The public-private partnership applied to large-scale irrigation investments in Africa: The Senegal River Delta Rice Partnership Promotion Project

Abstract

The Senegalese government's pursuit of rice self-sufficiency since Independence has motivated massive investments in the Senegal River Delta in northern Senegal. This paper assesses the contribution of the Projet de promotion du partenariat rizicole dans le Delta (3PRD, a project promoting rice partnership) to organizational and technical dynamics. The importance of this project lies in the public-private partnership, a recent paradigm in the world of irrigated agricultural development. Our approach is based on a bibliographic synthesis, field visits, interviews with project managers and surveys of farmers. The results suggest two major advances made by the 3PRD: The empowerment of private producers in a large-scale collective scheme involving the participation of the SAED a development company and the introduction of new irrigation equipment: The electric pump. They also show that efforts still need to be made in terms of crop intensity and agricultural yields to enable producers to make the investments they have made in their irrigation schemes more profitable.