As we have discussed in the previous blog, the former communist leader Thomas Sankara was killed in the coup d'état launched Blaise Compaoré and the French government in 1987 (Peterson 2021). After his death, the development paradigm of Burkina Faso turned from the communist model, which primarily focuses on the role of the state, to the neoliberal pattern, which promotes the development of the market (OECD 2013).
Obviously, this turn also impacts the irrigation
development scheme in this country. In the period governed by Thomas Sankara,
the irrigation systems mainly developed in the form of constructing small
reservoirs across the country with national investment and management due to
the extremely unequal spatial and temporal precipitation distribution of
Burkina Faso shown in Figure 1 (Cecchi et
al. 2009).
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| Figure 1: the Precipitation distribution of Burkina Faso (Cecchi et al. 2009) |
After 1991, Burkina Faso employs a combination of
community management and private market to manage irrigation with some foreign
aid and national guidance. As we see from the report, this model helps Burkina
Faso’s economy to grow
quickly in terms of national GDP, GDP per capita, and average income (World
Bank 2020, OECD
2013). Research has demonstrated that in regions especially which planet
cotton, community management works well with guidance from experts,
efficient council, regular supervision, and transparent system such as the
local communities upstream around Mogtédo (Kambou et
al. 2019).
But if you begin to search for news about this country on the internet, you would find news such as 1.5 million Burkina Faso refugees fleeing from this country from 2015 to 2022. Its human development index ranks 184th in all 191 countries (World Bank 2022). The problems of community management occurred as well such as extra living costs and conflicts over access to water. For instance, in the case study of Mogtédo, the communities which rely on cotton have continuous conflicts with communities that planets rice downstream (Kambou et al. 2019).
Thus, I would like to emphasize the potential of
Community Management Plus (CM+). The CM+ is a more realistic approach to the
current irrigation development as it recognizes that the bottom-up approach
would also have disadvantages such as localism mentioned above (Hutchings et
al. 2015). The authority, which might have many problems like
corruption, is not a role that could be ignored in governance especially in the
development of irrigation as water resources are shared by different
communities in most cases. Meanwhile, other methods which do not involve
community management patterns directly also have great potential such as
systematic education toward local farmers to help them use existing water
resources more efficiently (Zongo et
al. 2015).
Although there is no universal method to solve the
problem of lack of irrigation in Burkina Faso with its diversified nature
limits and social landscape, nevertheless, the basic idea of CM+ that authority
should steer the development process is a valuable concept that should be
considered in future development.
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| Figure 2: The analysis framework of CM+ (Hutchings et al. 2015) |
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