Although it failed, the project to allocate part of the Ndiaël Avifauna Reserve to agro-intensive exploitation remains a priority in local development plans. This confirms that the phenomenon of land-grabbing cannot be traced back to a single decision to grant a concession or a single land privatization, understood as an event in itself. Rather, it outlines a process, albeit a long one, of redefining relations between subjects, rights and territories, the course of which, in the Senegalese case, will also depend on the ability to build and strengthen alliances between peasant and pastoralist groups at local, regional and national levels in order to secure recognition of pastoralist land rights. Recognition has also been made urgent by the launch of a national land reform process that has gained momentum in Senegal since the early 2000s, precisely in relation to the opening up to foreign investors advocated by the new agricultural policy (Benegiamo, 2020). Today, the reform process is led by the World Bank, as a result of the Projet de Développement Inclusif et Durable de l’Agribusiness au Senegal (PDIDAS; Sustainable and Inclusive Agribusiness Development Project of Senegal),1 launched in 2016, which aims to make 10,000 hectares of land in the delta available for the arrival of foreign investors and the development of commercial horticulture.

Although the project was still at an early stage in terms of ‘valorizing’ the land identified and providing work for the rural communities that have ceded it, it had developed a method of land management for investment, based on a cadastral register, which, if extended to the whole country, would, according to the Bank, make it possible to implement ‘une réforme foncière en douceur’ (World Bank, 2019, pp 16 and 30).