This Policy Brief highlights the policy and institutional structures that support EOA in Senegal. The findings revealed that the government of Senegal is committed to supporting agroecology and by extension EOA although it has not provided explicit policies or strategies that support it. This support needs to manifest in government policies, strategies and programmes for EOA development. As it is now, the existing agricultural policies and most of the strategies do not explicitly support EOA nor is there sufficient financial support for it. Nevertheless, Senegal is among the few countries in Africa that have managed to comply with the Malabo Declaration of 2014 by contributing 10% of public expenditure to support agriculture. Most of the funding has been directed to conventional agriculture and government subsidies, for example, have mainly been provided for conventional agriculture inputs and has neglected the EOA subsector. There are no formal institutional structures provided for EOA development to support the implementation and coordination of actors in the subsector. A major weakness exists in the certification of EOA products where many farmers especially the small-scale farmers are not able to afford the services, which are rather expensive, or the processes, which are complicated to comply with, hence the need to streamline the issue of certification standards for swift development of the subsector. This will require the involvement of all subsector players led by the government and other subsector coordinating organizations led by FENAB. To seamlessly achieve these, there need to be strong public awareness campaigns and advocacy across all the stakeholders in the country. It is also critical to design training programmes aimed at regularly building the capacity of the various personnel involved in the subsector. Developing a standalone EOA policy/strategy or integrating EOA into the overall agricultural policies and poverty reduction strategies, and building organic agriculture supply capacities through education, research, extension services, of local and regional markets and export facilitation, are key to realizing the benefits that EOA offers in Senegal.
