Originally intended for a gum arabic plantation used in the agri-food and pharmaceutical industries, the 20 ha plot of land located at the entrance to the city of Ouahigouya, along national road no. 2, ‘named President Salif Diallo Grove’ after its initiator, is being divided up, marked out and put up for sale by individuals claiming to be landowners, despite warnings from the authorities, reports the daily L’Observateur Paalga in its Thursday issue.
Individuals claiming to be landowners allegedly seized the land to divide it into plots to resell, the media reports.
The land was intended for a gum arabic plantation project, launched in Ouahigouya in 1996 by the late Salifou Diallo, then Minister of the Environment.
Funded by the European Union, this project, implemented in other provinces of Burkina, was carried out in Ouahigouya by a union of groups called “Kogleweogo”, which has become an association. On the surface area of ??more than twenty hectares, species of gum arabic, or acacia, had been planted
there.
The aim was to strengthen the contribution of the forestry sector in the fight against poverty, in the sense that gum arabic, used in the agri-food and pharmaceutical industries, was exported to Europe and the United States, thus generating income for producers, adds the same source.
However, at the end of the second phase of project funding in 2004, producers were unable to sustain the gains.
In Ouahigouya, the land has been abandoned, and the trees, left at the mercy of animals, have been devastated in recent years by internally displaced persons, who uprooted them to make firewood, the media outlet deplores.
After the death of the mastermind of the project, his political comrades from the People’s Movement for Progress (MPP) considered it useful to revive the land by planting trees there during the commemorations of the anniversaries organized in his memory.
In the meantime, the Kogleweogo Association, lacking the means to continue its activities, decided to transfer the land back to the commun
e of Ouahigouya.
The special delegation, which wanted to continue the transfer process, undertook outings to demarcate the area of ??the land.
It noted that a good part of the twenty hectares was occupied by residential houses. An area of ??7 ha had not been touched.
Seeking to know the instigators of these constructions, a group of individuals emerged to make the municipal authorities understand that they were the owners of the land and that they had ceded it to Salifou Diallo at his request, and not to an association, much less to the town hall.
The two parties have been holding numerous meetings. During the month of August 2024, the said landowners are moving up a gear by proceeding with the division of the space.
Two districts of the city of Ouahigouya, notably Soumyaga and Souli, are said to have each granted themselves 3 hectares, then given 1 ha to the family of the late Salif uDiallo.
According to the same source, some time after the division, during the same month of August 2024, a mission led
by the Minister of Urban Planning, the Minister of the Environment and the municipal authorities, met on the site those who claim to be owners of the premises.
The mission is said to have suggested to its interlocutors to postpone their actions so that a common ground could be found. The latter do not
seem to have listened attentively.
Just after this meeting, construction work quickly began on part of the premises, under the direction of certain beneficiaries, with announcements of sale to whoever wanted to be a buyer, notes L’Observateur Paalga.
Source: Burkina Information Agency