The Bright Side: Madd fruit boosts Senegalese economy during rainy season
In the village of Thiobon, over 450 kilometres south of Dakar, local producers are sustaining the sector and thanks to a 2024 Protected Geographical Indication, Madd is becoming more widely available.
Backed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation and the French Development Agency, this classification is bringing new hope to an entire community.
From Dakar's markets to Casamance villages, people are willing to pay more than 14,000 CFA francs this year – just over €20 – for a sack of the fruit.
'The fixed price works well for us. If there's a lot or a little amount of Madd, people still buy it at the same price, so that's an advantage for us who harvest it," explained 29-year-old Madd picker, Lansana Mané.
Madd is only harvested for three months a year and processing remains largely artisanal, which is a challenge for producers.
'We don't yet have large-scale systems, so we rely on a few freezers in our processing units,' said Maimouna Sambou Diedhiou, president of the Association for the Protection and Promotion of the Madd Geographical Indication of Casamance.
'Manual work limits production to small quantities, making year-round operations difficult. One of the biggest challenges is industrialising the process and creating systems to preserve semi-processed products, like Madd nuts.'
According to industry insiders, the Madd sector generates an average of 500 million CFA francs, more than €750,000 each year.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
21 hours ago
- France 24
The Bright Side: Madd fruit boosts Senegalese economy during rainy season
The tangy and rich in vitamin C Madd fruit, eaten fresh or processed, is a crucial source of income for thousands of families who live off its harvest in the region of Casamance, south of Senegal. In the village of Thiobon, over 450 kilometres south of Dakar, local producers are sustaining the sector and thanks to a 2024 Protected Geographical Indication, Madd is becoming more widely available. Backed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation and the French Development Agency, this classification is bringing new hope to an entire community. From Dakar's markets to Casamance villages, people are willing to pay more than 14,000 CFA francs this year – just over €20 – for a sack of the fruit. 'The fixed price works well for us. If there's a lot or a little amount of Madd, people still buy it at the same price, so that's an advantage for us who harvest it," explained 29-year-old Madd picker, Lansana Mané. Madd is only harvested for three months a year and processing remains largely artisanal, which is a challenge for producers. 'We don't yet have large-scale systems, so we rely on a few freezers in our processing units,' said Maimouna Sambou Diedhiou, president of the Association for the Protection and Promotion of the Madd Geographical Indication of Casamance. 'Manual work limits production to small quantities, making year-round operations difficult. One of the biggest challenges is industrialising the process and creating systems to preserve semi-processed products, like Madd nuts.' According to industry insiders, the Madd sector generates an average of 500 million CFA francs, more than €750,000 each year.
France 24
5 days ago
- France 24
Over 11 mn refugees risk losing aid because of funding cuts: UN
That corresponds to a full third of the number reached last year by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. In a new report, the agency highlighted a deadly confluence of factors pummelling millions of refugees and displaced people globally: "rising displacement, shrinking funding and political apathy". "We are right now facing a deadly cocktail," UNHCR's head of external relations, Dominique Hyde, told reporters in Geneva. "We are incredibly concerned for refugees and displaced populations around the world." Dramatic aid cuts by the United States and other countries have left UNHCR and other aid organisations facing gaping shortfalls. UNHCR has said it needs $10.6 billion to assist the world's refugees this year, but so far it has received just 23 percent of that amount. As a result, the agency said it was seeing $1.4 billion of essential programmes being cut or put on hold. The impact, Hyde cautioned, risks being that "up to 11.6 million refugees and people forced to flee are losing access to humanitarian assistance provided by UNHCR". The agency said families were being forced to choose between feeding their children, buying medicines and paying rent. Malnutrition is especially severe for refugees fleeing war-ravaged Sudan, where the UN has been forced to reduce food rations and nutrition screening, she said, decrying the "devastating impact for children who have fled to Chad". The cuts have also forced UNHCR to pause the movement of new arrivals from border areas to safer locations in Chad and South Sudan, "leaving thousands stranded in remote locations", the agency said. Health and education services for refugees are also being scaled back worldwide. In camps in Bangladesh hosting nearly a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, education programmes for some 230,000 children risk being suspended. UNHCR also said its entire health programme in Lebanon was at risk of being shuttered by the end of the year. Last month, UNHCR announced it would need to cut 3,500 staff -- nearly a third of its workforce worldwide -- amid the budget shortfall.
France 24
13-07-2025
- France 24
Nigeria's former president Buhari dead at 82
Current President Bola Tinubu said in a statement that his predecessor died in London at about 4:30 pm (1530 GMT) "following a prolonged illness". He did not disclose the nature of the illness. Buhari governed Nigeria with a strong hand as a military ruler in the 1980s before reinventing himself as a "converted democrat", serving two terms from 2015 to 2023. "The family of the former president has announced the passing on of the former president, Muhammadu Buhari, this afternoon in a clinic in London," Garba Shehu, who served as Buhari's spokesman during his presidency, said in a post on social media. Tinubu said he had spoken with Buhari's widow and ordered Vice President Kashim Shettima to go to England to accompany Buhari's body back to Nigeria. He also ordered flags to fly at half-staff in honour of Buhari, whose tenure was dogged by health rumours. His frequent visits for medical treatment during his presidency attracted criticism about the government's transparency over his illness and worries about leadership during some of his longer absences. Although the nature of his ailment has never been made public, Buhari confessed in one of the trips that he had "never been so ill" and that he had received several blood transfusions. Critics also said the visits highlighted the country's weak health system. 'A failure of leadership' Last week his aide Shehu launched a book, titled "According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson's Experience", in which according to local media he confessed to fabricating a 2017 story about rats' invasions at the presidential office, to shift Nigerians focus away from concerns over the leader's health. Buhari had spent nearly three months away receiving treatment in Britain. "When the surge in calls for explanation of why the president would be working from home, if truly he had recovered his health and fit for the office came, I said to the reporters that the office, which had been in disuse, needed renovation because rats may have eaten and damaged some cables," he wrote in the book, according to local media. The rake-thin 82-year-old Muslim from Nigeria's far north made history as the first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent leader at the ballot box in 2015. His election victory in a country where re-election for the incumbent had been taken for granted was seen as a rare opportunity for Nigeria to change course. But his time at the helm failed to halt the country's long-standing issues of graft and insecurity, while the oil giant was further dogged by economic woes. Despite concerns about his fragile health, his economic policies, the extent of his claims about better security, as well as the targets of his campaign against graft, he secured a second term in 2019. In a 2020 opinion piece for The New York Times, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie charged that his tenure in office had shown "a failure of leadership", writing that the "government of President Muhammadu Buhari has long been ineffectual, with a kind of wilful indifference." © 2025 AFP
