Burkina Faso: The Man Who Stopped the Desert

19 October 2011

Changwon — Yacouba Sawadogo, a peasant farmer from Burkina Faso, is known as the "man who stopped the desert." But when he first tried to save his arid land from desertification by planting the trees that have since grown into a 15-hectare forest, people in his village thought he was mad.

Some 30 years later the people of Gourga, in northwestern Burkina Faso, who left the infertile area for a better life in the city, are returning while Sawadogo travels the world sharing his success story.

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