Success Stories

Mr. Dembélé, head of a 15-person family, sells meat in the village of Kremis in Mali’s Kayes region. His family has been slaves to another family for generations. Mr. Dembélé was forced to give his “master” a large portion of the proceeds from his meat-selling business.

Community-based disease surveillance is a crucial way to stop dangerous outbreaks before they spread. Community members are trained to spot disease among people and animals in their community and report to health authorities.

Challenges faced by rural, smallholder farmers around the world are being amplified by climate change and conflict as communities struggle to recover from the market-distorting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of people affected by hunger has increased by 46 million since 2020– reaching 828 million globally.

Globally, social media has become the fastest way to disseminate information and spread disinformation, and Mali is no exception.

Timothy Coulibaly is a maize, millet, and peanut producer in Farakala, Mali.

In 2011, at the age of 16, Balkissa Idrissa left school to get married and join her new husband in Bentia village, near Mali’s border with Niger. Soon after the wedding, her community and others in the area were beset by a conflict that officially ended with the signing of the 2015 Algiers Peace Accord. Despite the promise of peace, her area has continued to experience ongoing conflict and communities often fall prey to occupation by violent extremist organizations.

Tense negotiations between a teachers’ union and a school administration in Kenieba commune in the Kayes region of southern of Mali in July 2022 became more difficult when a social media post alleged that a school supervisor had been wrongly imprisoned by authorities. The local press in Kayes picked up the post and ran the story. Journalist Michel Yao doubted the story’s veracity.

Adiaratou Sangaré is a livestock trader from Yanfolila, Mali, who has been perfecting her craft for over 13 years. At 37, this mother of six is a member of the Association of Small Ruminant Traders of Yanfolila,