In the villages of Bolou Agbadomé, Bolou Gatigblé, Klokpoé and Ativimé, December 2020
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In the four villages, project activities started by raising awareness among the local population of the degradation of natural resources, soil poverty and its consequences, climate change, and sustainable agriculture through agroforestry. These sessions, held in January to mid-February 2020, attracted a strong turnout of villagers plus the village chiefs and elders played active roles. This first step is vital for the project implementation since it ensures local populations are aware of these issues and adhere to the project.
The activities continued with the setting up of nurseries and distribution of small items of agricultural equipment, as well as agroforestry and forestry seeds. Between January and February 2020, communities in the villages helped clean up the sites and built huts to shade the seedlings and potting bags.
All in all, four nurseries are now up and running, one per village. Volunteer beneficiaries, charged with managing the nurseries and seedlings, are trained for this task by APAF Togo, A Tree for You’s partner on the ground.
These workshops take place throughout the set-up and running of the nurseries and will prove valuable beyond this project. Also during this period, beneficiaries received training on fire risks and are now prepared in how to save future forests from bush fires.
Nurseries had just been set up in the four villages when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Togo, forcing the government to introduce drastic isolation and lockdown measures for the whole country.
The project continued despite access restrictions to villages and beneficiaries during the lockdown period. The local teams had to come up with new ways of running the project, in particular by training smaller groups to facilitate physical distancing between participants or remote support for beneficiaries.
The nursery management phase was strongly impacted by COVID-19 since the technical teams were unable to visit the nursery sites. Out of the 51,927 seedlings put in bags, only 33,044 survived. This high mortality rate is in part down to the lack of mulching and weeding in the nurseries, as well as insufficient or excess watering of seedlings by inexperienced beneficiaries.
Planting took place between May and July 2020, coinciding with Togo’s great rainy season – the ideal time for planting agroforestry and forestry trees. Unfortunately, the season proved extremely erratic in 2020.
In total, 1,173 beneficiaries planted 29,116 seedlings this year. Some of the forest seedlings include species such as Terminalia superba, Khaya grandifoliola and Tectonia grandis. Among the agroforestry seedlings are Samanea samane, Albizia stipulata and Albizia lebbeck. Lastly, among the fruit seedlings, orange trees have been planted.
The farmers will receive support from teams on the ground for the follow-up and maintenance of the seedlings planted during this first year – a crucial stage to ensure the young trees develop properly!
The difficulties encountered during this first year of planting did not undermine the motivation of the local populations, who continue to support the project.
A second wave of planting with new beneficiaries is planned for the next rainy season between May and July 2021. The goal here is to reach 44,000 planted and lasting trees, as well as supporting 1,600 beneficiaries.
