Alliance for solidarity launched two projects on Agroecology with a gender perspective in the South of Mauritania

Alliance for Solidarity has presented in Kaédi, a Mauritanian city in the southwest of the country, two development cooperation projects with which it will intervene during the coming months in the Sahealland country. Both have as their line of action food security through agroecology and with a gender perspective, in the south of Mauritania

This area, near the border with Senegal, is the rainiest region of the country. Therefore, most of the crops are located in it. However because of climate change, the country suffers from severe and recurrent droughts, which, together with the use of inadequate production techniques, contribute to the progressive desertification and increasing food insecurity among the population

The current objective of the Alliance for Solidarity in Mauritania is to strengthen several agricultural cooperatives in the south of the country, through training and technical support for to make crops more resilient and make more effective use of local resources. This will also be a way to promote the social economy of the region and achieve more sustainable local development in some of the regions most punished by climate change in Mauritania.

On the other hand, the cooperatives that will benefit from these projects are, for the most part, female. In Mauritania, gender inequality and the imbalance between roles are pressing, especially in the rural environment. Despite the female contribution in key sectors such as agriculture, livestock and trade, the role of women continues to be identified with the reproductive role, leading to limitations on their rights. In this sense, despite the people who work the land, they rarely own the land. For this reason, the Alliance for Solidarity aims to strengthen the capacities and leadership of these women so that they can defend their rights, especially your right to land ownership.

The impact of both projects will be a direct support to 90 cooperatives and 500 producers. This represents a beneficiary population of about 8,000 people, mostly women, in the Brakna, Gorgol and Guidimakha regions.

These projects will be implemented with the support of Action against Hunger and the local partner Association pour la Recherche et le Développement en Mauritanie (ARDM). One of them has the funding of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID) and, the other, governments of Aragon, Canary Islands and La Rioja