Low-cost Land Restoration Techniques - Somali communities survive and thrive

Halimoh Farah’ story

Halimo Farah is 57 years old. She has four children but lost seven others. One of her children stays with her in the village (Qaloocato), back in the rural, the other three are in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, for work. Her husband stays in Hargeisa with another wife. In her village, the community benefited in cash for work, water conservation, poultry and livestock projects supported by World Vision.

She is one of the community members who benefited from the poultry project because she already had experience in poultry farming. Twenty years ago, she used to keep poultry in Hargeisa.

Through the poultry farming project as part of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) programme implemented by World Vision, Halimoh was given six hens and bought more. Now, she has 25 hens, and she collects eggs every day. After a week, when she has accumulated enough (40/50 eggs), she sells them to community members in Odweyne (in the neighbouring village) or to Burao. She also cooks some of the eggs for her family.

Halimoh has also a small business of selling shoes to help her generate extra income.

“Before, I used to stay at home doing nothing.

Before the drought in 2016/2017, she had 30 goats and 28 of them died during the drought. She was left with one as she had to sell the second to get some income.

Ahmoud, 55, is a community leader. A father of fifteen children and husband to three wives has also benefitted and learnt a lot from the FMNR project to be able to apply techniques to enable him to sustain his family during hard times of drought. He is part of the “Qaloocato FMNR site group. Here, he learned tree management. He had never planted a tree before. Soon they will develop a tree nursery, which will help them to plant the trees outside of the FMNR site. He also learned some environment protection practices.

When Somaliland was affected by recurrent droughts, he lost most of his livestock. Ahmoud is now focusing on farming such as sorghum, onions and watermelons.

During the training, he also learned how to store food and grass (fodder) for his remaining livestock. He also taught some of his children farming and tree planting skills.