Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, president of the AFPAT, is the spokesperson for the women of the Peule m’bororo community in Chad. With her association, she runs workshops in remote communities. This long work is bearing fruit in a country where Fulani sometimes feel forgotten by government development policies.

Women are the mothers of the entire community, they ensure food security, health, education of children and take care of the elderly and the young. From the age of 4-5 years old, the little girl already starts to pound millet and help her mother.

By the age of 12, she is full of activities like an adult. During the dry season, the men leave and leave them with nothing. They wait for their return. They cannot go out and have no income generating activities. This is why, in 2018 within the framework of the Picsa* project (Innovative Projects of Civil Societies and Coalitions of Actors initiated by the AFD) we asked them what they wanted to lighten their workload; they immediately answered: “A machine that will be able to transform millet into powder”.

For a long time the men did not want it, for fear that they would no longer obey and would no longer agree to stay at home. I managed to convince them that it would be good for the whole community.

In 2018, the machine was installed and the women received training. Today, more than 1,000 women use it, sometimes coming from 25 or 30 km from their camp with their seed bags and, in half a day, they leave with their flour bags. They have thrown away the pestle and started to set up other activities.

The projects have to come from the communities.

Today, as Chari Baguirmi is 75 km from the sub-prefecture town, the community wants to set up a weekly market and also a water storage point because, with global warming and the consequences of drought, the ponds have become silted up and the women have to draw water from further and further away.

Also, today, at their request, there is a small health center. Here again, as I saw recently during an information campaign on Covid19 , it is the women who are at work. Change must be gradual. If we had rushed decisions, no project would have been able to see the light of day and the Peul culture would not have been preserved.

Today, women still continue to live according to their traditions: they still gather around production and food activities.

Credit: Salma Khalil