Discussion of women’s training within the Stock-farming Development Project in the Western Sahel, Mali, which started in 1980. The project team selected pilot villages where women were chosen by the villagers to be trained as ‘animatrices’ and in which a contact committee was established with four members, each in charge of a specific area: information and communication; health and nutrition; family economy; and general labour reduction. The project introduced improved stoves and motor driven grinding mills to villages after training agents to teach people to use them. It made available six carts and six donkeys on a loan basis, helped set up vegetable gardens, and trained a poultry agent for a proposed poultry scheme. Problems encountered by the project, including inadequate staff, introduction of inappropriate or expensive technology, and the death of animals given on loan to village women, are also discussed. Notes.
