Development Review 13, no. 3, (1987): 409-437. Commins, Stephen K. Africa’s Development Challenges and the World Bank. Hard Questions, Costly Choices. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988. Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Cooper, Frederick. Decolonization and African Society. The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Coulibaly, Cheibane. Politiques agricoles et stratégies paysannes au Mali de 1910 á 2010, Mythes et réalités á l’Office du Niger. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014. Cruz, Jean F. Transformation de Riz au Mali. Niono: URDOC, 2001. Due, Jean M. et al. “Gender-Views of Female Agricultural Extension Officers by Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania”. World Development 25, no. 5 (May 1997):713-725. Desjeux, Catherine et al. Africaines. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1983. De Janvry, Alain et al. “Rural Development and Rural Policy”. In Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edited by Bruce L. Gardener and Gordon C. Rausser, 1593-1658. Berkeley C.A.: Uiversity of California, 2002. Dougnon, Isaie. Travail de Blanc, travail de Noir. La migration des paysans dogon vers l’Office du Niger et au Ghana (1910-1980). Paris: Karthala-Sephis, 2007.

263

Bibliography

Djiré, Moussa. Investissements agricoles et acquisitions foncières au Mali: Tendances et études de cas. Londres/Bamako: IIED/GERSDA, 2012. Dey, Jennie. “Women in African Rice Farming System”. In: Women in Rice Farming, edited by International Rice Research Institute, 419-444. Manilla: IRRI, 1983. Diallo, Boubacar S. “Des Cauris au franc CFA”. Mali-France Regards sur une Histoire Partagée, 2005: 407-432. De Jong, Ali A. “Continuity and change in the Netherlands-Mali bilateral aid relationship”. In Development as Theory and Practice. Current perspectives on development and development cooperation, ed. David Simon and Anders Närman. London: DARG Regional Development Series No.1, 1996. Diawara, Mamadou. "Development and Administrative Norms: The Office Du Niger and Decentralization in French Sudan and Mali." Africa 81, no. 3 (2011): 434-54. Dӧrnemann, Maria “Seeing Population as a Problem. Influences of the Construction of Population Knowledge on Kenyan Politics (1940s to 1980s)”, In A World of Populations: Transnational Perspectives on Demography in the Twentieth Century, edited by Heinrich Hartmann and Corinna R. Unger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 201-221. Ela, Jean-Marc. L’Afrique des villages. Paris: Karthala, 1982. Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995. Ellis Frank, and Biggs Stephen. “Evolving Themes in Rural Development 1950s-2000s”, Development Policy Review, 19, no. 4, (2001): 437-448. Frey, Marc. “Doctrines and Practices of Agrarian Development: The Case of the Office du Niger in Mali”. In Rural Development in the Twentieth Century: International Perspectives, edited by Marc Frey and Corinna R. Unger, 15-34. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag GmbH, 2017. Filipovich, Jean. "Destined to Fail: Forced Settlement at the Office Du Niger, 1926-45." The Journal of African History 42, no. 2 (2001): 239-60. Fonseca, Claudia. “Functional literacy for village women: an experiment in Upper Volta”. Prospect 5, no. 3 (September 1975): 378-386. Garner, Karen. Women and Gender in International History. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Gentil, Dominique. Les Mouvements Coopératifs en Afrique de L’Ouest. Interventions de l’Etat ou organisations paysannes? Paris: L’Harmattan, 1984. Gladwin, Christina H. Structural Adjustment and African Women Farmers. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991. Grawert, Elke. Making a Living in Rural Sudan. Production of Women, Labour Migration of Men, and Policies for Peasants ‘Needs. Basingstoke: Mac Millan Press, 1998.

264

Bibliography

Gyekye, Kwame. African Cultural Values. An Introduction. Philadelphia, Pa. /Accra, Ghana: Sankofa Publishing Company, 1996. Havard, Michel. Conseil de Géstion aux Petites et Moyennes Entreprises de Décorticage de Riz auprés de l’Unité-Recherche Développement et Observatoire du Changement (URDOC). Rapport de Mission á Niono, Mali. Niono: URDOC, 2003. Haubert, Maxime et al. Politiques alimentaires et structures sociales en Afrique Noire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985. Huntington, Samuel P. “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics”. Comparative Politics, no.3 (April 1971): 283-322. Hazard, John N. “Mali’s Socialism and the Soviet Legal Model”. The Yale Law Journal 77, no. 1 (November 1967): 28-69. Huby Meg and Stevenson Stuart. “Meeting need and achieving sustainability in water project interventions”, Progress in Development Studies 3, no. 3, (2003): 196-209. International Labor Organization. Women in rural development. Critical issues. Genova: ILO, 1980. International Fund for Agricultural Development. Enabling the rural poor to overcome poverty in Mali. Rome: IFAD, 2011. Institut National de la Statistique. 4éme Recensement de la Population et de l’Habitat du Mali. Bamako: Institut National de la Statistique, 2009. ISIS, Genève, Femmes et développement outils pour l’organisation et l’action, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988). Ikenna, Alumona M. “Understanding the crisis of development in Africa: Reflections on Bedford Umez’s analysis”, African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, Vol. 3 (9), 2009, pp.354-355, https://www.researchgate.net › publication › 25558347, (accessed: 04-10- 2019). Jamin, Jean Yves, and Coulibaly, Yacouba. Succès et Echécs des Révolutions Vertes. Des Paysans Sahéliens Engagés dans la Révolution Verte: Les Riziculteurs de l’Office du Niger. Montpellier: CIRAD, 1995. Jones, Gwyn E. Investing in Rural Extension: Strategies and Goals, Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Center. UK: University of Reading, 1986. Jain, Devaki “Looking Back at the South Commission”, Economic & Political Weekly vol lI, no. 9 (February 2016): 62-66. Kelly, Joan. Women, History and Theory. The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Kardam, Nüket. “The Adaptability of International Development Agencies: The Response of the World Bank to Women in Development”. In Women, International Development: And Politics, edited by Kathleen Staudt, 136-150. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010.

265

Bibliography

Ki-Zerbo, Jacqueline. "Appropriate Technologies for Women of the Sahel." In Women Farmers in Africa: Rural Development in Mali and the Sahel, edited by Lucy E. Creevey, 167-77. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Kéita, Aoua. Femme d'Afrique: La Vie d'Aoua Kéita Racontée par Elle-Même. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1975. Karl, Marilee. “Dans le développement rural”. In Femmes et développement outils pour l’organisation et l’action, edited by ISIS, Genève, 45-139. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988. Lagoutte, Stéphanie. Dissolution of Marriage, Legal Pluralism and Women’s Rights in Francophone West Africa. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for Human Rights, 2014. Loxley, John. “Structural Adjustment and Social Policy in Mozambique”. Review of African Political Economy 17, no. 47-49 (Spring 1990). L’Image de la Femme Chez les Romancières de l’Afrique Noire Francophone. Suisse: Editions Universitaires Fribourg, 1986. La Société des Amis du Musée de l’Homme. Côté Femmes. Approches ethnologiques. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986. Les Associations Féminines au Mali. Bamako (Mali): Editions Jamana, 1999. Macekura, Stephen J. Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Mickelwait, R. Donald et al. Women in Rural Development. Washington: Westview Press, 1976. Massiah, Joycelin. Women in Developing Economies: Making Visible the Invisible. University of Virginia: Berg Publishers, 1993. Mortimore, Michael. Adapting to Drought. Farmers, Famines and Desertification in West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Magasa, Amidu. Papa–commandant a jeté un grand filet devant nous. L’Office du Niger 1902- 1962. Hamdallaye Segu: fondation Yeredon, 1999. Monteil, Charles. Les Bambara du Ségou et du Kaarta. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1977. Moretti, Franco and Pestre, Dominique. “Bankspeak. The Language of the World Bank Reports”. New Left Review 92, (Mars-April 2015): 75-99. Morabito, Vittorio. “L’Office du Niger au Mali, d’hier á aujourd’hui”. Journal des Africanistes 47, fascicule 1, (1977):53-83. Morabito Vittorio. “Compte-Rendu Sommaire d’une Mission d’Etude á l’Office du Niger (Rép. Du Mali) sur la Mise en Valeur de Périmètres Irrigués pour le Développement des Pays d’Afrique “, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’ Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, Anno 27, no. 3, (Septembre 1972): 463-474. Magli Ida and Odorisio Ginevra Conti. Matriarcat et/ou pouvoir des femmes? Paris: Des femmes, 1983.

266

Bibliography

Meillassoux, Claude. Femmes, greniers et capitaux. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991.Dolphyne, Florence A. The Emancipation of Women. An African Perspective. Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991. Mkandawire, Thandika and Adebayo, Olukoshi. Between Liberalisation and Oppression: The Politics of Structural Adjustment in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA, 1995. Migani, Guia. “L’Indépendance par la Monnaie: La France, le Mali, et la Zone Franc, 1960- 1963”, Presses Universitaires de France, no. 133, (2008):21-39. Musa, Ali. Privatisation in Africa. The Experience of Soudan and Eriteria with an introduction by Eckhard Dittrich: Privatisation-Lessons from Africa. München: Wissenschaftsedition im Rainer Hampp Verlag, 2000. Musa, Bilkisu Aboda. “Women Participation in Agriculture: The Role and Impact of Agricultural Development Project (ADP) in Kogi State”. MA diss., Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 2011. Marchal, Jean-Yves. “L’Office du Niger: îlo de prospérité paysanne ou pôle de production agricole?”. Canadian Journal of African Studies 8, no. 1 (1974): 73-90. N’Diaye, Bokar. Les Castes au Mali. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1995. Neto, Frederico. “Innovative approaches to rural development: Moving from state-controlled towards market-based land reform”, Natural Resources Forum 28, 2004. Okorji, Eugene C. “Women and Rural Development: Strategies for Sustaining Women’s Contribution in Rural Households of Anambra State, Nigeria”, Women and International Development, Working Paper, no. 166, (June 1988): 1-19. Odebode, O. Stella. “Gender Issues in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development in Nigeria”. In Rural Development-Contemporary Issues and Practices, edited by Rashid Solagberu Adisa (University of Ibadan, Ibadan: Intech open, 2012), 139-156. Paulme, Denise. Women of Tropical Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Poats, Susan V. et al. Gender Issues in Farming Systems Research and Extension. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1985. Paques, Viviana. Les Bambara. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954. Pearson, Ruth. “The rise and rise of gender and development”. In A Radical history of development studies. Individuals, institutions and ideologies, edited by Uma Kothari, 157-79. Garfield Road: Claremont 7700, 2005. Pingali, Prabhu et al. Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub- Saharan Africa. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Parpart, Jane L. Women and Development in Africa. Comparative Perspectives. Dalhousie University: University Press of America, 1989. Roberts, Richard. Two World of Cotton. Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, 1800-1946. California: Stanford University Press, 1996.

267

Bibliography

Rondeau, Chantal. Les Paysannes du Mali. Espaces de Liberté et Changements. Paris: Editions Karthala, 1994. Riss, Marie-Denise. Femmes Africaines en Milieu Rural. Les Sénégalaises du Sine Saloum. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989. Schumacher, Ernest F. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1989. Samaké, Modibo et al. La Situation de la femme rurale au Mali. Brême, RFA: Institut Des Sciences Humaines, 1980. Savane, A. Marie. “Women and rural development in Africa”. In Women in rural development. Critical issues, edited by ILO, 26-32. Geneva: ILO, 1980. Savané, Marie-Angélique. Femmes et Développement en Afrique de l’Ouest. Genève: Institut de Recherche des Nations Unies pour le Développement Social, 1986. Sanankoua, Bintou. Femmes du Mali. Paris: Saint-Martin, 2005. Snyder, Francis G. “The Political Thought of Modibo Keita”. Journal of Modern African Studies 5, no. 1, (May 1967): 79-106. Snyder, Margaret. “Women: The Key to Ending Hunger”, The Hunger Project Papers, no. 8, (August 1990): 1-37. Schultz, Theodore W. Transforming Traditional Agriculture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983. Schreyger, Emil. L’Office du Niger au Mali, la problématique d’une entreprise agricole dans la zone du Sahel. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984. Sogoba, Assana. “Le développement des productions maraichères á l’Office du Niger: atouts et contraintes dans le context post-dévaluation”, mémoire de fin de cycle de l’IPR de Katibougou, Décembre 1996. Simon, Julian L. Theory of Population and Economic Growth. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Sharma, Patrick A. Robert McNamara’s Other War. The World Bank and the International Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Traoré, Samba L. La Saga de la ville historique de Ségou, Préface du Professeur Amadou Touré. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005. Tounkara, Aly. Femmes et discriminations au Mali. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015. Tiékoura Ouassa. Intervention en milieu rural et changement social au Niger. Actions et réactions des femmes. Paris: L’Harmatta, 2013. Twagira A. Laura. “Women and Gender at the Office du Niger (Mali) : Technology, Environment, and Food C.A 1900-1985”, PhD Diss., Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, May 2013.

268

Bibliography

Tounkara, Aly. Femmes et discriminations au Mali. Paris: Harmattan, 2015. Tischler, Julia. Agriculture, pp. 119-149. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. European University Institute, on 03 Dec 2019. Tadesse, Zenebeworke. “Studies on Rural Women in Africa: An Overview”, in Rural development and women in Africa, edited by ILO. Geneva: ILO, 1984. Tsogo, Delphine Zanga. Vies de Femmes. Yaoundé (Cameroun): Editions CLE, 1983. Therborn, Gӧran. “African Families in a Global Context”. Research report nordiskaafrikainstitutet, no.131, (April 2006): 1-97. Truitt, G.A. “Female agricultural extension agents in El Salvador and Honduras: do they have an impact?” Economic and Social Development Series, no.55, (1998). Tarp, Finn. Stabilization and Structural Adjustment. Macroeconomic Frameworks for Analysing the Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. London: Routledge, 1993. Unger, R. Corinna. International Development. A Postwar History. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. UNICEF. Enfants et Femmes au Mali. Une analyse de situation. Paris: Harmattan, 1989. Ulferts, Hella. Les Clefs de l’Avenir. Education et Formation des Jeunes Filles et Femmes des Zones Rurales du Togo. Bremen: Zentraldruckerei der Universität Bremen, 2002. Vandersypen, Klaartje. “Improvement of collective water management in the Office du Niger irrigation scheme (Mali): Development of decision support tools”. PhD. diss., Faculteit Bio- ingenieurswetenschappen van de K.U. Leuven, 2007. World Bank Group. Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015. Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity. Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2015. World Bank. World Bank Assistance to Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington DC: World Bank Group, 2007. Wing, Susanne D. “Mali’s Precarious Democracy and the Causes of Conflict”. United States Institute of Peace, (May 2013): 1-16. World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women (WCUNDW), Copenhagen. New York: United Nations, 1980. Weinrich, A. K. H. La Situation de la femme au Zimbabwe avant l’indépendance. Paris Place de Fontenoy: UNESCO, 1981. Wiesinger, Rita. “Economic Development and Functional Literacy for Women: A Pilot Project in Iran”. Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 19, no. 1 (1986). Working Group on Population Growth and Economic Development. Population Growth and Economic Development: Policy Questions. Washington D. C: National Academy Press, 1986. Wing, Susanna D. Mali’s Precarious Democracy and the Causes of Conflict. Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2013.

269

Bibliography

Wasser M. A. Diuk et al., “Patterns of irrigated rice growth and malaria vector breeding in Mali using multi-temporal ERS-2 synthetic aperture radar”, International Journal of Remote Sensing 27, no. 3-4, (February 2006):535-548. Zolberg, Aristide R. “The Political Revival of Mali”. In the World Today 21, no. 4, (1965): 151- 160. Zahan, Dominique. Sociétés d’Initiation Bambara. Le N’Domo, le Korè. Paris: Mouton et Co, 1960. Zahan, Dominique. L’Office du Niger, un exemple historique de coopération franco-africaine. Strasbourg: Centre Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Européennes, 1962. Zahan, Dominique. The Bambara. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974. Zimmerman, Andrew. Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010. Accessed August 1, 2019. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt24hrmw.

270