By Issa Sikiti da Silva

DAKAR , Apr 11 2013 (IPS) - Malian widow Mariama Sow, 30, and her three children are trying to find some semblance of normalcy in their lives in Dakar, Senegal, since they left the historic city of Timbuktu in northern Mali last June to escape the Islamist occupation.

Sow and her children are now living in relative safety with her eldest sister in this West African nation, as she helps her sibling run her two tangana (informal township restaurants).

Mali remains in turmoil with hundreds of thousands of IDPs, missing and abducted children and food shortages aggravated by a dearth of cereals on the market.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 13 2013 (IPS) - As the Malian army and its foreign partners are slowly securing northern cities in the West African nation, it is still unclear how the country will turn its back on the political crisis that led to the March 2012 military coup.

By Marc-Andre Boisvert

GOUDEBO, Burkina Faso, Feb 22 2013 (IPS) - Fatimata Wallet Haibala sits among a group of women and teenage girls under a tent, her handicapped boy on her lap. The scene could be a rural picture of a Tuareg gathering in the desert. But the mother mother of five resides in a refugee camp in Goudebo, Burkina Faso, almost 100 kilometres from their home in Mali.

By Marc-Andre Boisvert

MOPTI, Mali, Feb 11 2013 (IPS) - At the entrance to the Evangelical church in Mopti, central Mali, military soldiers stood on either side of the door as Pastor Luc Sagara greeted his parishioners for Sunday mass.

The presence of the soldiers were a stark reminder that less than three weeks ago the town was under occupation by Islamist extremists committed to the imposition of Sharia law in this West African nation.

“We feel safe now. With the French intervention, we are hopeful that the Islamists will not attack us,” Sagara told IPS.

Farmers in Médina Yoro Foula, in Senegal’s southern Kolda region, are expecting a good grain harvest this year, and hope to sell thousands of tonnes of grain in the local and regional markets.

“The harvest will be far better than last year’s,” said Moussa Sabaly, from the Regional Office for Rural Development (DRDR) in Kolda.

Médina Yoro Foula département has a population of around 120,000, nearly 90 percent of whom are farmers and herders. Local farmers will also sell part of their produce in the neighbouring countries of Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea.

By Koffigan E. Adigbli

DAKAR, Nov 26 2012 (IPS) - Watering cans in hand, men and women move back and forth between the wells and water storage tanks and the crops they’re watering: carrots, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and potatoes, as well as fruit trees like palm, coconut, papaya and banana trees.

By Souleymane Faye

DAKAR, Nov 12 2012 (IPS) - The residents of five villages in the Boyard Valley, in southwestern Senegal, are freeing themselves from “the tyranny of imported rice” by stepping up local production of this important staple food.

“Agricultural production has been intensified here for several years now, thanks to the revival of rice farming,” Marie Sagne told IPS proudly.

By Koffigan E. Adigbli

POTOU, Senegal, Oct 16 2012 (IPS) - Increased harvests in the northern Senegalese community of Léona provide evidence of the benefits of multifaceted support for agriculture. But as their yields grow, farmers are calling for consistent policy to protect markets for their crops. Since 2008, the village of Potou has been the site of a multi-sector poverty eradication effort, one of 12 “Millennium Village” sites found in hunger hotspots in ten countries across Africa.