In September 2017, in Burkina Faso, Fert started a new action with partner producer organisations. Conducted in pairs by a Burkinabe technician and a Fert technical advisor, it addresses the important issue of rural leadership.
Sharing with the Cooperative agricole du Passore, both the observation of a lack of leadership within Burkinabe peasant organizations, and that of a certain inefficiency of the many existing training courses on this topic, Fert and its partners decided to develop together a participative type of training.
This project is not about educating the producer about the values that a leader must possess, nor is it about teaching him or her the technical skills to be a leader. For Fert and his partners in this action, the answer lies with the producer himself. Thus, it will be a question of working together, in particular to understand what a peasant leader is in Burkina Faso; how to exercise leadership within his group, his organization or even his village; or how to identify and support the next generation of leaders.
In October 2017, a first phase of diagnosis was launched. Different actors are met to define the whole field of representations of the concept of peasant leadership: associations, traders, administrations, micro-credit institutions, and, above all, the producers of the 7 organizations producing cowpea partners of Fert in Burkina Faso.
In this way, together, Fert and the partner producers take the time to reflect on a whole set of elements that already exist within the organisations, consider what can be improved, inventorize the generally appreciated tools of animation, so that the training that will eventually be created is the result of a common work.
