Increased Vulnerability of the Mossi Society in Burkina Faso

Abstract

This study is based on field survey conducted in a Mossi village located about 110 km north-west of the capital city of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou.
Out of 90 household heads in the village, 32 were interviewed. All were peasant farmers who produce millet, sorghum, maize and minor crops, such as yams, sweet potatoes and groundnuts. Even in a good harvest season, about a quarter of households can not meet their consumption needs. In a bad harvest, more than 80% of households experience grain deficits.
Of the 131 married male members of these 32 households, 71 or 54% are migrants living in the Ivory Coast. About 90% of these migrants are farmers. Two-thirds of the farmers have their own farm land on which they cultivate cocoa and/or coffee, and the rest are farm labourers.
Many of these migrants send home remittances, which constitute indispensable income for the villagers, not only for covering deficiencies in food supply but also for agricultural investment, such as the purchase of fertilizers.
Until the end of the 1960s, people migrated to the Ivory Coast as forced labour or as a consequence of the government’s labour recruitment policy. Since then, however, circumstances have changed. People have migrated in search of more stable and prosperous conditions for engaging in agricultural production, while abandoning unsustainable production under precarious weather conditions back in Burkina Faso. They have purchased land and started to cultivate commercial crops.
But this effort to strengthen their access to land and more sustainable agricultural income has exposed them to unexpected risks. The abrupt emergence of an anti-Burkinabe (Burkina people) movement since last year’s presidential election has shown that the vulnerability of land-holding migrants in the Ivory Coast is more serious than that of farm labourers.
The vulnerability of the Mossi village as a consequence also increased.