Researchers of the world, this time in Suriname

It is alway fun to talk to interesting people. This week in Suriname I enjoyed the company of an intelligent young woman named Ine Apapoe. Ine is researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname and she will soon travel to Amsterdam to start her PhD at VU. Ine is currently one of my workshop participants and so she got enthusiastic to start her own blog about the traditional Maroon Society. Marrons are, according to Ine’s blog, descendants of people who, during the 17th and 18th century, escaped from slavery at the plantations of former Dutch Guiana and settled as free men and women in the interior lands. Born from Marron parents, Ine, who grew up in Paramaribo, decided to study the influence of modern public administration on traditional hierarchic structures, like those of the present rural Marron communities.
Ine is an expert in Surinam history. She knows the intriguing facts of this country’s history both from the official literature, and from her own experience, and from personal stories told by her relatives. She knows facts about the interior wars and other important historic events, many of which have hardly been documented. Proficient in several traditional languages, Ine has an advantage above other researchers. She is able to make people feel comfortable, whenever she visits the Marron villages. This will help her collect the information needed for her study.
Apart from being a passionate researcher, Ine is also a caring mother of three children, the youngest one being only 15 months old. Early in the morning she cooks traditional dishes for her family before going off to work at the university campus. After work she hurries back to drive her children to piano lessons and to the tennis court; today she had to buy some gifts for the Sinterklaas party this weekend.
It is nice to meet people like Ine. She is a great story-teller. She made me curious to learn more about the history of Suriname.

African farmers and the Web

Sibiri Sawadogo is a farmer in the Sahel. He works on his field and grows his crops to feed his family. Conditions in this part of Africa are not easy. Soils are poor and water is scarce. There is no electricity in the villages. He does not use sophisticated tools to cultivate his land. All the work is done by hand. In one hand Sibiri Sawadogo holds a hoe; in his other hand he holds his mobile phone…



Sibiri Sawadogo is an example of an innovative farmer in Burkina Faso. By using very simple but effective techniques, protecting trees, using manure to improve soil fertility and making stone bands to let the rainfall percolate the soil, a number of farmers-innovators have managed to re-green their barren and degraded lands. If more farmers in the region could take advantage of this way of farming, living conditions of more people could be improved, and a re-greening movement could evolve, which could have a real impact on the region…

Until recently, information technologies were not affordable for people like Sibiri Sawadogo, but the world is changing. Mobile telephony has become less expensive, and even affordable for the very poor. The World Wide Web and Mobile Telephony are converging, forming new technologies and opening new opportunities. The Mobile Web could become a new way for farmers to connect to each other and share information…

Last week in Burkina Faso I met many people involved in farming or in supporting small-scale farmers in their re-greening activities. This re-greening has started as a grassroots initiative. It is not a centrally-managed or externally financed project. It is becoming a movement of people and their social networks.

Re-greening in Africa is about knowledge sharing and communication. It is about farmers connecting to farmers. ICTs are carriers of information, and they will hopefully be helpful to accelerate and extend the scale of the re-greening success.