The Centre de Formation Professionelle en Transformation Agro-Alimentaire, or Centre Agro-Alimentaire Siby (CAAS) for short, is a vocational training facility for girls and young women in smallholder agriculture in southern Mali. There they are familiarized with methods of soil improvement, modern, productive and sustainable agricultural cultivation and production techniques, as well as food processing and preservation methods.
It is the women in Mali, often in women’s cooperatives, who cultivate small-scale horticulture and fruit growing close to the village: eggplants, tomatoes, peanuts, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans as well as mangoes, guavas, citrus fruits, papayas etc., take care of livestock farming – poultry, cows, sheep and goats – and also process the crops in a rudimentary way, mostly for their preservation. This is why the CAAS concentrates on promoting girls and women.
The CAAS is located near Siby, a small rural town, and in neighboring Kalassa. Both are located in Mandé, a landscape in south-western Mali, bordered to the north by the Mandingo Mountains and to the south by the Niger River. Twenty rural communities belong to it. Siby is located in the middle, sixty kilometers southwest of the capital on national road no. 5, a junction on the way to Guinea. The largest weekly market southwest of Bamako takes place here every Saturday. The location is therefore particularly suitable for a vocational training center.
The population of Mandé consists mainly of Malinke and Bambara, two ethnic groups that practice agriculture. Deforestation, declining soil fertility, insufficient seeds, strong population growth, climate change and the resulting scarcity of rainfall are causing per capita yields from agriculture to fall, rural poverty to increase and rural exodus to occur.
The dependence on natural events and the unpredictability of harvests have given rise to many forms of practical solidarity in African society: Groups and associations based on mutual aid. This is especially true for women. There are many such associations and cooperatives in Mandé. These are the second target group of the CAAS: because it is through them that new ways of thinking and methods of cultivation or processing find the desired social dissemination.
