The current situation of TerraCottem in Burkina Faso
Historical Sites
During our journey from the 2 nd till the 14 th of April 2007, we only managed to visit 3 sites where TerraCottem was and is used:
This site has been a project site for more then 20 years. This NGO sets up different small projects in order to give direct help to the local families, to plant trees, design and protect areas for hay etc.
AZN is using TerraCottem for its nursery, planting trees beside the roads, the creation of natural fences for hay areas. They are not using TerraCottem for cultivating vegetables.
The ground in Guiè is as hard as rock, sometimes untill to 2m deep before getting to a normal soil. From their perspective, TerraCottem is a very useful technology as it gives relatively good results in this very hard soil.
They did share their latest shipment of TerraCottem with a Suisse-Burkinabé lady who is in charge of an NGO that is doing tests for their use. ( newTree-nouvelarbre - Franziska Kaguembèga-Müller)
AZN gets the TerraCottem from a NGO in Monacco and it is the only NGO in Burkina Faso known by TerraCottem NV. They did not have any spare TerraCottem left at the time of our visit.
This site is organised under the umbrella of Pierre Kaboré. (See CV of Pierre Kaboré)
Pierre Kaboré used to work with Prof. Van Cotthem on several of his TerraCottem projects in Burkina Faso . Through this channel he got in contact with the Committee Maastricht-Niou, which fund him with his development projects.
Using TerraCottem for reforestation, fruit trees and the cultivation of vegetables, he is by far the one man with the most experience in using TerraCottem in the country. (See Pictures)
Not only for this reason:
TerraCottem NV was not aware of this user and are guessing how and from who he receives the TerraCottem. They suppose it is partly coming from the remainder of the stock of Loek Masthoff.
This site was part of a reforestation project set-up in July 1992.
I recognized this site and found proof that this was the same place by finding a part of an Eternit tube, which was used to make the fence. The rest of the fence had been recuperated, the forest had been cut several times but was still visible and in relative good health.
We were unable to find the other historical sites due to lack of time and due to the number of years which have passed since the start-up of the projects.
Current knowledge in Burkina Faso of the product
In general, we could say that only those people who were using it knew something about the product.
The others, professionals and others, had only heard about the product,and sometimes accompanied by a negative conotation, such as expensive. None of these knew something about how to handle it, how it really worked etc.
Current users of TerraCottem:
AZN – TERRE VERTE : www.azn-guie-burkina.org - Guiè
Out of stock – import via NGO out of Monacco
Pierre Kaboré – Zorgo – Mégué
15 bags of 20kg each in stock
500 kg in bags of 20 kg in import zone waiting for clearance.
Buying via Committee Maastricht-Niou