No trees, no crops, no jobs: Women fall back on hard labour standardmedia.co.ke - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from standardmedia.co.ke Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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OUAGADOUGOU (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Wiping her sandy fingers on her shirt, Balkissa Sawadogo for a moment rests her aching body from shovelling sand and gravel into piles.
Three years ago, as rains dried up, the 25-year-old single mother was forced to stop farming in her neighbourhood on the outskirts of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou to begin the back-breaking work of selling sand to construction workers to support her family.
Her landlocked West African nation has been hard hit by drought and desertification caused in part by climate change.
Once-fertile land is now dry, forcing farmers that used to survive by cultivating it to change professions, often toiling from dawn until dusk in jobs that make it hard to scrape by.