Yacouba Sawadogo

Yacouba Sawadogo (1946 to 2023) was a Burkinabé farmer and agronomist who used the traditional zaï technique to restore soils damaged by desertification and drought in the Sahel. Beginning in the 1970s, with another local farm innovator, Mathieu Ouédraogo, he experimented with lines of stones called cordons pierreux and with zaï holes, which he enlarged slightly and filled with manure and other biodegradable waste to feed plants and attract termites whose tunnels loosen the soil. From the mid-1980s until 2009 the use of zaï was followed by water tables rising by about five metres on average. He held twice-yearly Market Days at his farm in Gourga to spread the methods, received the Right Livelihood Award in 2018 and the Champions of the Earth award in 2020, and is portrayed in the 2010 documentary The Man Who Stopped the Desert.