The land rush and the new extractivism

Part of global public opinion probably started to take an interest in the existence of an agricultural land acquisition race in 2008, when the Financial Times (Jung-A et al, 2008) broke the news of ongoing negotiations between the South Korean company Daewoo Logistic and the government of Madagascar for the free grant of 1,300,000 hectares, equivalent to about half of the entire arable land of the African country, spread over several regions. According to the agreements, the land was to be used for the cultivation of maize and African oil palm. The company planned to export the harvests by placing them on the global market, but also intended to use them for the Korean market in the event of a new food crisis, similar to the global one that was underway at the time.

‘Food can be a weapon in this world’, said one of Daewoo's managers in an interview to explain the company's strategy, pointing out that the land involved was in an area that was ‘totally undeveloped land which has been left untouched. And we will provide jobs for them by farming it, which is good for Madagascar’ (Jung-A et al, 2008). The news of the agreements provoked protests and street riots in the country, leading to the dismissal of the incumbent president and forcing the new government to renege on the investment.

Land-grabbing and development in postcolonial Senegal

In the years immediately after the global food crisis, the expression ‘land-grabbing’ became widely used in the media. While this term is important in defining a further stage of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ associated with land, particularly in Africa, it remains nonetheless vague with respect to the dynamics and processes that such dispossession entails and on which it is based.

In a very general way, and when used to refer to the land acquisitions of the early 2000s, this idea refers to the land concentration dynamics that have oriented post-crisis agricultural development since 2007– 2008. Sustained by a precise political approach, the new development indications remain consistent with the idea that the industrial agricultural model – characterized by monoculture and intensive land exploitation, as well as by the increasing financialization of agricultural markets and a monopolistic organization of distribution chains on a global scale – is better suited to combine the promotion of local development, global food supply and climate change mitigation actions, in particular because of its greater capacity for investment and technological promotion as compared to peasant, local and small-scale agriculture. In this sense, it is a vision strongly revolving around a pro-growth technocratic approach, based on a neoliberal preference for free trade and the central role supposedly played by competition for the proper functioning of the market.

Colonial fractures and margins of resistance

Almost two hundred years ago, Baron Jacques-François Roger took up residence in his new home on the banks of the Senegal River, a majestic and eccentric neoclassical building that was much more princely than the one where he had lived in the nearby town of Saint Louis. He had arrived in Senegal a few years earlier to take possession of the palace that the King of France had commissioned, modelled on the luxury residences of colonial officials and plantation owners in Santo Domingo (Argo, 1976), at the time among the richest colonies of the French Empire. With the grand inauguration party that was held in the new residence, Roger probably wanted to give a specific character to his mandate. After several attempts, he had succeeded in obtaining the office of governor by royal stipulation on 26 July 1821 and was appointed Commandant et administrateur du Sénégal et dépendances. Mandated by the King of France to implement a policy of recovery and development of the colony, he carried out his project of building a model farm in the delta region of the Senegal River, before surrendering to failure. He left Senegal seven years later.

Determined to import the colonial plantation model to Senegal, Roger made a few attempts at developing irrigated agriculture and conducting cutting-edge botanical experiments in the delta. The species involved in his experiments were mainly rice, certain fruit trees, indigo, coffee and the peanut, the only plant that earned him considerable success and of which he became an ardent promoter.

With land capitalism has always played a double game. From land come the ‘free gifts’ on which accumulation depends; but precisely because they are free, for capital these goods are worth nothing in themselves. To acquire value they must be ‘put to work’, and to be ‘put to work’ they must be appropriated. As stated by Locke, who can be considered one of the founders of the ideology of capital, what originally belong to all can and should be privatized in order to motivate the owner to extract as much value as possible, for his (the male pronoun is mandatory!) and everyone's benefit.

From Marx to Weber, from Benjamin to Polanyi: many have argued that capitalism is more than an economy. To use a successful expression by Nancy Fraser, it is an institutionalized social order, in the same way that feudalism is. It thus includes not only an organization of economic relations but also a conception of reality, a morality and a structuring of the relations within and between all social spheres. By the same token, capitalism tends to hegemonize the sense of the world and the existence of those who dwell in it, crushing or denying the exterior, the other than oneself. Its peculiarity, however, lies, on one side, in that the crises it goes through are not accidental and disruptive events but structural and propulsive; on the other, on its extraordinary capacity to react to external threats. Capitalism has so far managed to incorporate, to mould in its own image, everything it has encountered on its way.

‘Senhuile is worse than Ebola’: implications and impact of agro-industry

On 10 September 2012, approximately 36 hours after the first trees were felled by Senhuile in Ndiaël, the inhabitants of the 37 official villages and related hamlets residing in the reserve convened a meeting in the village of Kadd Ndeff to draft a letter to be sent to the governor of the Saint Louis region (whose administration covers a large part of the delta). The letter was signed by the ‘Collective of the 37 villages of the Ndiaël’. From then on it was this name, and later also the name of ‘Collective in defence of the Ndiaël lands’, that the inhabitants of the reserve and sympathizers from the neighbouring areas used to sign a series of declarations addressed to the press, the head of state and several Senegalese ministers to demand the withdrawal of the investment and express their concern for what was described as ‘a threat, if not an aggression’.

The letter sent by the villagers of the Ndiaël to the governor of the region not only denounces the impact of the investment, but also declares that any possibility of negotiation between the company and the population most affected is closed. It also emphasizes the concern about the increase in social conflict generated by Senhuile's presence in the area. Indeed, President Abdoulaye Wade's decision to delocalize Senhuile's investment in the delta region did not come about in general silence: both the company and various government representatives, as well as influential Senegalese businessmen, went to great lengths to obtain the endorsement of the project by the inhabitants and the local municipal council.

Although it failed, the project to allocate part of the Ndiaël Avifauna Reserve to agro-intensive exploitation remains a priority in local development plans. This confirms that the phenomenon of land-grabbing cannot be traced back to a single decision to grant a concession or a single land privatization, understood as an event in itself. Rather, it outlines a process, albeit a long one, of redefining relations between subjects, rights and territories, the course of which, in the Senegalese case, will also depend on the ability to build and strengthen alliances between peasant and pastoralist groups at local, regional and national levels in order to secure recognition of pastoralist land rights. Recognition has also been made urgent by the launch of a national land reform process that has gained momentum in Senegal since the early 2000s, precisely in relation to the opening up to foreign investors advocated by the new agricultural policy (Benegiamo, 2020). Today, the reform process is led by the World Bank, as a result of the Projet de Développement Inclusif et Durable de l’Agribusiness au Senegal (PDIDAS; Sustainable and Inclusive Agribusiness Development Project of Senegal),1 launched in 2016, which aims to make 10,000 hectares of land in the delta available for the arrival of foreign investors and the development of commercial horticulture.

Although the project was still at an early stage in terms of ‘valorizing’ the land identified and providing work for the rural communities that have ceded it, it had developed a method of land management for investment, based on a cadastral register, which, if extended to the whole country, would, according to the Bank, make it possible to implement ‘une réforme foncière en douceur’ (World Bank, 2019, pp 16 and 30).

Growing sunflowers in the Ndiaël Avifauna Reserve

Towards the end of the summer of 2010, an Italian company producing edible oil and active in the agro-energy market decided to partner with an entrepreneur of long-standing experience in the agro-industry to make an investment in Senegal. The project involved the acquisition of an expanse of land on which to cultivate sunflower and sweet potato for the subsequent production of bioethanol. However, over the following years, the purpose behind the crops being cultivated changed many times and at one point included the cultivation of rice for food purposes, but returns were always very poor if not irrelevant. What has remained a constant over the years is the amount of land considered necessary for the investment: 20,000 hectares, that is, an area roughly the size of Milan and two and a half times the city of Dakar, equivalent to 28,000 football pitches.

In Senegal, as in many other African states, the land tenure regime is a mix of formal and informal systems. Here, moreover, private property is less widespread than national land property, a juridical category that gives land an inalienable and collective character. All rural areas fall under this group and so they cannot be the object of individual property but only of use rights. Therefore, to obtain the right to access such land, the joint venture had to seek permission from the rural community, which represents the first level of administrative power and presides over land concessions.