News stories by Souleymane Faye

DAKAR, Nov 12 (IPS) - The residents of five villages in the Boyard Valley, in southwestern Senegal, are freeing themselves from "the tyranny of imported rice" by stepping up local production of this important staple food.

DAKAR, Oct 18 (IPS) - Over the past two years, millet production has reached record levels in Dya, a rural community in the Kaolack region of central Senegal, where the Agricultural Value Chains Support Project (PAFA) is supporting two farmers' collectives.

DAKAR, Sep 04 (IPS) - Thousands of farmers are earning a living growing fruit and vegetables in the Niayes, a strip of fertile land running north along Senegal's western coastline from the outskirts of the capital, Dakar. But land speculation threatens the future of this market gardening.

DAKAR, Aug 14 (IPS) - Military action by West African states against the insurrection in northern Mali would be extremely risky without diplomatic support from neighbouring Algeria and Mauritania, according to International Crisis Group researcher Gilles Yabi.

DAKAR, Aug 02 (IPS) - A record number of women were sworn in as legislators as Senegal's new parliament was inaugurated on Monday. Sixty-four women now have seats in this West African country's 150-member National Assembly, thanks to a law on gender parity.

'We no longer need to go to Hanène, three kilometres away, for vaccinations or for check-up for our children,' said Maguette Niang, a 40-year-old mother from Keur Madaro, a village in the west of Senegal.

Senegal's small-scale fishers are challenging the government over licences granting foreign trawlers permission to fish in Senegalese waters. The artisanal fishers condemn the 'selling off' of the country's fishery resources at a time when stocks off Senegal's coast are severely depleted.

Senegal's efforts to improve maternal health and reduce child mortality are hampered by a lack of health centres and poor care in those that do exist. But the government faces a major financial hurdle in financing the Bajenu Gox initiative - a community health programme intended to address this.