Summary

Since the 2000s, development strategies have placed particular emphasis on infrastructure as a mechanism capable of initiating production and attracting investment. Since 2014 this has been reinforced by the development strategy based on the Plan Sénégal Émergent (Emerging Senegal Plan) PSE, which has made it possible to implement priority economic reforms and investment projects opening the way to growth while preserving the economy and debt viability. Financing is a major problem, in the face of the breathlessness of the budgetary machine and the constraints of compliance with a rate of indebtedness in conformity with convergence criteria. This context rendered resorting to public-private partnerships unavoidable.

Senegal has relied on an attractive regulatory and institutional framework to make Public- Private Plans (PPP) a privileged means of financing while respecting social equilibrium. Unfortunately, the system has not been as effective in preventing the inefficiency of private action and respect for women’s human rights and the environment. The case of the construction of the toll motorway has shown the limits of the PPP model, through the relative high cost of infrastructure, the loss of human life and the prejudices suffered by displaced persons, especially women. The case also points to the additional efforts required so in order to reduce their risks and negative impacts.

Even if victims’ vigilance and protests allowed for better care, the Corporate Social Responsibility (RSE) policy of the executing company played a major role in taking women into account. Otherwise, gender aspects were only taken into account through the treatment of vulnerable groups to protect them from economic precarity after their displacement from the infrastructure area.

Thus, the recommendation to mitigate the risks cited above requires that equity, equality, and gender issues be taken into account in the RSE policy of the private partner and especially in the regulatory and institutional framework at the government level, through gender representation.