Meet Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer in the West African nation of Burkina Faso known as ‘the man who stopped the desert’ after he reintroduced an indigenous farming practice called Zaï and transformed barren land across Africa into forest and crops.
Born sometime around 1946, Yacouba was working as a salesman at a local market when severe drought and famine changed the direction of his life in the early 1980s. While many people left rural areas to find work in the cities, Yacouba returned home to his village with a vision to cultivate the desolate land and make it fertile again.
He began experimenting with Zaï, a traditional farming technique that involves digging pits into the earth to trap precious rainfall. Yacouba innovated by digging deeper holes and filling them with manure and other biodegradable waste to enrich the damaged soil and enhance water retention. The results were striking: trees began sprouting in the arid ground and the crops he planted thrived.
Despite his success, locals called him a 'madman' and even set his forest on fire. Yacouba was undeterred. He persisted, and by 1984, was hosting 'zaï markets' on his land to teach other farmers how to regenerate the soil. Today he receives visitors from all around the world and continues to train young farmers in his adaption of Zaï.
In forty years, Yacouba has created a 40-hectare forest on his land with more than 60 species of bushes and trees. His innovation has helped villages across Burkina Faso and Niger become food secure and produce crops even in years of drought.
Yacouba is now facing another challenge as the expansion of a nearby city is threatening the land he’s regenerated. Without formal ownership of the land, houses are been constructed on the edge of his forest but Yacouba will not give up easily. “It’s not possible to avoid hardship or being challenged by other people for your goals. You have to be ready to challenge them back and defend your position. The world is counting on it.”
