A herd of goats trudges between dry grasses and rows of gnarled shrubs. Suddenly, a golf ball falls in the middle of the herd, ricocheting in the dust. Its nervous rebounds disperse the goats who hurry to avoid the projectile.

Around, the horizon is cluttered with buildings: this small landscape of Sahel stuck in the middle of constructions on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is an 18-hole golf course approved by the French federation.

Here, no carefully watered lawns, but earth and stones where herds graze.

“In Burkina Faso, water is a very rare commodity, we cannot afford to water a field. Here, we play golf in its natural state”, explains Salif Samake, president of the Ouagadougou Golf Club, when a UN conference on water is due to open on Wednesday in New York.

The drought constitutes “the first natural disaster anywhere in Burkina Faso, a Sahelian country without a maritime outlet”, recalls the Ministry of the Environment in a report published in 2015, which underlines that agriculture is the main activity of the country and occupies approximately 90 % of working population.

However, a top-of-the-range 18-hole golf course has an average consumption of 5,000 m3/day, the equivalent of the average consumption of a community of 12,000 inhabitants, according to official estimates.

The “green” is therefore replaced here by a “brown”, made up of a mixture of sand and motor oil. “It rolls a little less and then good, the putting is a little more complicated”, concedes Mr. Samake, who nevertheless believes in the merits of the formula.

“It’s a model that can be exported to other countries. The only difficulty is that you just have to scrape to remove the small pebbles, because when the ball hits a pebble, there it goes. all the senses… It makes us laugh”, laughs Mr. Samake.

Beginners are welcome, like Nathanael Congo, who spends some time looking for his stray balls in the surrounding brush.

“It’s also part of the game. It’s also what makes the course of Ouagadougou atypical”, he believes, not discouraged.

“At the beginning I was a little resistant. The common Burkinabè think that it is a sport reserved for a certain category of people”, says this accountant residing in Ouagadougou.

At 250,000 FCFA (381 euros) a year, in a country ranked among the poorest in the world, equipment not included, the license is not given, but foreigners only represent a minority of players.

While Burkina Faso is plunged into an unprecedented security crisis, the inhabitants of its capital, spared by the violence, are still enjoying relative recklessness. Like this officer who came to hit a few balls and that it is necessary to avoid filming in this unmartial situation.

Out of time, the Ouagadougou golf course also resists the appetites of promoters. “At the time, it was the village, people did the cultivation and the breeding. Now, you see that the golf course is surrounded by plots all around”, explains Abdou Tapsoba, sports director of the club.

He is the son of the founder of golf, the “naaba” of Balkuy, customary chief of the area who had discovered golf in Europe, after the Second World War during which he had fought for the French army.

In 1972, the peasants were asked by the Naaba to abandon their fields to make way for the golf course of their dreams.

But the descendants of the farmers have found another resource: “It is the children of these families who pull the carts, the caddies, there are more than 60 here and they live only from golf”, assures Mr. Samake.

“The best players are among the young people of Balkui. They started as caddy and became players,” adds Abdou Topsoba.

Among the original inhabitants, only one family has not changed its way of life: the Diallo, Fulani herders established there for 70 years. Their estate, wedged between holes 5 and 10, has remained virtually in its original state, except that the houses are regularly bombarded by balls from clumsy players.

Omar Diallo, breeder, does not complain about this neighborhood. His oxen continue to graze as they have since the arrival of his ancestors. But the extension of the capital, which for several years has suffered intense real estate speculation, threatens his herd.

“It’s difficult to find pasture for the animals, we have to take them far,” he worries. “Tomorrow, we don’t know if we can stay here.”

20/03/2023 19:13:34 – Ouagadougou (AFP) – © 2023 AFP