This project was part of HOPE’87 long-term strategy in this area, which started in 1992 with smaller village rehabilitation projects and has developed to a holistic approach comprising agricultural as well as non-agricultural income creation, environment and the consolidation of local structures.

The objective of the project was the sustainable social and economic development of rural communities in Moyenne Casamance. To achieve this aim, the project on the one hand provided technical and institutional support and facilitates to the village committees as well as to high-level association of agricultural and forestry production. On the other hand, collective mechanisms for the advocacy, reconstitution and rational administration of natural resources on the basis of a concurrently developed cultivation plan were implemented in order to initiate an endogenous development process of the local community.

Project Background: 

The main sources of income and subsistence of the local population in the project area are agriculture, stock farming, forest use and the craft sector, whereas the traditional methods of production are neither efficient nor resource-saving. Some of the methods even endanger the present forest goods. Additionally to human actions, climate change has a severe impact on the living standards and the ways of production of the local communities.