Women’s cooperatives building economic autonomy and food security in Mauritania’s Senegal River Valley

Assistance Communautaire et Développement (ASCOM) is an Indigenous-led, community-centered organization based in Nouakchott, Mauritania. For the past several years, ASCOM has worked in the country’s southern region, addressing poverty, social inclusion, and gender equity through community-based development, with a particular focus on women’s cooperatives and sustainable livelihoods.

ASCOM works alongside the villages of Gani, Kéké 2, Maata Moula, and Oumoul Ghoura, in the Tékane Commune, along Mauritania’s border with Senegal. These villages sit in the Senegal River valley, and are home to Peulh/Fulani and Haratin communities.

Women in these villages organize themselves into agriculture, dyeing, small trade and livestock cooperatives. In Kéké 2 and Maata Moula, they have also developed community vegetable gardens, while in Gani and Oumoul Ghoura raising poultry is among the women’s initiatives.

These communities face high poverty rates, compounded by gender disparities: limited access to economic opportunities and resources, low participation in decision-making settings, and a high rate of girls leaving school early.

In Mauritania’s Sahel belt, worsening droughts have also pushed many men to migrate seasonally in search of pasture and paid work, leaving women to manage households, land, and remaining livestock for months at a time. That’s why strengthening women’s own economic autonomy is so central to this project.

Faced with these realities, ASCOM turned to the communities themselves to shape a response. Together, they agreed on a project to advance the socioeconomic empowerment of the women of Gani, Kéké 2, Maata Moula, and Oumoul Ghoura, building on the cooperatives’ existing knowledge and priorities.

Our partnership with ASCOM began in 2026, growing out of a shared recognition of the strength and leadership of the women in these communities, and of ASCOM’s community-led approach to supporting them. This vision for economic empowerment, built from the ground up, was a natural fit for a partnership with Azimuth World Foundation.

Through our grant, we’re supporting ASCOM’s Socioeconomic Empowerment of Women project, reaching 170 women across the four villages over 10 months. The project’s solutions are rooted in what the cooperatives already identified as their own priorities:

– Launch meetings in each village to introduce the project and ensure community ownership from the outset.

– Reinforcing the community chicken coops in Gani and Oumoul Ghoura with chicks, feed, and equipment.

– Providing milk collection and processing equipment to the women’s cooperative in Kéké 2.

– Installing a solar-powered pump to irrigate the women’s vegetable plots in Kéké 2, replacing manual watering with a reliable, sustainable water source.

– Training in improved vegetable farming techniques and providing seeds to the cooperatives of Kéké 2 and Maata Moula.

– Training the women of Maata Moula to produce fortified flour, both for household nutrition and as a new source of income.

– Strengthening ASCOM’s own institutional capacity, so the organization can sustain and grow this work long after the project ends.

The project is just getting underway, and its first tangible milestone is already in place: ASCOM has installed the solar-powered irrigation pump in Kéké 2, giving the women’s cooperative a reliable water source for their vegetable plots ahead of the next planting cycle.

Over the coming months, the project is working toward:

Increasing income and access to resources for 170 women across four villages, through strengthened cooperatives in poultry, dairy, vegetable farming, and fortified flour production.

Reliable irrigation and improved farming techniques to boost vegetable yields, alongside fortified flour production to improve household nutrition, particularly for pregnant and breastfeeding women, young children, and the elderly.

Strengthening women’s participation in the mechanisms that shape their communities’ economic and social future.

Reinforcing ASCOM’s organizational systems and long-term sustainability, so the communities have a lasting local partner.

Village launch meetings and regular monitoring visits, designed to keep the project shaped by the communities it serves.