Producing high-quality salt
and creating new jobs

Senegal produces more than 450,000 tonnes of salt a year, making it the largest producer in West Africa. A large part of this salt comes from more than 15,000 small-scale artisanal producers of unrefined salt. There are also a small number of private initiatives such as Salins du Sine Saloum, a company with the only salt factory in the country that produces cleaned, refined salt. Salins du Sine Saloum exports around 80 per cent of this salt, mainly to other African countries.

In recent years, new industrial actors have also begun operating in the salt sector, cooperatives have been set up and several market niches have been identified. The local water utility Seneau is interested in using salt instead of imported chemicals to purify water, for example – for which it would need around 100,000 tonnes of salt a year. According to UNICEF, the total demand for salt in Africa is 7,000,000 tonnes a year.

Senegal’s salt sector faces a number of difficulties, however, which are primarily connected to the poor quality of the salt and prevent good marketing despite growing demand from the local agricultural sector and food industry. Local companies producing stock cubes, for example, therefore continue to import salt from abroad.

To enable the country to harness the potential of its salt sector more effectively in future, Invest for Jobs is supporting the development of the sector by implementing a project that focuses on building the technical capacity of producers and refineries, optimising logistical processes and facilitating access to funding. It aims to improve the quality of the salt while creating new jobs.

The project to develop Senegal’s salt sector is geared towards local companies that produce unrefined salt, traders, cooperatives, salt refineries and food manufacturers.

The first step involves improving the management system of the cooperatives. For example, the project aims to set up accounting systems and develop instruments to manage the movement of goods and the stock in the warehouses more efficiently.

In a next step, the aim is to enhance the services offered by producers and support the cooperatives, for example in attracting domestic buyers in order to build new trading relationships.

In addition, a quality management system is to be implemented, because product quality in particular needs to be improved in order to achieve economic sustainability in the sector. Plans involve acquiring infrastructures and equipment that are more effective and better suited to local conditions. This includes washing and iodisation plants and warehouses that meet the required standards.

During the final step, the project will build skills among producers and refineries in connection with topics such as hygiene, safety and techniques to produce high-quality salt in line with the conditions that prevail in the production region.

Invest for Jobs is receiving support in implementing the project from GFA Consulting Group, which began by conducting a market study in Senegal to analyse all the producers and their production capacity, identify the actors’ needs and gain a more accurate picture of the business climate across the sector.

Initial activities with cooperatives, industrial partners and banks have begun as part of efforts to boost the services offered by the producers, improve the cooperatives’ management system and introduce a quality system.

By 2023, with support from Invest for Jobs, the goal is to create 500 new jobs, improve working conditions for 1,500 employees and enhance the business climate for 30 companies.

In the long term, the project aims to develop a competitive salt sector in Senegal that produces high-quality salt, particularly for the local market, and meets the requirements of the local small and medium-sized enterprises and industry.

The salt sector in Senegal is being supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) within the framework of the Special Initiative "Decent Work for a Just Transition".