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Saudi Arabia Reinforces Regional Leadership with 21 WHO-Accredited Healthy Cities
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia /Health & Science

Saudi Arabia Reinforces Regional Leadership with 21 WHO-Accredited Healthy Cities

From Asharq Al-Awsat · () English

Summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • A Burkina Faso farmer is expanding pineapple cultivation in the Sahel as the country seeks to reduce food imports and adapt agriculture to a harsher climate.
  • Oumarou Compaoré’s farm near Bobo-Dioulasso has grown to about 50 hectares, while pineapple fields in the surrounding administrative region have reached roughly 100 hectares.
  • The initiative supports the military government’s push for food self-sufficiency, although insecurity, displacement and widespread hunger continue to disrupt farming and markets.

Oumarou Compaoré drives around his farm in western Burkina Faso in a van marked “Pioneer in pineapple production in the Sahel.” Beneath his boots, the soil is sandy and stony, far from the lush conditions usually associated with pineapple cultivation.

Yet Compaoré’s farm outside Bobo-Dioulasso has expanded to about 50 hectares. He began the project in 2018, after years of growing papayas with little profit. Border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic helped inspire the shift. When imported pineapples became scarce, he said, the fruit sold easily.

“People told us that here we could only grow cotton, maize or sorghum,” Compaoré said. Pineapples had long been viewed as an exotic crop produced by wealthier coastal neighbors, and as a more expensive alternative to the mangoes grown around many Burkinabe homes.

People told us that here we could only grow cotton, maize or sorghum.

— Oumarou CompaoréThe farmer described the doubts he faced when he began growing pineapples in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region.

The project now fits into Burkina Faso’s wider drive to produce more of its own food. The military leaders who took power under Capt. Ibrahim Traoré have made food production part of their sovereignty agenda. The government suspended rice imports in April, opened two tomato-paste factories in 2024 and promoted locally produced goods through a “Let’s consume what we produce” section at a major supermarket in Ouagadougou.

Pineapples have also entered the formal development plan. Regional agriculture director Adanabou Eric Pascal told local media that pineapple fields in the administrative region containing Compaoré’s farm had reached about 100 hectares by November. Kola Jean, an agricultural engineer at the farm, estimated that more than 100 farmers were beginning to grow the crop.

The effort faces serious limits. A decade-long security crisis has left extremists controlling large areas, disrupting access to fields and markets and displacing many people. UN agencies say about 2.7 million people face acute food insecurity. No government data on national pineapple production are available, but farmers say interest in the crop is growing.

Because the fruit was in short supply, we were able to sell it easily.

— Oumarou CompaoréHe explained how pandemic-era shortages helped create demand for locally grown pineapples.
About this summary

Originally published by Asharq Al-Awsat. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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