The Regional Director of Agriculture and Rural Development of Bounkani, Konan Kouadio Lucien, proposes the rehabilitation of water reservoirs built in the 80s as one of the key solutions for the fight against farmer-herder conflicts in the region.

Questioned by the AIP, Saturday May 13, on this problem, a source of tension and which is becoming more and more recurrent in the region, he pointed out that a dozen water reservoirs are functional, in the vast region of Boukani. All the other reservoirs have dried up and have been out of use for more than thirty years, which further intensifies the crises, because the herds do not have enough water to drink.

He pointed out that crop damage therefore takes place when herds, in search of water, travel long distances through fields and plantations.

”We must rehabilitate the 40 water reservoirs that the former SODEPRA (Animal Production Development Company) left us in the 1980s and build new ones, particularly in the localities of Danoa and Kalamon, where oxen from Burkina-Faso flow in and cause enough crop damage,” suggested Kouadio Konan Lucien, for a significant drop in these conflicts.

Farmer-herder conflicts are one of the scourges of the Bounkani region. In March 2016, a conflict sparked in Panzarani, 21 km from Bouna, spread throughout the department and left hundreds dead, many properties destroyed and nearly 2,000 displaced.

Source: Agence Ivoirienne de Presse