A document from the Network of Peasant and Pastoral Organizations of Senegal (Resopp) looks extensively at the history of agricultural cooperatives in our country. Senegal still had a tradition of cooperatives, but success was not there, despite attempts
The first cooperatives had religious authorities as presidents: Serigne Bassirou M’Backé, Serigne Cheikh M’Backé, El hadji Ibrahima Niasse or traditional leaders like Fodé Diouf. From 1956, Mamadou Dia, head of the Government of the Framework Law or Internal Autonomy, realizing the dangers faced by the cooperative movement infiltrated by politicians in search of legitimacy, decided to put things in order. This attempt to moralize the cooperative movement ended with his arrest in 1962, according to the website resopp-sn.org. Initially organized on a national scale and operating according to democratic principles, agricultural cooperatives brought together a group of several villages whose cooperators elected an office which was responsible for the management companies and state services.
The January 1983 law on cooperatives in Senegal
The arrival of Abdou Diouf, Senghor’s successor in 1981, will inaugurate the era of “Less State, better State”, that is to say, accountability and democratic openness. “In 1983, following various management problems of management companies and peanut cooperatives, the State decided on cooperative reform. Law No. 83-07 of January 28, 1983 establishing the general status of cooperatives in Senegal and its implementing decree No. 83-320 of May 25, 1983 will see the creation of village sections (4,500) and rural cooperatives (337).” , reports the Source. This reform did not, however, provide adequate responses to the problems of rural cooperatives too dependent on peanut farming in full decline. Faced with the lack of reimbursement, the State was led to levy significant margins on the peanut seeds marketed to finance the services of the Bnds. The latter in turn foundered in 1990. The Senegalese cooperative movement fell into disgrace and it was replaced by other forms of organization such as Economic Interest Groups (EIGs) whose action proved to have little structure and little benefit to the national economy. What a long way we have come!
Reference – Dia, “the father of the cooperative movement in Senegal”
However, Ibrahima Dème expresses some reservations about the availability of surface areas proposed for municipal agricultural cooperatives (Cac). “It is possible to find the 200 ha per municipality but on condition of good land planning. There is land that can be allocated to producers. Everything must be done according to the spirit of Mamadou Dia whom I call ”the father of the cooperative movement in Senegal”. He had charted a clear and precise path for the evolution of the cooperative movement in this country. And, from his famous circular no. 32, he went beyond agricultural cooperatives to already speak, in 1962, of rural communes. And, today that it is relevant, we must refer to the Mamadou Dia Plan which is still there as far as the rural world is concerned,” he advised, nostalgically.
Babacar Mbaye, 2nd class of the Mamadou Dia Horticultural Center – “I don’t believe that Senegal has enough arable land”
The septuagenarian, Babacar Mbaye, 2nd promotion of the Horticultural Center set up by Mamadou Dia, retired agricultural worker, also notes: “I do not believe that Senegal has enough cultivable land to carry out this proposal from the Minister of Agriculture. Agriculture because the country only has 410,000 ha of arable land. Are these areas of 200 ha per municipality real? We have to see on the ground.”
