On Wednesday 26 October 2022 in Abidjan, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (ADB) approved a loan of 63.6 million euros to Senegal. This is in the context of financing the implementation of the Centre's Agro-Industrial Transformation Zone Project, called Agropole-Centre.

Agropole-Centre will be implemented by the Ministry of Industrial Development and Small and Medium-sized Industries and will cover four regions in the center of the country. They are Kaolack, Kaffrine, Fatick and Diourbel. Indeed, the implementation of this project will contribute to increasing agricultural exports and therefore reducing food imports as well as food insecurity in rural areas. According to Marie-Laure Akin Olugbade, managing director of the African Development Bank for West Africa, “The Bank is a key partner for Senegal in the implementation of five integrated competitive agropoles planned under the S& Plan. An emerging negative, through a public-private partnership. After the South Agropole approved in 2019, we are now financing that in the Central region of the country, which covers an important agricultural basin.”

The director of the Rural Infrastructure and Agricultural Finance Department Atsuko Toda maintains that “the project thus benefits from lessons learned for this type of agro-industrial project, finance & eacute; according to a public-private partnership through the experience accumulated in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Togo and Senegal in particular and which gives it a comparative advantage.”

In reality, several results are expected at the end of the first phase of the project (2023-2027). Among others, there is the creation and consolidation of 129,500 direct jobs and 208,800 indirect jobs (including about 52% for women), the processing of at least 400,000 tons of peanuts, 100,000 tons of cereals and 50,000 tons of salt.