Therefore, farming systems cannot be understood without making reference to a "system of activities" ( Lavigne-Delville 1999) where agricultural productions are part of a palette of activities, spread out along the year and gender specific ( Mazzucato and Niemeijer 2001). Milleville ( 1989) noticed: "In many cases, agricultural production systems constitute only components of a broader rural or peasant strategies the latter extend beyond not only agricultural activities but also the geographic local area". Moreover, multi-activity is a structural characteristic of these societies ( Paul et al. However, the 20 th century was a period of fields' extension in a quite empty territory, meaning that the most limiting resource was labor rather than land ( Yamba 2004). Improvement of grain harvests per unit of surface is therefore often considered as the only way for productivity increase of these farming systems while manpower productivity is neglected ( Koning and Smaling 2005). As a consequence of the last point, villages are considered as almost closed systems in which millet cropping constitutes the quasi-unique economic activity, other local activities are viewed as minor complements and off-farm activities are merely indicators of an overall degradation in living conditions.These constraints imply thereby that environmental factors are over-considered by the majority of researchers and development operators, under considering human variables. Facing the lack of environmental, agricultural and socio-economical data and information, the majority of development operators and researchers acting in such difficult contexts tend to rely more on external data that combine the ease of access in time and money, the quality in terms of temporality and reliability, meaning mainly remote sensing data concerning environmental variables.Many development programs have underestimated several socio-economic factors ( Biershenk et al. The poor relevance of development aid strategies with regard to the socio-economic environment is often pointed out as a major cause of this low impact. Rule-Based Modelling, Rural Sahel, Confidence Building, Low-Data Context, Social Criteriaġ.1 Since the 1960s and independence, rural societies in Africa have reacted in a very limited way to agriculture programs supported by development agencies. Such ABMs can be a useful interface to analyze social stakes in development projects. the individual tied to social relations, limitations and obligations and connected with his/her biophysical and economic environment, the model can be considered as an efficient "trend provider" but not an absolute "figure provider" for simulating rural societies of the Nigrien Sahel and testing scenarios on the same context. Thanks to its empirical approach and its balanced conception between sociology and agro-ecology at the relevant scale, i.e. The confidence building simulation outputs reasonably reproduces the dynamics of local situations and is consistent with three authors having investigated in our site. Thanks to a sensitivity analysis on several selected parameters, the model appears fairly robust and sensitive enough. the economic, demographic and agro-ecological environment is described following published or unpublished literature. The model-building methodology is thereby crucial: the interviewing process provided the behaviour rules and criteria while the context, i.e. The purpose of the work is to build a valid and robust model that overcome this lack of data by building a individual specific system of behaviour rules conditioning these differential accesses showing the long-term catalytic effects of small changes of social rules. Beyond a game-theory model that leads to a premature selection of the relevant variables, we build an individual-centered, empirical, KIDS-oriented (Keep It Descriptive & Simple), and multidisciplinary agent-based model focusing on the villagers' differential accesses to economic and production activities according to social rules and norms, mainly driven by social criteria from which gender and rank within the family are the most important, as they were observed and registered during individual interviews. However, such sites lack the necessary amount of reliable, checkable data and information, while these very constraining factors determine the populations' evolutions, such as villagers living in Sahelian environments. Development issues in developing countries belong to complex situations where society and environment are intricate.
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