On Wednesday September 7th, Renata Serra, Charlotte Talham, and Emily Rowland gave a SASA lunch presentation entitled, “The Political Economy of Food Production in Senegal: Findings from the 2016 Africa Multidisciplinary Food Program.” Dr. Serra is a faculty member in economics and development in the Center for African Studies at UF, Charlotte Talham is a second year student at UF, and Emily Rowland is a recent graduate of UF.
The research team coalesced as a result of the UF Research Tutorial Abroad Program in which Dr. Serra was the principal investigator while Talham, Rowland, and a PhD student in Dakar served as research assistants. The on-the-ground research occurred over a 2-week period across at least 4 field sites. The research focused on the political economy of agriculture in Senegal, narrowing in on two primary agricultural sectors: dairy and poultry.
In the dairy sector the research team found that government policies focused their support on increasing milk production at the individual level, but offered no major initiative to address barriers in transportation of milk to refrigeration facilities, which remains the biggest obstacle to developing the sector. As for the poultry sector, a ban on imported chicken implemented in 2006 until at least 2020 was found to have helped the industry, yet at least one major farm outside of Dakar still had to slaughter, process, and sell the poultry on the same day due to refrigeration restrictions. Overall the Senegalese government has made some effort in developing these two sectors but given Senegal’s recent degradation to a low-income country in 2016, more coordinated agricultural policy initiatives are necessary to implement effective sector-wide change.