The project also uses cell phone technologies to provide pastoralists with information about resources in the transhumance zones, and to track and monitor the course followed by selected shepherds and their flocks from one point to another in the forestry-pasture zone. The project organisers conducted field surveys among more than 200 families in three countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal), to compile an inventory of traditional practices and local know-how in the use of pastoral resources, with a view to combining them with modern tools and knowledge and making them more accessible.

Three zones, known as "pastoral units" (PU) were selected in Senegal (Kouthiaba, Thiel, and Tessékéré) as sites for a pilot project to demonstrate "the use of ICTs for local communities in tracking the movements of transhumant herds for sustainable management of pastoral resources in the Sahel, Senegal." In each of these trial zones, herders were taught to read and to prepare geographic maps by working with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that were linked to satellites and that could be used for accurate positioning on the ground.

Several of these herders were equipped with cell phones to speed up the exchange of information and provide them with an "early warning system" against pending disasters. Some herders received IT training so that they could access information available on the Web. All the equipment needed for Internet connection was installed in each pastoral unit, where real-time information could be accessed through a site that was built for them in July 2003.

Technology, Economic Development, Agriculture, Environment

The project's objective is to encourage pastoralists "to improve the feeding of their animals, to develop livestock production, and to manage the environment sustainably," by using these technologies to obtain and exchange information.