Equal in the eyes of bees
A beekeeping couple in Senegal are working as a team and reaping the rewards of gender equality
Mamadiang Mballo and Fatoumata Kandé both work as beekeepers and are finding new ways of working together after attending a gender-sensitive, FAO farmer field school training.
©FAO/ Yacine Cissé
“The turning point came when my husband and I participated in the FAO training together. That’s where my motivation to become a beekeeper came from,” says Fatoumata Kandé, a farmer and mother from the village of Sare Bidji in the Kolda region of southern Senegal. “Beekeeping in Senegal has traditionally been considered a man’s job. The training helped me understand that I too can contribute and make a difference.”
As a member of the local cooperative, Coopérative Agroalimentaire de la Casamance – Miel (CAC/Miel), Fatoumata’s husband, 52-year-old Mamadiang Mballo, has practised beekeeping for over 15 years. Beekeeping fascinated Mamadiang from a young age, but he started this livelihood with one clear objective in mind: to ensure his children got an education.
Over the years, Mamadiang set off alone in the mornings to collect honey and return to sell it at the local market. But this changed after the couple attended a farmer field school together, organized as part of the FAO Strengthening Agricultural Adaptation (SAGA) project funded by the Government of Québec.
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