Heat. Dust. Noise. Fatigue. I’ve only been in Africa for 24 hours and I’m getting to know all four a bit better.
Temperatures of more than thirty degrees centigrade met a man who’d left Gatwick on one of February’s meanest mornings, and a light breeze soon gave way to a blistering midday sun.
I’m writing this from The Gambia, a tiny wedge-shaped country in West Africa. It’s half the size of Wales and surrounded on three sides by Senegal and by the mighty Atlantic on its fourth.
I’m here with a charity called Concern Universal, to look at how they’re helping farmers here develop better access to markets and avoid the effects of cheap imports.
They certainly need it. This is one of the poorest countries on earth, placed at 155 in the UN’s poverty index, which only goes as far as 172. Half the people live on less than 50p/day. Life expectancy is 57.
Even here, in the poshest hotel the country has to offer, with close links and endorsements from the Gambia’s own President Jammeh, the light bulb flickers as I type. Soon power will fail altogether.
The Gambia is basically the great river valley of the River Gambia, but don’t imagine inherently fertile floodplains and nutrient-rich silty soils. The river is tidal and bordered by mangrove swamps for most of its brackish course through the country.
This means salinated soils reclaiming rice fields every year. One farm I saw today had seen its rice-growing area retreat by about 20m in the last two years. A frightening prospect for a country only 50% self-sufficient in rice, and for which food insecurity it the norm for 6 months of the year.
I’m new to Africa. But there are already many parallels emerging with farming in the UK, and issues facing rural communities. And this week I’ll be trying to post a few of them on this blog.
Ian Ashbridge- deputy business editor