Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso - Traditionally, labourers have hauled water by hand, carrying it to the fields in watering cans. It is tedious work in the punishing sun, and farmers can only cultivate as much land as they and their families and/or hired labourers can water.
Now, affordable treadle pumps introduced by FAO's Special Programme for Food Security have become popular among small farmers. The Programme provided the first demonstration pumps but now has trained five private metal working shops around the country to manufacture them and sell them commercially. While a motorized pump costs over US $300, a treadle pump costs just 45 000 CFA francs (US$65).
As a labourer steps up and down on the treadles, water is drawn up through eight metres of plastic pipe inserted down the well, then along another pipe to an adjacent field. A second man diverts water down individual rows of tomatoes and okra. The pump can easily be dismantled and moved to another well by donkey, hand-drawn cart or even a bicycle.
In Burkina Faso, the treadle pumps are now produced and sold by local metal working shops. They receive no subsidy. One of the shops, in the national capital of Ouagadougou, has sold over 200 pumps in the past year.:
