Writing committee : Victorien DEMBELE, Bia COULIBALY, Romain THERA.
Background information
- Country: Mali
- Capital: Bamako
- Regional Capital: Ségou
- Area Capital: Tominian
- Cultural areas: Buwa
- Main local language: Bomu
- Communal assemblies: Mandiakuy, Mafouné
Abstract
The Mandiakuy y Mafouné communal meetings, organized on September 14 and 15, 2009 respectively, allowed the participants to build the communal discourse through challenges, values and so on.
Sixty (60) delegates, appointed by customary, religious and administrative authorities which represent a wide variety of socio-professional organizations as well as youth and women’s associations, took part in the Mandiakuy and Mafouné communal meetings.
This Book of Proposals of the Tominian area is a transversal analysis of the Mandiakuy and Mafouné communal discourse. During the Area Workshop carried out on September 16 – 17, 2009 at the Conference Room of the Mandiakuy Mayoralty, the delegates identified the area’s most important issues. Challenges, values, commitments and proposals / solutions to achieve an efficient development of the community were set.
Proposals from the social groups of the Tominian area
During the area meeting, the various participants organized themselves in three workshops: men, women and youth. Stepping from the five most important issues from the area, each social group analyzed the challenges, values, commitments and proposals. The putting forward of different proposals led to the writing of the Proposals booklet of the Tominian area.
1. Multiple challenges
The challenges to be faced by the peoples from the Tominian area are varied and they are founded in the general incomprehension of democracy and the political reforms implemented in the country. In people’s opinion, democracy’s ill-perception produces various uses and multiple detours. This may also explain the destruction of values and the disintegration of socializing places (family, the “bwaru” association, etc.).
The lack of support to the youth, the weakening of the school at a local level and the devaluing of collective education constitute challenges which set obstacles in young people’s development.
The city’s isolation (transport and communication networks) is a key blockade factor and it favors speculation about rural productions.
2. Values
The various challenges faced by these peoples cannot be overcome without focusing on social relations, on the values which found the feeling of a life in common. For these peoples, the spirit of the community provides all its sense to citizens’ participation towards communal and area issues. Citizens’ actions are still an essential paradigm to highlight all the challenges related to the misunderstanding of democracy and the detours associated with it. Such values are: solidarity, mutual help and mutual support among citizens from the community and the area. Conversely, it is only from these norms that children’s collective education can be revalued.
It could also be seen that socializing places must allow the launching of community and area development through the refreshing of family advice, the reactivation of social economy, a consensus placed in the heart of social relations and human investment on the youth to carry out collective work on the community and area level.
3. Commitments
The peoples’ common life project takes collective action for granted. The people make a commitment to carry out several activities without which the challenges could not be met. This has to do especially with (awareness) talk-debate activities on democracy, the strengthening of socialization, participation in community management through TDRL payment (regional and local development tax), etc.
It can be pointed out, then, that inter-community relations and the development of associations are still important parameters to join the various efforts to put an end to their isolation from the area.
Thus, in order to alleviate the speculation about the prices of farming products, farmers agree that they should get organized within the heart of co-operative and inter-cooperative societies.
4. Proposals
The development of the area has necessarily to do with a wide understanding of democracy and the aims connected with the on-going political reforms, so as to minimize the impact that ill social uses have.
The traditional authorities’ legitimacy constitutes an efficient way to re-energize socialization places; in order for this to happen, there must a strengthening of their capabilities through training on the aims of decentralization, democracy, etc.
The regulation of the education system is also a key factor; to achieve this, collective education must go hand in hand with citizens’ education towards patriotic values.
People’s actions to put an end to the area’s isolation must continue. This would allow to re-value local farming production.
Synthesis
The disintegration of socialization places and the destruction of common values are two of the key issues raised during the Tominian community and area assemblies. In order to explain these detours, people point out the misunderstanding of democracy and the on-going political reforms which tend to re-organize local public spaces without providing people with the keys to understand the challenges to be faced. What they question is both the incomprehension of orientations and the social and political use made of these orientations.
To remedy this situation, people believe that returning to fundamental values is of the utmost importance. Such values are based on the feeling of a life in common and they allow people to find referents to solve the very many difficulties they have to face. In terms of the isolation issue, people make a commitment to re-energize the youth’s local collectives, the inter-community relation, etc. Actually, it is based on this collective reaction that the multiple associations may contribute to local development.
the Citizens' Assembly in Mali
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