Senegal dams to help West African farms

Press, 3 June 1981, Page 20

Senegal dams to help West African farms

From ‘The Economist/ London.

The building of one of the most ‘ambitious irrigation projects in the world, to harness the River Senegal, in West Africa, is to start this November. It will benefit three poor African countries, Senegal, Mali and Mauritania. Western and Arab countries have promised to lend $BOO million, more than nine tenths of the total cost. Last month, the donors met in Paris to decide who is to finance which part of the project. Two dams are planned. The first, at Diama, on the river’s delta, will form a reservoir that will feed 135,000 acres of land. Work is due to begin this November. , The second, to start next year, is 500 miles upstream at Manantali. It will act as a giant tap, regulating the flow of the river to provide irrigation for a further 630,000 acres. The River Senegal bestows what little fertile land the three countries possess, but until now has provided irrigation for only a few months in the year. The new project will produce year-round water for the 1,6 million people (14 per cent of the three countries’ total population) who live in the basin. They have depended on the river’s annual flood which, for much of the 19705, was little more than a trickle. The scheme is less ambitious than originally intended. There had been plans to provide

100 MW of hydro-electricity and access to the sea for. landlocked Mali, but these ideas were dropped because costs for the whole project have increased five times since 1974. When the project is complete — some estimates say that will not be until well into the next century — it should more than treble the area of land available for cultivation and increase yields from about' a half a tonne per hectare to around 5.5 tonnes. Benefits will start to be felt much sooner. Between 1960 and 1975 the populations of .the three countries increased at an

average’rate of 3 per cent a year, while their crop production at best stagnated. In 1960, Mauritania grew 63 per cent of the food it consumed; by 1979 it could manage only 16 per cent. Last .year, the total grain imports for all three countries were in the region of 500,000 tonnes. . But future plenty will create present problems. There is the risk that irrigation channels will. spread water-borne diseases like bilharzia more easily than in the past. The change in the flow of the river .will also destroy spawning grounds for fish on which large parts of Mali depend.