For the past four years Jean-Baptiste Fauvel has been working in the European Union (EU) Delegation to Burkina Faso as an Energy Programme Manager. Yet he first came to the attention of capacity4dev.eu as one of the winners of last year’s photo competition. A keen observer of the people he works among, he spends his time outside the office researching their languages and context, and building friendships and trust. In doing so, he has uncovered a remarkable story, the little-known history of a community living in the north of Burkina Faso.
Working as a programme manager in Indonesia and Burkina Faso, Jean-Baptiste Fauvel has made the most of the opportunities that his work has presented to him, in order to pursue his passions for ethnology and photography.
At work, Fauvel has helped to develop Burkina Faso’s solar energy capacities on projects including the Zagtouli photovoltaic park outside the capital Ouagadougou. This is project which the European Commission (EC) contributes EUR 25 million to and that will soon supply electricity to 400 000 people, thus covering 6 % of Burkina Faso’s electricity needs and becoming West-Africa’s largest solar electricity project.
“It was very rewarding to work on a project that will change peoples daily lives,” he said.
Burkina Faso – which roughly translates in the local Mòoré and Dioula languages to the land of Men of Integrity – is home to a number of challenging green energy projects and Fauvel, who was trained as an engineer, has been involved in many of them.
The young Energy Programme Manager – and more largely the European Union Delegation to Burkina Faso – also supports 2iE, an engineering school where approximately 500 green-technology engineers from Africa and beyond graduate every year. Doubling as a research centre, engineers there are also currently developing a cost-effective green engine that combines solar and biomass energies.
Fauvel's interest in green energy stems from his belief that access to it can have a “direct impact on alleviating poverty”. Therefore, in this capacity, he has explored Burkina Faso and come into contact with some of the most inaccessible and destitute segments of this landlocked West African country’s population.
This includes people living in the villages around Oursi, some 300 kilometres North East of Ouagadougou, now an area of restricted access due to an insurgency in neighbouring Mali. “They live with no electricity whatsoever,” says the energy expert to describe their level of poverty.
More surprisingly, some people there are of European and Moroccan descent. This is where the profile of the energy expert and cooperation officer leads to another side of his personality: Fauvel, the travel writer, amateur ethnologist and photographer.
Fauvel’s fascination with the local history and culture is reminiscent of old style ethnologists and diplomatic officers, such as Richard Burton or Heinrich Barth – one of the first Westerners to set foot in Dori and Timbuktu – both of whom dedicated their lives to researching the people and countries that they visited.
In a feature article that he sent to capacity4dev.eu, Fauvel explains that “it was curiosity” that led him to the village of Tin Edjar, inhabited by Tuaregs who spoke Songhai instead of Tamacheq (the language usually spoken by Tuaregs), which was the first indication that they have their own very specific history.
“They claim to be of Spanish descent,” explained Fauvel.
Jean Baptiste Fauvel’s well-researched and illustrated article, Ceux de la Casbah, tells the story of how the distant ancestors of the people of Tin Edjar came to Burkina Faso from Europe. You can read or download this here.
He went on to visit this community several times. There, he met Seydou ag Madian, a man in his sixties who is the repository of an oral history spanning 500 years that Fauvel has corroborated with written sources, including the writings of French geographer Henri Barral.
According to these sources, this Tuareg community landed in Southern Sahara in the sixteenth century. At that time, Spain was laying its hands on the gold of the Incas, while in Morocco the Sultan Moulay Ahmed al Mansour was providing refuge to several different groups. These included Spanish Moors chased away from Spain, and all sorts of European converts to Islam; some of them adventurers, others the victims of Barbary pirates.
Some of the so-called “Andalusians” and “renegades” were enlisted in the army set up by Ahmed al Mansour to take part in a Sahara military campaign. A 6000-strong Spanish speaking army was sent across the desert, only half of whom made it to the Niger River. This is most probably how this Tuareg community arrived in Burkina Faso.
Orodara, in the West of Burkina, where the EC sponsors a solar-panel kit rental project, is also an area of personal interest to Fauvel. During his duty visits, he discovered that the people living there speak a language related to the so-called Kru languages from Liberia and the Ivory Coast, some thousand kilometres away, a feature that again testifies to the ancient migration and trade routes in the region.
“How have these languages arrived here? I have no idea, but I would love to investigate this!” said Fauvel.
When asked what had sparked his interest in Burkina Faso’s cultural and historical heritage, Fauvel was surprised at the question, as if this was natural.
A few weeks after meeting with capacity4dev, he sent in this quote from the French leading historian Fernand Braudel. “If I had to improve my understanding of difficult cultural evolutions, I would not use the last days of Byzance as a battlefield, but would rather leave for Subsaharan Africa. Enthusiastically.”
After four years in Burkina Faso, Jean-Baptiste Fauvel will take up a new post at the EU Delegation in Addis Ababa. The ancient history of Ethiopia will no doubt present him with several new ethnological puzzles to unravel.
If you or one of your colleagues in Delegation is working on a project that you would like to share with the capacity4dev.eu community, we would be pleased to write your profile or publish your pictures. To contact the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team please use the contact form and select the suggestions category.
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Jean-Baptiste Fauvel and Arnaud de Vanssay, with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.
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