Yacouba Sawadogo: how a farmer made a forest teachable
How Yacouba Sawadogo adapted zaï farming into a forest, a teaching network, and a wider movement for restoring degraded land.
In the early 1980s, drought emptied farms across northern Burkina Faso. Yacouba Sawadogo went back toward the village instead of joining the movement to the cities. He began working degraded land near Gourga, in Yatenga province, with a question that was practical before it was heroic: could a farmer make hard, barren soil hold water again?
Four decades later, the answer stood in the form of a roughly 40-hectare forest containing more than 60 species of trees and bushes. Reuters photographed Sawadogo planting with his sons beneath the canopy. The forest became proof of a method, a place for teaching, and a contested piece of land. Sawadogo’s achievement matters because the forest connected a local experiment to a wider chain of farmers, researchers, public programs, and community organizations. 12
A farmer stays
Sawadogo was born in Yatenga province in 1946. After attending Koranic school in Mali, he returned to the region and worked as a market salesman. The severe drought around 1980 changed the direction of his life. Agricultural yields fell, famine took lives, and many rural families left for cities. Sawadogo returned from the city to his village, determined to make abandoned land productive again. 2
The crisis had several causes. Wind erosion, water shortages, rapid population growth, and overgrazing continued to degrade land across the region. The environmental problem therefore arrived as a household problem: a field could lose its crops, a village could lose its food, and a family could lose the reason to remain. 1
Sawadogo worked with knowledge that already existed in the Sahel. Farmers used zaï, a planting-pit technique, to collect rainwater and organic matter. Sawadogo altered the practice through repeated trial. He dug wider and deeper pits, added compost or manure, and used stones to slow runoff. He also protected trees and shrubs that could regenerate from existing roots. The work required a farmer to prepare before the rains, when the ground was dry and the first storm was still a future event.
What a pit changes
A zaï pit gives a short rainstorm somewhere to stay. The pit interrupts the movement of water across a hard surface, concentrates moisture and nutrients around a seed, and allows organic matter to support biological activity in the soil. Termites attracted by manure can open channels through compacted ground. Stone lines, laid across the slope, slow water and allow silt to collect. Roots then hold the soil in place and create more routes for water to enter.
The Food and Agriculture Organization describes zaï pits as wide planting holes used as micro-catchments. Its technical record gives a typical diameter of 30 to 40 centimetres, a depth of 10 to 15 centimetres, and spacing of about 70 to 80 centimetres. The same record reports that fertilized plots in suitable conditions averaged 409 kilograms of millet per hectare, compared with 195 kilograms on control plots. The figures describe the technique in the source record; they are not a personal yield measurement attributed to Sawadogo. 3
The technique has a cost. FAO records high labor requirements, and the method suits particular degraded soils. Sandy soils can fail to hold the pits, while valley bottoms can flood them. Large-scale use also requires community organization, tools, organic fertilizer, and enough time to prepare the land. Zaï offers a way to work with scarce water; it does not remove the work of farming or the physical limits of a site. 3
The forest added another layer. Sawadogo cultivated millet, sorghum, and maize alongside trees. The trees could enrich soil, slow wind, reduce erosion, provide fodder and medicine, and create activities such as beekeeping. The point was agricultural as well as ecological: a forest could help a farm remain useful during difficult seasons. 2
A working example becomes a movement
A technique travels when other people can inspect it, test it, and adapt it. Sawadogo made his land a place for that process. In 1984, he began organizing twice-yearly "zaï markets." After harvest, farmers brought crop samples from their pits, and Sawadogo stored seed in a seed bank. Before the rainy season, visitors selected varieties for the coming planting cycle. The gatherings grew to include representatives from more than 100 villages. 2
The visitors were not a passive audience. Farmers compared seeds and methods. Researchers, journalists, policymakers, local organizations, and farmers’ associations helped carry the practice into other settings. In 1989, 13 farmers from Niger’s Tahoua region visited Sawadogo’s fields. After they returned home, they began restoring degraded land with zaï. During the drought year of 1990, the farmers who had used the technique produced a reasonable harvest, according to the Right Livelihood account. 2
Public institutions also mattered. UNEP reports that Burkina Faso’s government embraced zaï during the late 1980s under President Thomas Sankara. The organization says the technique later spread across a 6,000-kilometre stretch of Africa, including countries in the Sahel, Ghana, Chad, and Kenya. UNEP also places zaï among the indigenous land-use practices associated with the Great Green Wall. These figures describe the wider adoption of a practice; they do not turn Sawadogo into the sole author of every restoration effort. 4
The movement grew through a specific sequence: a farmer adapted inherited knowledge, a visible forest made the result credible, gatherings made the knowledge shareable, and institutions helped other farmers apply it. The named leader mattered because he built a demonstration and kept teaching. The wider result belonged to the people who dug, planted, compared, and maintained.
Resistance, land, and the limits of a hero story
Sawadogo’s experiment met social resistance before it met international praise. Local people called him a "madman," and his forest was set on fire. Persistence here meant continuing to work while the result remained uncertain. Admiration arrived after the land began to answer for him. 5
The forest also faced a legal and economic threat. As towns expanded and land values changed, the restored area became vulnerable to competing claims. Reuters describes continuing pressure from erosion, water scarcity, population growth, and overgrazing. A forest that protects livelihoods still needs land rights and public protection if another authority can reclassify or build over the ground. 1
These conditions narrow the lesson. Zaï is powerful where rainfall, soil, labor, organic matter, and community organization line up. The farmer-managed restoration approach also depends on people being allowed to protect trees and benefit from them. The technique can be taught across borders, while the conditions that let it work must be negotiated locally.
Legacy in the ground
The Right Livelihood Foundation awarded Sawadogo its 2018 prize "for turning barren land into forest and demonstrating how farmers can regenerate their soil with innovative use of indigenous and local knowledge." The foundation says his trainings and visitors helped restore tens of thousands of hectares to productivity in Burkina Faso and Niger. 5
UNEP named him a 2020 Champion of the Earth in the Inspiration and Action category. The award page records a forest of 40 hectares and more than 60 species, and quotes Sawadogo on the continuing danger of drought. He died on December 3, 2023, after leaving behind a forest, a teaching practice, and a model that others had already altered and extended. 24
A compact timeline
- Around 1980: Severe drought and falling yields lead Sawadogo back to his rural village, where he begins restoring degraded land with adapted zaï practices. 2
- 1984: He starts twice-yearly zaï markets, using seed exchange and farmer visits to make the experiment teachable. 2
- Late 1980s: Burkina Faso’s government embraces zaï, helping the practice move beyond individual fields. 4
- 2018: Sawadogo receives the Right Livelihood Award for restoring barren land and advancing indigenous and local knowledge. 5
- 2020: UNEP names him a Champion of the Earth. 4
- 2023: Sawadogo dies, while the techniques and institutions shaped around his work continue through other farmers and organizations. 2
Three leadership takeaways
- Adapt inherited knowledge to the constraint in front of you. Sawadogo’s work began with a traditional practice and changed its timing, pit size, organic inputs, and relationship to trees. Useful innovation often starts with careful attention to what a place already knows.
- Make the result inspectable. A forest gave farmers something to walk through, compare, and question. The zaï markets turned a private experiment into shared evidence through seeds, visits, and repeated practice.
- Build the partners that protect the work. Farmers, family members, researchers, government programs, NGOs, and local associations carried the method beyond one field. Land rights, labor, and public support belong inside the leadership problem because a working solution can disappear when the institutions around it fail.
References
- 1
- 2Yacouba Sawadogo - Right Livelihood
rightlivelihood.org
- 3Zaï planting pits
fao.org
- 4
- 5The Man Who Stopped the Desert Receives 2018 Right Livelihood Award
rightlivelihood.org
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