Every Saturday, people living in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, gather to clean out the clogged drainage ditches in their neighborhood. They say they had to take matters into their own hands as the city has consistently failed to provide this basic service.

The initiative began in Somgandé, a neighbourhood located in the 4ᵗʰ arrondissement of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The drainage ditches in the capital are often clogged with rubbish, making it impossible for the water to flow through them. Frustrated that city workers were not cleaning the ditches out, a community group decided that it was time for local residents to take matters into their own hands. The group, the Association for the Promotion of Citizenship and Development (APCD, or Association pour la Promotion de la Citoyenneté et le Développement), organised a community ditch clean-up operation. More than 200 people turned up on August 24 and 31 to help out.

Julien Tiendrebeogo, the president of the APCD, said that they couldn’t wait for the city to deal with this problem any longer:

We had to do something to get the authorities’ attention - we couldn’t leave the situation as it was. The drainage ditches are filled with rubbish. We needed to clean up our living environment. We also needed to free up the ditches to allow water to circulate, thus preventing the floods that wreak havoc on our country during the rainy season. This work is also important in terms of malaria prevention. The stagnant water in these clogged drainage ditches is a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, right next to people’s homes.

This post (in French) shows the clogged drainage ditches in the 4ᵗʰ arrondissement. The rubbish-filled ditches are “extremely dirty” and create ideal breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitos.

That’s why we started carrying out what we call "Mana Mana" operations. "Mana mana" is an expression which means something that has to be done quickly and well. We made fliers with photos of the clogged drainage ditches to get people’s attention. We handed them out to locals and important people in the neighbourhood, like tribal chiefs and community leaders. We also spread the word on Facebook and read out an announcement about the upcoming event on the local city radio station.

Fliers about the ditch-cleaning event.

It was a big success. Nearly 300 people participated in the clean-up on the first day. Even the elderly - some over the age of 70 - took part. The fittest among us climbed into the drainage ditches to pull out rubbish. Older people, women and children gathered it up and carried it to the landfill. We worked from 5am until 6pm!















Photos by Julien Tiendrebeogo (slideshow).

Photos by Julien Tiendrebeogo (slideshow). We were efficient. The night after our first clean-up, there was a lot of rain but, thanks to our hard work, the water drained properly and there wasn’t any damage.





