THE GREEN VEINTHE AGROECOLOGICAL RENAISSANCE OF WEST AFRICA

A documentary film by Sara Baga, emerging from the Food Systems Caravan, West Africa.

Release date of trailer
21.4.2021

Global premiere of film
18.5.2021

Duration of documentary
90min

Languages
French, English, local languages

Subtitles
French, English

Video resolution
1080p

Distribution
Online open access from 2022
CC-BY-NC-ND

THE GREEN VEIN – SYNOPSIS

For centuries, the great empires of West Africa were fed by rivers like the Volta or the Niger – their blue veins.

Today, after decades of colonisation, the food resilience of the banks of these rivers is at risk, and endogenous culture is being lost to an increasingly urban and violently industrialised transitional society.

Nigeria tells us how far this boat can sink through the voice of Dr Beatrice, but on the banks of the Niger, in Mali, that a first answer comes to us. “My first contact with farming was through the internet” Ousmane, a former footballer who swapped football pitches for other fields, tells us. Farmers poisoned by pesticides are a constant in Burkina Faso, triggering the search for alternatives are sought by partnerships between scientists and farmers. In the urban periphery children learn a taste for planting. In Ghana students and researchers seek to value endogenous culture and recover local food sovereignty. Members of the Rastafari community feel the call to care for the health of the land and people. “This is the moment of the African Renaissance” argues Godfrey Namudjo, founder of Songhai, a worldwide recognized agroecological training centre in Benin.

A stream of awareness, ideas and initiatives flows and grows across West Africa like a powerful green vein fertilising the land.