In Senegal, concern about large-scale land acquisitions has been growing since 2000. This is closely linked to the pressure created by the need to intensify agricultural production. Senegalese agriculture has long relied on small-scale family holdings and extensive agriculture. But the current population growth rate, combined with rapid urban development and natural resources degradation, have inevitably changed the game. In order to address the ensuing need for intensification, the government of Senegal has sought to establish a political, legal and institutional environment that promotes agricultural investment, and is taking increasingly radical measures to enable private investors to access agricultural land....

Land has always been a key part of the political landscape in Africa, and contemporary land laws in many African countries are still influenced by the way that the French and English colonial authorities managed land issues in previous decades. In Senegal, the land tenure regime has recognised three types of land since 1976, when Law No. 76-66 of 2 July 1976 regarding the Code on state land (domaine foncier de l’État) supplemented Law No. 64-46 of 17 June 1964 on national lands (domaine national). The three categories are national land, state land (both public and private) and private land...

This research has documented the multiple ways in which investors gain access to land. In the research sites, large-scale land acquisitions were made for extractive industry projects (Diogo and Darou Khoudoss area), an agri-food project (Diokoul Diawrigne area) and a project to produce biofuel (Beud Dieng area).

In Diogo and Darou Khoudoss, the company obtained land rights for a mining concession under Article 13 of the land law of 1964. This provision allows the central state to require national lands including “home territories” to be registered in the name of the state, and to issue decrees allocating this land in...

Senegal has made considerable efforts to attract private investments in agriculture. This has included the development of legislation, including an investment code that provides various incentives to private sector operators. For example, special advantages that the investment code gives investors for a three-year period during the investment phase include exemption from duties on imported materials and items that are neither produced nor manufactured in Senegal, and which are specifically intended to be used for production or operations in the agreed programme; and suspension of value added tax on imported materials and items that are neither produced nor manufactured in Senegal....

There are judicial institutions mandated to settle land disputes at several levels: the district courts, the regional courts, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. But recourse to the courts typically involves long and expensive procedures, and the legal route can be risky. Many plaintiffs have great difficulty travelling to the courts, and find the complex mechanism and interactions with experts and lawyers at best unintelligible, and at worst contrary to their interests. Many rural people find it hard to obtain legal assistance, judges and judicial officials may be partial or corrupt, and judgements are slow, contradictory and rarely...

Development actors are increasingly aware of the social, economic, political and legal issues associated with the governance of land and investment. The ongoing land law reform process seeks to rationalise land use, increase local communities’ security of tenure and create a more favourable environment for investments that can contribute to agricultural development – but it has also triggered lively debates in which strong positions are taken on land tenure and, ultimately, on desirable development models.

The surge in demand for land from private investors over the last decade is partly due to a changing global context. But it is also...