To enhance food security and reduce poverty in the rural areas of Senegal economic growth and entrepreneurship need to be stimulated, particularly involving women and young people. For this purpose, an important national programme named PADAER (Programme d’appui au développement agricole et à l’entreprenariat rural) was established to directly benefit rural households. Investments are primarily focused on developing irrigation schemes, storage, transportation infrastructure and marketing of cereal production of smallholders.
However, are these interventions well prioritized and hence, are investments being effective? For instance, were storage facilities and feeder roads located in the best positions? And where should investments go in the future, based on key concerns such as expected population growth and climate change? For example, can cultivated land be increased in support of growing population and how does it affect investments in storage facilities and roads? And how does climate change alter the conditions of accessibility due to inundation of feeder roads?
Robust data solutions help to analyse options and success of a positive transformation of agricultural value chains. With support of IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) we developed data solutions based on spatial explicit, objective data. The data (e.g. satellite data) were pre-processed and fed into an Agent Based Model (ABM), simulating actions and interactions of value chain actors such as farmers and buyers in order to understand the behaviour of the chain and what governs its outcomes.
Examples are:
- Evaluation of existing and potential storage capacity of villages looking at current and potential production
- Study of the routing through the road network, also in view of worsening transit conditions, to deliver produce to warehouses and markets and to bring inputs to farmers.
Different scenarios and results were discussed in a participatory process joined by several stakeholders, including the staff from the PADAER program, from local government agencies of Senegal as well as potential investors.
The map below is an example a final product: a map of cropland and potential production data where existing storage facilities are sufficient and were new ones should be constructed as a matter of priority.
The analysis of possible interventions to positively transform agricultural value chains in Senegal was regarded as very useful by all stakeholders as well as IFAD. The participatory mapping and analysis made problems visible in current infrastructures as well as opportunities for future investments. It provides valuable inputs in the design of new phases of the PADAER program. The used tools can also prove to be a valuable way to monitor and evaluate interventions and investments.