The commune of Koul, in the Tivaouane region, has around thirty farms distributed among about fifteen economic interest groups (GIEs). Behind these figures often lie fragile structures whose members have mastered the act of producing, but sometimes struggle to formalize their internal operations. It is to bridge this gap that the Programme d’appui au programme national d’investissement dans l’agriculture du Sénégal (PAPSEN) organized, at the end of September and the beginning of October, a five-day session intended for the members of these GIEs.
Forty beneficiaries, five days, four modules
About forty participants, including twenty women, attended the training before receiving their certificates on 3 October during a closing ceremony in Koul. The program was structured in two distinct blocks: the first three days were devoted to gender, leadership, and cooperative governance; the last two to financial education and administrative management.
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On the governance side, participants worked on leadership roles, the functioning of boards of directors, the conduct of meetings, and the drafting of minutes — basic tools that nevertheless determine the credibility of an organization in the eyes of partners and funders. On the financial side, the training introduced the keeping of a cash journal and a bank ledger, the tracking of purchases and revenues, as well as the organization of accounting documents.
The gender dimension held a notable place in the program: women’s access to productive resources, participation in value chains, involvement in decision-making bodies. With half of the participants coming from the female world, the stated intention is consistent with the actual composition of the local agricultural fabric.
Mixed feedback from the field
The testimonials from beneficiaries reveal expectations that go beyond the scope of this training alone. Awa Fall Diop welcomed a better understanding of how organizations function, but called for additional sessions, “more focused on accounting, management and practical exercises.” In other words, five days are enough to open doors, but not to train seasoned managers.
Babacar Diop, another participant, raised a more structural question: strengthening management capacities is useful, but one must first have something to manage. According to him, the training initiators should simultaneously “help remove obstacles to production.” This reminder highlights a classic tension in agricultural support programs: institutional strengthening cannot compensate for constraints on access to financing, inputs, or markets.
The mayor of Koul, Modou Fall, asked the forty participants to share the knowledge gained with the leaders of the approximately 30 to 35 GIEs in the municipality — representing an expected multiplier effect, but whose real effectiveness will depend on the quality of follow-through in the field. “The end of the training marks above all the beginning of the fieldwork,” he declared, a formula that well summarizes the uncertainty of the post-training period.
What PAPSEN promises next
Kalidou Kane, representative of the national coordinator of PAPSEN at the ceremony, recalled that the program has already established two community agricultural cooperatives of 100 hectares each in Koul and Mérina Dakhar. He announced the continuation of support through the deployment of Agricultural Equipment Use Cooperatives (CUMA), the construction of infrastructure and the finalization of the six agricultural farms planned as part of the Koul cooperative.
These commitments follow a logic of gradual support, but they remain contingent on timelines and funding that the communiqué does not detail. The question of the sustainability of PAPSEN itself — its duration, its available resources, its long-term institutional anchoring — is not addressed, even though it directly determines the continuity of the promised support.
Koul’s initiative illustrates a broader reality: in West Africa, GIEs and agricultural cooperatives often constitute the first level of economic organization for producers, but their viability depends as much on the quality of their internal management as on the macro-agricultural environment in which they operate. Equipping members is necessary; it is not sufficient. The next step will be to measure whether these forty certificate holders effectively transform their learnings into sustainable practices within their organizations.
Source: APS (Senegalese Press Agency), 3 October
