BAMAKO, Mali - Portrait of Abdoulaye Traoré from the rooftop of his university in Bamako, the capital of Mali. After work at the cashew processing plant stalled Abdoulaye left his hometown to begin studying law, but his family has remained in Kolondieba.
The cashew processing plant where Abdoulaye Traoré and roughly 200 other Malian laborers made a living by stripping the fleshy husks off of crescent-shaped nuts had been sitting idle since early February when the plant ran out of raw materials. The plant is one of Mali’s flagship development projects, and the blueprint for future multi-million-euro job-creation initiatives aimed at curbing migration to Europe. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)