Village self-analysis was introduced into the projects of the Regional Programme for the Management of Watersheds in Upper Niger and Upper Gambia (PRABV-HNHG) as soon as they were launched. The method is not an
innovation specific to PRABV. It had already been used in other programmes or projects, in particular from the West African subregion to Burkina Faso, Senegal and Mali.

The PRABV projects nevertheless had the merit of launching this approach in a particularly interesting situation in Guinea, since it was a question of definitively abandoning an ancient practice of designing and implementing projects from the top up, without consulting and even less involving the beneficiary populations.