SCALA Senegal
Project Overview
Located in West Africa, Senegal has a steadily growing economy over recent years. However, poverty in Senegal is still prevalent in rural areas, where roughly 60 percent of the population resides. The other 40 percent of the population resides in urban areas, where the majority live in rapidly growing urban suburbs. Low agricultural production, limited capacity of the economy to create sustainable jobs, and inadequate resource allocation for social services contribute to poverty. While the agriculture, livestock and fishery sectors are contributing to food and nutrition security and representing 60 percent of the Senegalese rural labor force, these sectors are vulnerable to several climate-related impacts, such as drought, locust invasion, flooding, sea-level rise, coastal erosion and related health epidemics, as well as bush fires.
Project Details
Senegal has a strong motivation to enhance its climate strategies and create more sustainable production patterns and food systems. The country plans to achieve its climate objectives in terms of land use and agriculture through the transformation of agri-food systems. The systemic approach adopted by the SCALA programme with all stakeholders constitutes an innovative approach to overcome obstacles and help define actionable priorities. Through fostering stakeholder commitments, to build institutional, financial and technical capacities and foster transformation actions such as agroecology, improving crop varieties, agroforestry and the importance of operationalizing the concept of agripreneur, the SCALA programme will further support the government of Senegal in accessing sustainable solutions, by considering cross-cutting issues and promoting synergies between ongoing initiatives.
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News
Senegal's pathway to enhance climate reporting 
Strengthening transformative approaches in Senegal’s climate action plans
6 November 2021 - The programme was officially launched during a two-day inception workshop in September 2021, where key stakeholders discussed SCALA’s activities and objectives to be implemented over the next four years. The discussion centered on the agroecological solutions (such as composting), improving crop varieties, agroforestry and the importance of operationalizing the concept of “agripreneur”. To learn more about the national priorities discussed, the SCALA programme sat down with two technical advisers from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Equipment, Mr. Boubacar Drame and Mr. Younoussa Mballo, to unpack the opportunities and objectives of the programme.
This report captures the participatory mapping of actors in the millet/groundnut and market gardening system and identification of challenges and barriers preventing an environment favorable to agroecological transformation in Senegal.