Niger Currents
Exploring life and technology along the Niger river

I walk past the fruit plantation one last time. I'm on my way back into Tamani from a picture-taking excursion and this time my curiosity gets the best of me. We're actually in a rush to get moving so that Eli can leave the river in time to make his flight back to Canada. I know we should continue on, but I can't resist. I want to know what the heck this fruit plantation is doing in such a seemingly harsh environment, who is behind this operation and, most importantly, how I might get some of the succulent papaya hanging from the trees just on the other side of the fence!

After looking around without finding an entrance, I realize I will need Ali, our translator, for this mission. I head back to our boat to get Ali, pacifying our crew's desire to get moving with promises of fresh fruit.

Ali and I approach the plantation from the beach and Ali speaks under his breath in French as he surveys the scene. "Banane, papaye, goyave..." Goyave!? "Ali, did you just say Guava?" I ask. I had become addicted to guava juice while living in Ghana, but had never seen or eaten the fruit itself. Now I was really excited!

We shout greetings without seeing exactly who there is to greet. Our greetings are quickly returned by a tall, middle-aged man who comes strolling out of the plantation with a welcoming look on his face. Mohamedou's energetic handshake and exuberance at showing off the plantation make us feel right at home. Mohamedou shows us around the plantation while we wait for the owner, another Mohamedou, Mohamedou Nimaga, to return from town.

The plantation stands out in stark contrast to its surroundings. The farms that surround it are just starting to be prepared for farming season. They sit dry and devoid of life save for a few small bushes here and there. Across the river, the landscape is desolate. Many would think, looking at photos, that we are at the edge of the desert. But inside this one-hectare garden, fruit trees spring up in a congregation, filling every square inch with green.

Mohamedou tells us the plantation has been operating for three years. They grow banana, papaya and guava, and he says they generate a good profit. He proudly tells me that they grew the guava and papaya from seeds in a nursery they set up in an adjacent parcel of land. The banana came as plants from nearby Segou.

We're just about to collect some papaya when Mohamedou Nimaga, the owner, returns from town. I've still got my craving for fruit, but right now I'm more interested in finding out more about this plantation.

Mohamedou explains that his family had first tried to grow fruit on their family farm about five years ago. The experiment failed when the well on their property could not provide enough water. The idea lingered until three years ago when Mohamedou dove in, buying an irrigation pump and the land along the river for the farm. The pump cost about eight times as much as the two hectares of waterfront land.

It's an investment that has paid off well for Mohamedou and his family. Every week the plantation earns them a profit of about $100 CDN. Not bad in a country where the average person earns about $20 per month. Mohamedou isn't content though. He plans to expand to a second hectare and wants to diversify his crops to include mangoes and lemons.

Still, I wonder, why fruit? Why not irrigate to grow rice and millet like they do on his other land? His answer highlights his keen business thinking: "No one else was growing fruit. I wanted something that wasn't already in the community." Staple crops are grown by most families, so there is really only a local market during the lean season. Mohamedou definitely understands the principles of supply and demand.

If Mohamedou has been so successful with irrigation, why aren't more people doing it? Tamani is the first place where I can recall seeing small-scale pumped irrigation along the river. I'm reminded of the success some of Engineers Without Borders Canada's partner organizations have had promoting treadle pumps to farmers who have irrigated vegetable gardens. With such a large water source nearby, I wonder why there isn't more small-scale irrigation. There are many waterfront gardens fed by buckets carried by hand from the river, but why not pumped-water irrigation to transport this water?

I ask Mohamedou why more people don't use irrigation or other inventive profit-making ventures. "There are lots of people with good ideas," he replies. "They just aren't able to follow through with them." I nod in agreement. In my work with women's groups in Ghana, I came across an amazing number of good business ideas that were just never realized.

So how is Mohamedou able to succeed when so many others aren't able to get off the ground?

First, Mohamedou took a risk. He planted fruit on his family farm, not knowing if it would work out. The risk didn't pay off immediately, but in the long run it has paid off in a big way.

One key difference between Mohamedou and many would-be entrepreneurs is that he was in a position to take a risk in the first place. His family is successful enough with their rice and millet farm that taking a small part of the land to test out fruit didn't put his family at risk of going hungry.

For most families having food to eat year-round depends very much on a combination of good decision-making, hard work and luck. When you are living on the edge of poverty, additional risk, no matter how small, is too much to take on, regardless of the potential payoff. For many people in Canada, the thought of going bankrupt is enough to deter them from starting a new business. Just imagine the pressure in a country without a social safety net, where going bankrupt has a very life-threatening set of consequences!

Mohamedou is also different from the average would-be entrepreneur in that he can afford to go forward with his venture. The motorized pump that makes his operation possible cost about $1,200 CAD, something not many people here can afford. "I'm lucky," Mohamedou tells me. "A friend who lives in France lent me the money." I'm happy for Mohamedou, but this reality also makes me sad. Not many people have a friend who can help them out in such a way. One-to-one lending doesn't allocate loans based upon the quality of a business idea. In the long run it is an unlikely large-scale solution to the lack of capital in rural West Africa.

I ask Mohamedou how he would have started this business without the help of his friend. He replies by telling me it would have taken him a couple of years to save up the money. "Is there a bank in town?" I ask. "No, I wouldn't do it that way," he replies. "I would buy a small cow and raise it and just keep going with that until I could sell enough cows to buy the machine."

Putting money in the bank is generally not considered a good option here. Banks are often not available and when they are the high inflation rate means that money in the bank often actually loses value. Taking a loan often isn't an option either. Credit isn't always available, and when it is interest rates (again largely due to inflation) are often prohibitively high. In Ghana, a good interest rate on a loan seemed to be around 25%. The not-for-profit microfinance schemes often supported by non-governmental organizations can help, but in many places access is limited.

Mohamedou impressed me in many ways. His willingness to try something new, his forward thinking and his business sense are all admirable. But his special circumstances remind me just how difficult it is for many people to take the risk of starting something new. I have sometimes heard the stereotype that people here aren't entrepreneurial. From my experience in West Africa, people here are generally quite independent and entrepreneurial. It is just that, for so many people, the consequences of failure and the lack of access to capital snuff out the entrepreneurial spark.

As important as I feel it is for readers in Canada to understand the constraints on people here, it is equally important to know that there are a number of people and initiatives that are helping to put people in a position to drive positive change in their own lives.

The work of agricultural extension agents, people who live in rural communities and help disseminate agricultural "best practices" and demonstrate the success of new crops and technologies, is vitally important. Their work helps farmers create the "breathing room" from poverty necessary to allow people to start thinking about the next steps and helps to reduce the risks associated with adopting new crops or growing practices.

Many projects now assist beneficiaries to access the financial resources necessary to turn their entrepreneurial spark into a flame. As part of the Multifunctional Platform program in Ghana, all the funds produced by the platform go through an account in a rural bank. The account isn't strictly necessary for the program itself, but having a bank account gives members of the women's groups the financial clout to access low-interest micro-credit on their own.

Technology also plays a vital role. A treadle pump provides a low-cost entry point for someone to start prasticing irrigated farming on a small scale. Not a lot of people can afford a $1,200 motorized pump, but many people can afford the $120 that a treadle pump costs (especially considering it often pays for itself well before the first farming season is over).

Despite the huge challenges faced by people who live in rural Mali, examples like these give me hope that, in a few years, rural West Africa will see many more innovative businesses like Mohamedou's fruit plantation.