Senegal River

World Rivers Review: Volume 13, Number 1

This past September, an official think-tank called Le Groupe de Réflexion Stratég ique (Strategic Planning Group) publicly released a report critical of the large dam projects in the Senegal River Valley. The group's report prompted a local farmers' group to demand the re-establishment of natural river flooding upon which their agricultural systems depend and which the dams had effectively ended.

World Rivers Review: Volume 12, Number 5

The Manantali Dam in Africa's Senegal River Valley is a "poster child" of bad dams. When it was built in the 1980s, it put an end to 1,000 years of successful flood-recession farming; created major economic impacts for downstream farmers, fishers and herders; harmed fisheries, ground water resources and riverine forests, and turned an area with a low incidence of water-borne disease into one of the worst-infected in Africa. Besides all the problems it caused, it also failed to provide promised benefits. The conversion from flood-recession farming (i.e., the cultivation of riverbank areas enriched by silt from retreating annual floods) to irrigated agriculture has been much slower and costlier than expected. In addition, irrigated agriculture has actually been less productive than flood-recession f arming, and contributes to water-borne diseases via irrigation canals and water-storage areas. The project has yet to produce any power, and navigation benefits have been virtually nil.

1. The project

The Manantali project consists of the Manantali dam on the Bafing river, a tributary of the Senegal river, a 200 MW power station and a network of 1300 km of transmission lines to the capitals of Mali (Bamako), Mauritania (Nouakschott) and Senegal (Dakar). The dam is 1460 meters long and 65 meters high. It created a reservoir with a storage capacity of 11.3 billion m³ and a surface area of 477 km².

I was given the opportunity to take part in the work of the World Commission on Dams, by contributing to the Thematic Review on Social Impacts of Large Dams. In speaking of dams in Africa, I naturally concentrated on what I know best: the dams on the Senegal River, the chief of which is Manantali Dam, constructed under the

 

Jan Piercy
The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433

cc: Ruth Jacoby, Hasan Tuley, Torbjorn Damhaug

Re: Delaying Board decision on Manantali Project

Dear Ms. Piercy:

I am writing to express concerns regarding the Manantali Energy Project, which I understand is coming before the Board on June 24. This project presents the World Bank with a great opportunity to follow through with President Wolfensohn's new "green top ten" list, which includes a commitment to "conserve and manage critical ecosystems," and to "be consistent with environmental and social assessment." Because of our concerns over this project, we ask you to help delay a Board decision on the project.