Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to understand what dynamics of agrarian change emerge out of land deals by analysing some of the transformations led by the spectacular rise horticulture in the Senegalese River Valley Region between 2006 and 2017.

Paper long abstract:

Depending on the claims of outcomes, agricultural investments requiring land and/or labour, have been dubbed the land rush, or "land grabbing". This "global land rush" emerged in the turbulent context of socio-economic and political transformations post-2007. It made media headlines in the late 2000s, prompting what Oya dubbed the "literature rush" both from NGOs and later the academy (2013a). While the drivers, scale and actors in this renewed interest in land (and labour) are still contested, a body of knowledge interested in its differentiated impact and outcomes, as well as political reactions to these deals, is growing (Hall et al 2015). In this land rush debate, there have been missing dimensions such as social reproduction, the impact of different types of accumulation and type of labour-regime as well as their implications for capitalist development (Oya 2013). This paper is part of this wave of "making-sense" research (Edelman et al 2013) which goes beyond an earlier research.

Based on empirical evidence from Northern Senegal, I argue that some local communities and their leaders are seeking to attract agricultural investors in their communities through formal and informal agreements as a way to develop their territories in a context of relative disengagement from the neoliberal state. The investors on the other hand, disguise their use extra-economic means of coercion and strategies of accumulation under what I call "CSR paternalism". In this presentation, I analyse the nature of this form of land grabbing, and responses to it.