A $5,000 grant was awarded to the Burkinabe filmmaker Michel K. Zongo for his project L’homme qui plante les baobabs

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Every year for the past half century, a man has planted baobab trees in his village in western Burkina Faso. At the age of 80, El Hadj Salifou Ouédraogo has spent 2/3 of his life planting over 3,000 baobab trees that stretch as far as the eye can see. It’s been a life of struggle, dedicated to ensuring the existence of these trees, while combatting prevailing prejudice and developers’ attempts to expropriate his lands. El Hadj Salifou Ouédraogo was misunderstood by the inhabitants of his village when he first started planting these majestic millennial trees so essential to the ecosystem, which have become rare and endangered in the African savannah.