Spatial Dynamics and Strategic Challenges of Rice Farming in Burkina Faso

This article is a critical and retrospective analysis of rice farming programmes in Burkina Faso. Because of African States' lack of legitimacy, major hydro-agricultural projects have emerged as an opportunity to mobilize the population, especially the rural population, around development issues and to legitimize political leaders. In Burkina Faso, although recurrent droughts justify recourse to irrigation to secure agricultural production, investments in rice farming make it possible to reduce food imports. These investments in rice farming would conceal other strategic and political motives. The analysis of the strategies related to hydro-agricultural farming will combine both the spatial dynamics concerning rice-farming areas and the logics of actors' intervention, through a qualitative approach. The logics of actors' intervention consisted of formal and informal interviews with the services in charge of agriculture, producers and NGOs working in the agricultural sector. These interviews were supplemented by in situ observations on about ten irrigated perimeters and a literature review on the history of hydro-agricultural farming in Burkina Faso. The article first presents how rice cultivation has evolved from a marginal activity to an activity with a strong spatial hold and which mobilizes many actors and development programmes. It then analyses the relevance of the choice of irrigation and rice cultivation particularly, for the development of poor rural areas that are faced with climatic hazards. Finally, it deciphers the strategic nature of irrigation, which remains a propaganda tool in the hands of political elites who use it to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of rural populations. Lastly, it reveals that rice farming, despite all the avatars we know about it, contributes to guaranteeing and strengthening the incomes of many farmers and food sovereignty of Burkina Faso.