At a muddy market in a city district in Ivory Coast, hundreds of animals are lined up to be sacrificed for the Muslim festival of Eid this Sunday.
The vast majority of the animals at the market in Adjame in Abidjan come from the Sahel — a region rocked by crises that are disrupting supplies in Ivory Coast.
Yaya Ouattara sells sheep that he brings from neighboring Burkina Faso, where on every trip he tries to avoid the jihadists who regularly carry out attacks in the country.
“They rob us, they kill us,” he told AFP, adding that “they take other routes because of them and we can do (a trip of) four days instead of two” before the security crisis.
A few meters away, Moussa Dicko is selling the sheep he brought back from Mali for 200,000 CFA francs ($330) a head, up from 120,000 CFA francs before the crisis.
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Customers “talk down to us” and don’t understand that “we’re taking risks,” he said.
Insecurity and sanctions
In Ivory Coast, more than 90 percent of the livestock consumed during Tabasque — the name given to West Africa’s Eid — comes from Sahel countries, said Jean-Pierre Konan-Banny, a consultant of the Ministry of Animal and Fisheries Resources in June.
“Our national production covers only 44 percent of annual meat and offal needs,” added Minister Sidi Tiemoko Toure.
That situation forces Ivory Coast, where more than 40 percent of the population is Muslim, “to resort to imports, mainly” from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, as well as Niger, he said.
At the same time, “for several years now, on the eve of this religious holiday, we have observed a significant increase in demand for sheep, cattle and goats”, he added.
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Along Ivory Coast’s northern borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, which are poorly demarcated and porous, “cattle farming” is “one of the main activities” practiced, according to a report by the Institute for Security Studies.
However, “the current socio-political context” in Sahel countries “poses serious challenges to our supply,” Konan-Banny said.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have been plagued by jihadist violence for about 10 years.
In Burkina alone, more than 20,000 civilians and soldiers have been killed.
In addition, all three countries are ruled by military regimes grouped in the Sahelian Alliance of States.
In Niamey, the government that emerged from a July 2023 coup was slapped with heavy economic and financial sanctions until February by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
“Terrorist activities and economic sanctions imposed by ECOWAS have seriously disrupted normal trade flows,” Konan-Banny said.
Self-sufficiency
Ivory Coast also has very tense relations with Burkina Faso and condemned the coup in Niger.
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In Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country that imports sheep from Mali and Mauritania, there is also the issue of dependency.
We need to “work for full self-sufficiency” and “even a surplus to supply other countries,” President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said Monday at a market in Dakar.
To gradually change its strategy, the Ivorian government has taken several measures, Konan-Banny said, including creating “monitoring committees” for “market supply” and “strengthening animal price controls”.
Ivory Coast has also launched “23 livestock projects” in two northern regions, according to Nicolas Bosson Aboly, who is in charge of monitoring the projects.
This is expected to increase national output by 16 percent by 2030.
However, several constraints remain: urbanization in the south of the country, increasing land area occupied by feed and food crops, and communal conflicts between farmers and herders.
Source: AFP