Baccalauréat · Série D · Anglais — 2015

TEXT — The price of millet

Amadou Ouédraogo has been growing millet near Kaya for thirty-one years. For most of that time, he sold his harvest to the same man, a trader who came to the village with a lorry two weeks after the rains had stopped.

« He told us the price, » Amadou says. « We did not know if it was the real price or not. The nearest big market is sixty kilometres away, and nobody was going to walk sixty kilometres to check. »

Then, five years ago, his eldest son sent him a mobile phone from Ouagadougou. Amadou could not read, but his daughter could. Every Tuesday, they called a cousin who worked at the market in Kaya and wrote down the prices in an exercise book.

« The first time the trader came after that, I told him the price in Kaya. He laughed. Then he stopped laughing and he paid me nine thousand francs more per bag. »

Today twelve families in the village share the information. They also store part of their harvest in a small warehouse and sell it in March, when prices are high, instead of selling everything in November, when everybody sells and prices are low.

« The phone did not make the millet grow, » Amadou says. « It only told us what our own work was worth. »