A Grassroots View of Senegal River Development Agencies: OMVS, SAED

I was given the opportunity to take part in the work of the World Commission on Dams, by contributing to the Thematic Review on Social Impacts of Large Dams. In speaking of dams in Africa, I naturally concentrated on what I know best: the dams on the Senegal River, the chief of which is Manantali Dam, constructed under the aegis of the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Sénégal (OMVS), and the associated irrigation schemes on the Senegalese bank of the river, overseen by the State development corporation for the river, the Société d'Amánagement et d'Exploitation des terres du Delta du Fleuve Sénégal (SAED).

In this report, I did not draw directly upon my own experience. I should like to do so here today – to show you, as it were, a few snapshots from my album; not to make a case for or against any persons or institutions, as that would not be pertinent here, but to share with you briefly something which has been little discussed in an African context, and of which, perhaps, relatively few of you have direct knowledge: what river development schemes can look and feel like from the underside – from the grassroots, if you like.

For over twenty years now, I have been living in a village near the town of Bakel in Senegal, on the banks of what the eleventh–century geographer Al–Bakri referred to as 'the Nile': the Senegal River. There are quite a few young men from our area studying in what they call Missira. After the war, merchant seamen from our area worked on French ships passing through the Suez Canal. One of them, Jaabe So, who later became my husband, returned home in the early 1960s to take up farming once more. At first, the rains came and there were good harvests; but after 1965, drought set in. He had seen irrigated farming in his travels, especially in Madagascar and India. So he went to work in a factory in the outskirts of Paris, and earned enough money to buy a small motor–.pump. He returned home in 1973. 'When people saw what irrigation could do, they all fell in love with it. I decided the best thing to do was to try and make development for everyone who wanted to take part.' He hoped that people would once more be able to grow enough to feed themselves; and that their sons might be able to earn a living from the land, rather than seeking work abroad.

By the end of 1974, Jaabe So had organised farming groups in most of the riverside villages there. Group members, in addition to their individual rain–fed fields of sorghum and maize (for men) and groundnuts (for women), together farmed a collective field; for the dry season, in addition to their flood–recession fields, they put in wells and grew vegetable gardens, a novelty in the area. The idea was that they would sell the product of their joint labours, and save up money to invest in irrigated farming. There was considerable enthusiasm at the time; people working abroad, in France and Zaire, joined the farming groups and began to pay dues. The Director of SAED, and the Minister of Rural Development, visited the area, but said nothing at the time. Some older people were afraid that the administration might try and make trouble. But Jaabe So said no: "When people work to develop their country, the government is pleased."

Snapshot 1: 1975

A village courtyard surrounded by mud walls. Some men in suits are rising from a table; several dozen men in traditional robes remain seated on mats, and there are women on the verandas. The men in suits do not look pleased.

I was in the Bakel area in 1975 on a six–month research grant, to study the African dimension of labour migration from the Senegal River Valley to France. That is how I happened to be present at a meeting held by a SAED delegation, which had come to announce that the government had drawn up development plans for the area; peasant farmers would be organized and trained to grow irrigated rice. When members of the farming groups said that they would be pleased to receive technical assistance, but would prefer to keep their own form of organisation and choose their own crops, they were given to understand that this was not an option: 'God created SAED; Not to work with SAED, would be like a son rejecting his father's legacy.' When they persisted, a member of the delegation accused them of being against the government; another stated that no development was possible without the administration. After that meeting, the change of atmosphere was very sad. Some people were angry; but most of them were afraid.

I left the area shortly thereafter. When I returned in early 1977, USAID had provided $3 million of funding for the 'Bakel Small Irrigated Perimeters Project', largely on the grounds that it was 'the result of a truly grassroots development process.' This money went to SAED; it paid for SAED's base in Bakel, for running costs (vehicles, salaries etc), and for building irrigation networks in all the villages where independent farming groups had been set up. People weren't happy: They were forced to grow rice, often with poor results on sandy soil, and ran up heavy debts for fuel and fertilizer; a group that grew irrigated sorghum instead had its motor–pump taken away. They decided to form an association, the Fédération des Paysans Organis’s du Département de Bakel, to represent them. But the government steadfastly refused to grant it official recognition. Many people considered they had no choice, other than to leave the farming groups. Those who were considered ringleaders were very isolated.

The men in suits in our first snapshot were from the Senegalese State development corporation, the Soci’té d'Amánagement et d'Exploitation des terres du Delta du Fleuve Sénégal (SAED). In 1973 SAED, which had been managing highly mechanised irrigated rice–growing schemes in the River Delta, began to move its operations to the more heavily populated areas upstream, where peasant farmers deprived of their traditional livelihood by drought, would be trained through small–scale irrigation on petits parimétres villageois (PIV). These PIV developed rapidly in the Valley: on the Senegalese side, and were praised as an innovation, a move to give priority to farmers’ initiative: in 1974 they represented 20 hectares of irrigated land, and in 1986 13,000 hectares. Yields were good. However, as suggested by my first snapshot (which showed SAED up against a real farmers’ initiative), there were problems ahead.

Snapshot 2: 1978

The same courtyard as in Snapshot 1, at night. By the light of a kerosene lamp, two young men, one French, one Senegalese, are reading from a booklet. An older man in traditional robes is listening attentively.

The two young men had been sent by a French NGO to visit people in the Valley to discuss with them the implications of plans for building dams on the River. They had brought with them copies of booklets and articles criticizing the dams, and spoke of the campaign being organised in France by an association of Senegalese migrant workers. They had found that people in the Valley, on the whole, had not heard of these plans. After their visit, for ten years or so – while the dams were being built – we heard nothing more.

I had read about these plans, of course, during my period of research. In 1973 the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Sénégal, (OMVS), announced its programme, centred upon the construction of two dams: the main dam upstream, at Manantali in Mali, to store the waters of the Bafing, which contributes about 60% of the flow of the Senegal River, in a reservoir; and a secondary dam at Diama, at the mouth of the river, to stop salt water penetrating the Delta and the lower valley. The programme had three components. The first was irrigation. The second was navigation: the river was to be made navigable in all seasons, from Saint–Louis to Kayes. The third was energy, with the construction of a hydro–electric plant at the base of the Manantali dam.

The aim was to bring 300,000 to 400,000 hectares of land under irrigation, with two crops a year. The main crops would be rice and wheat; the area devoted to sorghum and maize would gradually decrease. For twenty years, Manantali's reservoir would be used to simulate the River's annual flood, at a rate of 2,500 cubic metres/second during thirty days in August and September, so that people could continue the traditional flood–recession farming, 'thus guaranteeing those who depend on that crop a relatively stable athough modest income', but the level of flooding would decrease steadily every year: it was expected that after twenty years, the entire population of the Valley would be engaged in irrigated farming.

Had it not been for OMVS and its plans, there might have been a small chance of PIV's success influencing River development plans in the direction of greater flexibility, which might have enabled it better to weather the storms of the 1980s. The Senegalese government's plans for irrigated farming, however, were designed from the outset to fit in with OMVS' programme of dam–building and large hydro–agricultural schemes.

Snapshot 3: 1985

An official seated at a desk has tossed a paper over to a man in traditional robes seated in front of him. The man looks at him with indignation at this lack of respect.

The scene is the Préfecture of Bakel, a handsome fort on the River, built in Faidherbe's day. After some eight years of applications, lost dossiers (fie times in all), letters, reports, delegations and so on, the Fédération des Paysans Organis’s du Département de Bakel has finally been granted official recognition by the Ministry of the Interior.

This was at the start of the second phase of Senegal's structural adjustment programme. Key slogans of the New Agricultural Policy were: phasing out State intervention, giving farmers more say in their own affairs, and promoting the private sector. At first, the slogans sounded good; they seemed in line with what the Federation was doing, as after receiving official recognition, it began with help from NGOs to set up a support system for irrigated farming. But it gradually became clear that this was not what NPA had in mind. Only the private sector was good; and it did not include peasant farmers. SAED's only construction work during the 1980s was for local politicians and civil servants. USAID brought in private consultants; they did not work with Federation's farmers' groups, nor with the Federation, but tried to make an entrepreneur out of the local cinema owner. It failed, and the project was brought to an end without a single hectare being built. The most committed farming groups carried on; they did not fall into debt. The major difficulty was the poor state of repair of irrigation networks. Because people were still 'in love with irrigation', the Federation decided to seek funding itself for rehabilitating irrigated perimeters. It also decided to make contact with other farmers along the River, to try and learn more about what was happening throughout the Valley.

While the dams were being built, SAED's plans for expanding irrigated farming fell into big trouble. As structural adjustment began to bite, peasant farmers, who had not been prepared for it in any way, began to lose their grip on irrigation. They coped with the changed circumstances, either by reducing expenditure, even at the costs of lower yields; or by emigrating in search of work. In some cases, farmers bought inputs with cash advances from wealthier people, and repaid these advances in kind after harvest, at less than the official price; a disguised form of share–cropping, which allowed outsiders to invest in irrigated farming without having been granted land. In the end, people sold their plots of land, or simply gave up irrigated farming. Maintaining a policy of rapidly expanding irrigation, required the presence of a private sector able to undertake what can no longer be done by the State. But where was this private sector, if peasant farmers did not count?

In the Valley, members of prominent land–owning families applied to the conseils ruraux they controlled in order to gain legal title to part of their family's land holdings, using both traditional rights and political connections in order to undertake commercial farming, usually on a small scale. In the Delta, there was a rush towards private–sector irrigation (20,000 hectares from 1987 to 1992); some of the most successful private schemes were initiated by former SAED cadres who benefited from their connections to gain access to land and financial support; even lower–echelon employees who lost their jobs, received generous financial support to help them embark on irrigated farming. But many of the private schemes were hastily built and ill–conceived. The drop in levels of loan repayment between 1990 and 1993 coincided with the difficulties experienced by private irrigation schemes, which led many private GIE in the Delta first to decrease the area cultivated, then to give up altogether.

Snapshot 4: 1990

The river bank, early morning. Something seems to have happened to the river: a group of women are staring down at a blank expanse of black mud.

It seemed clear to us from the beginning that one way of helping peasant farmers to remain present in irrigated farming, was to use irrigation as a complement to other forms of farming. In the Bakel area, with improved rainfall, rain–fed farming remained a risk worth taking; but flood–recession farming was another story. Something unprecedented began to happen: one could wake up one morning to find that Diama had been opened, and the river drained overnight like a bathtub. People would despairingly rush to plant their maize, beans, calabashes and pumpkins; only to see much of their work destroyed by a release of water from Manantali.

Diama was completed in 1986, and Manantali in 1988; both dams were inaugurated in 1992. Thus they were built during a period when irrigated farming encountered increased difficulties: massive unpaid debts, an ecological disaster in the making in the Delta, irrigation schemes lying abandoned in the Valley. Yet during the dams' first years in operation, at a time when there was every reason to supply an artificial flood to ensure a certain degree of food security, OMVS broke its promise, year after year.

OMVS's lack of respect for its promise to maintain an artificial flood, is particularly striking as the Senegalese Government's position on this matter seemed to have evolved somewhat. A more agreeable snapshot from this same period, would have been the same courtyard as in Snapshots 1 and 2, with a party of guests dining on roast mutton: including an American woman. The woman's name was Muneera Salem–Murdock. She headed a team from the Institute of Development Anthropology which in 1987 began a programme of research in Senegal, the Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity (SRBMA). This research allowed them to demonstrate, among other things, that flood–recession crops offer a better return on capital and labour than irrigated farming, while reducing risks to a minimum. It successfully defended the idea that a permanent artificial flood from Manantali, which would raise the river to the level achieved by a natural flood, was justified by the increased production, income and work it would provide, while also protecting the environment; and that contrary to what OMVS consultants had claimed, there was no incompatibility between controlled flood releases and the production of electricity. IDA's research would henceforth be an essential reference point for discussions of the future of farming in the Valley – except those conducted by the official River development agencies.

When IDA's results were presented at a seminar in Dakar, in November 1990, they were favourably received by the Government of Senegal, which had just drafted a Master Plan for the Left Bank (Plan Directeur de Développement Intégré de la Rive Gauche – PDRG) calling for a permanent artificial flood. However, the then High Commissioner of OMVS stated that IDA's research was an affront to the authority of OMVS, which alone was entitled to decide how to use the water in Manantali's reservoir. Indeed, IDA's hydrology expert was told by OMVS staff that it was 'dangerous' even to ask questions about the artificial flood, as that might give farmers the idea that they were entitled to it.

The Plan Directeur de Développement Intégré de la Rive Gauche (PDRG), drafted in 1990 and adopted by the Government of Senegal in 1994, seemed in some measure to acknowledge this; it includes an explicit commitment, however prudent, to maintaining an artificial flood as a permanent feature of River development; and for the first time, defines a strategy which explicitly acknowledges flood–recession farming as an enduring component, however limited in scope, of agriculture in the Senegal River Valley, and suggests that there should also be limits to irrigated farming. But the question arises immediately: what has become of this Plan Directeur? It seems to have vanished without a trace; as far as OMVS and SAED are concerned, it may as well never have existed. Indeed, there is reason to believe that SAED was not unconnected with its disappearance, as it was to be supervised by a different agency, the Commissariat á l'Aprîs–Barrages, which would have taken precedence over SAED.

Snapshot 5: 1997

A large hall filled with several hundred people. Most of those in the front rows are wearing Western dress, often the khaki tenue of Senegalese administrators; most of the others are wearing traditional robes. A man in traditional robes has the floor; he is addressing some people seated at a table facing the audience.

The Groupe de Réflexion Stratîgique (GRS) an independent think–tank attached (with World Bank funding) to the Ministry of Agriculture, had convened a meeting at Ndioum in the Middle Valley, well–attended both by officialdom and by farmers' representatives, in order to inform the inhabitants of the Valley of the conclusions of the GRS report on River agriculture and give them the opportunity to comment upon it. The meeting was conducted in the languages of the Valley as well as in French. A number of farmers and pastoralists spoke: as one might have expected, their main themes were on the one hand an ardent desire to see flood–recession farming and grazing revived, and on the other hand great anxiety about access to irrigated farming, in particular the question of indebtedness. Because their preoccupations were mirrored in the GRS report, they were dismissed as hired agitators; the organizers of the seminar, including myself, were attacked via the press by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Agriculture, and the GRS, headed by the highly–respected author and former Minister Cheikh Hamidou Kane, was dissolved shortly thereafter.

A Valley–wide union of farmers' associations had helped the GRS organise the meeting. In 1992, these same associations had issued a manifesto which among other things asked the administrative authorities, in co–operation with peasant farmers' organizations, to regulate the artificial flood in such a way as to favour flood–recession farming and the reproduction of River fish, and to evolve a land and development policy that gives priority, first to the present and future needs of River inhabitants, then to the present and future needs of the inhabitants of the rest of Senegal, and which takes into account all possibilities for developing the land, not just irrigation. They received no reply.

According to SAED's own statistics, the total area laid out for irrigation on the Senegalese bank of the River, was 71,751 hectares in 1995; and the area actually farmed that year, in all seasons, was 29,792 hectares. Nevertheless, SAED is pursuing an ambitious programme costing 178,000 million CFA Francs all told ($356 million), part of which has already been funded. If SAED were working within the framework of PDRG, which recommends 88,000 hectares of irrigated land, ought it not at the very least to have suspended construction of new schemes? That seems very far from the thoughts of the Minister for Agriculture. Under the headline 'M. Robert Sagna notes that 30 thousand hectares are being farmed in the River Valley, out of a potential 240 thousand hectares', a Dakar newspaper notes: "If peasant farmers aren't capable of cultivating those 240 thousand hectares, other people will have to be allowed to do so; and that implies solving the land tenure question" stated the Minister, who announced that a draft law will be put before the National Assembly within the next few months.' (Walfadjri, 11/12/98) (SOGEM director).

Thus, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the Government still refuses to acknowledge that its agricultural policy for the Valley is in deep trouble, let alone to amend it to take account of reality. There is no way forward. Could that be why, during the 1990s, at the approach of that year 2000 by which, it used to be said in the 1970s, the Valley was to be 'le grenier du Sénégal', Senegal's granary, several projects were put forward which relegate agricultural development in the Valley to the background: the Canal du Cayor, the Vallées Fossiles, the Manantali Energy Project? The former two planned to use 'superfluous water' from the River, to supply Dakar, and to revitalise 3000 kilometres of dried–up river beds and irrigate several thousand hectares of land in western and central Senegal. They seem, for the moment at least, to have been set aside. But the Manantali Energy Project is due to install hydro–electric turbines to supply Dakar, Nouakchott and Bamako with electricity, within a year or so. The World Bank, which is funding the project, has stated that provision will be made for flood releases, in the interests of downstream farmers. But there seems, on precedent, little reason to believe that.

The Director of SOGEM, responsible for supervising Manantali, said recently: 'We will have to provide both a constant supply of electricity, and water for farmers in the Valley. This necessarily means a shift from traditional to irrigated farming, for the sake of regional food security: with 350.000 hectares of irrigable land, farmers can have two harvests a year instead of one. The dam offers magnificent economic opportunities, both for agriculture and energy.' SAED and OMVS have not changed in the past twenty–five years.