Masterplan 2025-2034: A strengthened private sector to achieve true economic sovereignty

Senegal wants to change course. The 2025-2034 Masterplan intends, in this order, to make agriculture, natural resources and industry the engines of a more productive economy, less dependent on imports and more focused on value creation.

Senegal is entering the next decade with an economic ambition that marks an important step in its development trajectory. Through the 2025-2034 Masterplan, presented as the first operational version of Vision Senegal 2050, Senegal intends to modify the very drivers of this growth.

The country wants to gradually move from an economy often dependent on imports to an economy capable of producing, transforming and financing its development more on its own.

The first challenge, getting rid of external dependence

Senegal remains faced with an agri-food deficit which the government estimates at around 500 billion FCFA. The Masterplan sets the particularly ambitious objective of reducing it to less than 100 billion FCFA, in particular by increasing the rate of local processing of agricultural, fishery and animal production from 20% to 60%.

This logic also applies to mining and energy resources. The development of iron, gold, marble, salt, fertilizers, gas and hydrocarbons must gradually go beyond the sole logic of extraction to encourage the emergence of industrial ecosystems around these resources.

From agriculture to agro-industry: changing scale

Agriculture appears to be one of the sectors in which this transformation could produce the most significant effects. The development of agropoles will make it possible to bring together production, processing, storage, logistics and marketing. Such an approach could help reduce post-harvest losses, secure producers’ outlets and encourage the emergence of agro-industrial companies.

The development of local fertilizer production

The development of local fertilizer production is particularly strategic. In an agricultural economy, control of inputs constitutes an issue of sovereignty as much as a factor of competitiveness. Reducing imports of essential inputs would ultimately reduce producers’ exposure to international price fluctuations and supply chain disruptions. But Senegalese industry will have to face a complex equation: producing at sufficiently competitive costs to replace imports without creating a protected and structurally uncompetitive industry. This is where industrial policy must be closely linked to energy, tax, customs, financial and trade policy.

Oil and gas as economic accelerators

The development of hydrocarbons constitutes another major dimension of the economic outlook. The gas network, the modernization of the refinery and the increased valorization of energy resources will contribute to reducing production costs and improving industrial competitiveness.

True energy sovereignty would therefore not only consist of producing oil and gas, but of using these resources to power a competitive industrial base: electricity, fertilizers, petrochemicals, materials, transport, agri-food processing and other energy-intensive activities.

O.BA