Ousmane Djebare Djenepo, wearing sunglasses and an easy smile, stands upright to show off the mighty Niger River, which is flowing around his traditional wooden canoe, or pirogue.
The 76-year-old Malian is one of tens of thousands of fishers who make a living from the river and the verdant wetlands that surround it.
However, Djenepo’s smile hides unease.
“Before, the river was deep and the fishing seasons long,” said Djenepo, head of the federation of fishers of the Niger River’s inner delta. “Now there are far fewer fish and the river has too many problems.”
Ecological issues are threatening livelihoods in the area in central Mali, even as inhabitants have to contend with jihadists and armed groups.
Islamist militants launched a brutal insurgency in Mali in 2012 that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
In the Inner Niger Delta, overfishing has depleted stocks and the Sahara desert is also encroaching on the green floodplains.
Boukary Guindo, the government’s fisheries director for the region, said that the situation for fishers has gone “from bad to worse.”
The Inner Niger Delta is a complex ecosystem comprising lakes and floodplains that support hundreds and thousands of fishers, farmers and herders.
During flooding in the rainy season, only pirogues can travel across the delta, but when the waters recede, fish-filled pools are left behind, alongside huge fields of hippo grass that attract cattle from across the semi-arid Sahel.
Hamidou Toure, director of the delta’s fisheries development office, said that the Sahara has been “engulfing” the Niger River for years.
New sandbanks cut off formerly productive areas of the delta, with fish no longer left behind, Toure said.
Several dams built since the 1970s have also changed the course of the third-longest river on the African continent, while rains are less frequent, which has slowed its flow.
The result has been a blurring of boundaries between seasons, weakening the traditional shared management of the delta’s resources, said Ibrahima Sankare, from the aid group Delta Survie.
“When the grass is there, it’s for the pastoralists; when the water is there, for the Bozos; when the land is there, for the farmers,” he said, explaining a customary system.
Bozos are an ethnic group in Mali who traditionally practice fishing.
Sankara said that everyone has “abused” the system, which was established in the 19th century under the ethnic Fulani-led Macina empire.
However central Mali’s rampant insecurity prevents fieldwork.
Since jihadists infiltrated the region in 2015, it has become one of the Sahel conflict’s bloodiest battlegrounds, where the government exerts little control.
Some Bozo fishermen told reporters that they can be shot at while traveling the waterways of the delta, and jihadists sometimes block access to fishing grounds or demand taxes.
Serious attacks can also occur and have prompted many locals to leave the region.
In a hut on the outskirts of the regional capital, Mopti, Rokia recounted how militants in 2018 kidnapped the men in her family.
Gunmen had demanded that her family’s five pirogues — with 23 people aboard, including her husband, two sons and two brothers — pull up by the riverbank, she said.
Rokia — whose first name has been withheld for her safety — pleaded with the militants, to no avail.
“We never saw them again”, she said, through sobs.
Now based in Mopti, the remaining members of her family no longer fish.
In response to falling stocks, authorities are promoting fish farms, which now account for about 10 percent of the delta’s production.
Modibo Traore, who spent 30 years fishing the river, has taken this route.
“You can catch only big fish if you want, it’s easier,” he said.
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