Senegal remains heavily reliant on agriculture for employment and food security, despite ongoing economic diversification. Over the past two decades, the government has launched several high-profile agricultural initiatives – including the REVA Plan (2006), Great Agricultural Offensive for Food and Abundance (GOANA) (2008) and Program for Accelerated Cadence of Senegalese Agriculture (PRACAS) (2014) – to modernize the sector and reduce rural poverty. This article evaluates the effectiveness and distributional impact of these policies using nationally representative household survey data from 2011 and 2019. Results indicate that poverty remains high among farming households. Although their poverty rate declined by 13% between 2011 and 2019, the reduction was substantially larger among non-farming households, leading to a widening welfare gap. Moreover, the flagship input subsidy program - particularly for fertilizers - is not effectively targeted toward the poorest farmers. Instead, better-off agricultural households, especially those in the top income quintile, are more likely to receive subsidized inputs. The findings also suggest that improved pro-poor targeting of input distribution could generate significant productivity gains among low-income farmers and strengthen the poverty-reducing impact of agricultural policies. These findings suggest that existing subsidy mechanisms are poorly targeted and may exacerbate rural inequality rather than alleviate it. The article concludes with policy recommendations to improve the equity and poverty-reducing potential of agricultural support programs in Senegal and other low-income countries facing similar challenges.
Diop et al. (Sat,) studied this question.