Video by Marco Garofalo, interview by Tamara Ferrari, edited by Paolo Martelli.

We are in the small village of Gourga, north of Burkina Faso, in a region of Sahel where the sky is greedy of clouds and rain. In this corner of the Earth, at the gates of Sahara desert, Mr.Yacouba Sawadogo lives where fields and sand are in constant competition and where the desert gains 15,000 new squarekms per year.

Here an imaginary border bisects the horizon: on one side the red of arid desert land expands, on the other one Tamarindi, Baobab, Shea, Acacie form a dense forest, where the eyes go blank.

This is the result of years and years of Yacouba Sawadogo’s work, “the man who planted trees”.

Yacouba Sawadogo sets the he heart of his practice in sharing knowledge, such as the Zai technique, and plant seeds: through the radio He reaches a large number of farmers in the area, informing them about sowing periods, good practice and results of the harvest.