Water and Food for 2,000 People in Rural Senegal

Situated in the Kaolack region of Senegal, the community of Ndiagne Kahone, with a population of 1300, became the newest CREATE! partner community in 2020. Thanks to your generous support, the community now has access to clean and safe water year around and the means to produce nutritious vegetables.

After the partnership between the community and CREATE! was finalized with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, the CREATE! technicians started work on rehabilitating an existing well in the village. The well water was tested to make sure it was suitable for drinking before the rehabilitation process began. CREATE! technicians also made sure that the aquifer that fed this well, the Continental Terminal of the surface aquifer system in Senegal, had sufficient reserve and recharge potential so that the community does not exhaust this scarce natural resource. The well in Ndiagne Kahone is 67 meters deep and required some repairs and refurbishment. With only 1.5 meters’ diameter, the narrow interior of the well posed some problems for rehabilitation. But using an innovative and appropriate technological tool to clean the wells– a human-powered winch system that can lower people and equipment into a well to help clean out the trash and to refurbish the inside walls- the well was cleaned in July 2020. The well in Ndiagne Kahone now has abundant water available to the community for agriculture and household consumption purposes.

Together with the well rehabilitation, the community members helped clean and fence the garden site and installed drip irrigation systems to help irrigate the sandy soil in preparation for planting nutritious vegetables. After the rehabilitation was completed, a solar pump and panels were installed to help pump out the water from the well by using renewable solar energy in place of fossil fuels. This aspect of CREATE!s program is the cornerstone of our projects that rely on only renewable and appropriate technology that helps sustain the environment. This solar powered water pumping system has given the community of Ndiagne Kahone access to 16,000 liters of water every day, out of which 14,000 liters is used for agricultural activities and 2000 for domestic consumption. This amount is much less than the recharge potential of the aquifer and will help sustain the agricultural activities year-round without depleting the resource.

Once the garden site was ready for cultivation, CREATE! technicians started training the community members on organic agricultural techniques and methods to sustain agricultural activities in the sandy soil. To retain maximum soil moisture, the members were trained not only to till the soil with hand held shovels and hoes, but were also taught to use straw on their garden beds. Our technicians have noted that using straw reduces the water requirement by nearly 45 to 50%. In the water scarce environment of Senegal, this helps minimize water use for cultivation purposes. The straw that they use for this purpose is also simply the dried weeds that grow in the farms during the rainy season. In an effort to use only sustainable and organic means to grow crops, the members are also taught organic composting methods using animal and plant waste. Composting is an excellent and sustainable way to turn barren soil and sand into nutritious garden beds for numerous vegetables and is the preferred way in all the CREATE! communities to grow food yearlong in order to achieve food security. With the help of these composted beds, Ndiagne Kahone started planting okra, turnips, peppers, lettuce, onion and tomatoes in November 2020. In just three months, Ndiagne Kahone has already produced more than 4000 pounds of vegetables for consumption and sale in the local markets. These nutritious and diverse vegetables will make the community food secure and improve the nutritional outcomes of the community members.

As Ndeye, the President of the Ndiagne Kahone garden cooperative points out, the transformation of the community garden is very noticeable since they started the project. The community now also has better access to fresh vegetables they produce themselves, vegetables that they chose to produce given their food habits. Ndeye also hopes the future generations, kids who are already spending their free time in this garden, will continue this work. This change in Ndiagne Kahone has been possible only because of the generosity of donors like you. The community members and all of us at CREATE! are thankful for this support.

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