Valeur économique de la protection des petites retenues d’eau au Burkina Faso : cas du barrage de Yitenga dans la province du Kouritenga

The question of the management and protection of water resources is in the center of actual priorities of many countries particularly Sahelian countries like Burkina Faso. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the profits of Yitenga’s dam protection for the border populations. For that, the study has used a process that combined statistical and econometric analysis of panel data coming from border households. The econometric analysis has been possible through the use of three models: Heckman model of two steps in panel data to determine the explanatory factors of the involvement of users to the improvement of the dam quality, the logit model multinomial unordered for the identification of determining factors of the implementation of waters and soils conservation (WSC) techniques and the model of the agricultural household in order to do a robust assessment of the value of Yitenga’s dam. The analysis has permitted to note that variables as the household chief sex, the profession, theactivities around the dam, the education, WSC practice and monetary transfers contribute significantly to explain the willingness to pay (WTP). Also, very few households have implemented WSC techniques in the area. Only 20.69% of the households investigated practiced at least one technique. It evident from the results that the stony cords, the zai, the grass strips and the quick hedges are the more adopted. Finally, the model of the agricultural household, valued by the SURE method permitted to calculate the surplus of the producer-consumer and the total value of the dam that rise to 63 289 411. 39 FCFA.