Currently, around one hundred Chinese companies are registered in Senegal. From January to November 2020, China imported approximately 323,000 tonnes of peanuts from Senegal - almost triple the amount imported in 2015. Senegal is the third-largest peanut-producing country in Africa. Peanut farming involves more than half of the rural population - around four million people — and is considered the backbone of the national economy. Much of the country's peanut production is exported, with 90% going to China.
Chinese businessmen offer relatively high prices, so farmers prefer to sell their peanuts to them rather than to local companies. While this competition makes local farmers the big winners in the short term, it has major consequences for Senegal's arachis oil industry and economic landscape in the long term. Meanwhile, the security of Chinese buyers is at risk as conflicts intensify.
Photo: February 2021. Forty-tonne trucks full of peanuts were parked at the roadside outside Kaolack, waiting to be weighed and shipped to Dakar port.
Photo credit : © Mamadou Alpha Diallo
