Meet Moussa Sangaré

Posted: 23 November 2004

Moussa Sangaré is the president of a cotton growers cooperative near Fana, Mali.

The farm crisis in Mali hit Moussa Sangaré's family hard recently, when their lack of cash cost them the life of a family member. Sangaré's mother, severely weakened by a miscarriage, passed away. The Sangarés could not afford to transport her to a hospital and pay for medical treatment. Lack of a proper diet probably contributed to her inability to recover. One of his friends said, "Eventually they got her to the hospital, and they gave her 2 liters of blood. But she was already extremely week from not having eaten well, so she died anyway."

But Sangaré, 25, is carrying on. As the head of an 11-member household, he is running a nine-hectare (22 acre) farm where he grows three hectares of cotton and devotes the rest to millet. All together there are 11 members of his immediate family that depend on the money brought in by their three hectares of cotton. These include both of Sangaré's wives, his elderly father, and four children, all girls. Two are old enough to attend school.

Sangaré plays an essential role in his cooperative. He represents the needs of his fellow cooperative members to the CMDT (Malian Company for the Development of Textile Fibers), a government agency that finances cotton growers and purchases all their crop. He also helps disseminate information and teach new production techniques to farmers.

One message he takes to the government relates to the costs of the inputs the farmers need to grow cotton. "There is very little money in cotton because of the costs that go into the production. When you have to repay all your debt it is very difficult," Sangaré explains. "Most of the time, if you are lucky, you can get a little more than CFA 500 [about $1] from your harvest. So you're not paid well for your production."

"One thing that would make the production of cotton better would be to lower the price of the inputs. The price of these inputs keeps growing but the price of the cotton keeps going down."