Policy environment in Dakar: swallowed by the national level

The competitive or nurturing models, discussed above, are not useful when observing the Senegalese subnational level or when attempting to organise findings in relation to co-development processes linking localities in Kolda or Dakar to their counterparts in Catalonia. This is explained, first (and partially) by understanding that the comparison between the two regions is much more unbalanced than the comparison between entities within the Catalan localities. Kolda occupy a peripheral and rural position in comparison to urban Dakar, and governance ecologies are different in each region. Second, in comparison to the Catalan cases, the type of gathered data in Senegal is very different. There is one major difference between this dissertation’s analysis of contexts of origin and those of settlement. This is due to the difficulty of travelling to different municipalities within the territory, accessing written documents, and systematised information regarding formal spaces and procedures. In

Senegal, municipalities do not have webpages. Printing or photocopying documents is not always straightforward. Rather, policymaking leave their traces in different ways. These difficulties were compounded by the fact that I only stayed there for several weeks. Therefore, in this research, tracking the general approach of public policies with regard to migration and development was mainly reliant on interviews in Dakar and Kolda and the documents that the Kolda Regional Development Agency provided. Another, and third, important distinction between institutional contexts of residence and origin concerns how migrants are perceived in Catalonia or Senegal.

To put it simply, in Senegalese contexts, particularly in small villages, those people who once left the community are always a member of it. Therefore, inclusion of migrants or migrant associations in the public sphere is confronted by other types of challenges.

Regionally, during fieldwork, the role attributed to the Kolda or Dakar Regional Development Agencies was very different. Dakar Regional Development Agency was invisible while the Kolda Regional Development Agency was very dynamic and was perceived, by donors, as one of the most active in Senegal. One of the reasons given to explain these differences is that Dakar is a very dense governance hub where central government, international agencies, certain embassies, and non-governmental organisations are important and highly visible. Therefore, the Regional Agency could easily be overlooked. The Regional Development Agency in Kolda was enmeshed in a very different governance and territory context. Moreover, this agency, created in 2000, had a director who had been in charge since 2007 (there had been 4 directors before him). In addition, this director whom I interviewed, was generally perceived by Spanish and Catalan donors as very efficient. In fact, soon after the interview in 2012, he left the regional agency and, by 2015, was in charge (Sécrétaire Exécutif) of the above-mentioned National Programme for National Local Development Programme.

A person in Dakar’s office of the Spanish Aid Agency (AECID) expressed it in the terms below. The same person explained the importance of donors being aligned with local development actions and priorities. Traditionally, Spanish Cooperation have worked with Saint Louis region (in the Northern part of the country), Kolda, and Ziguinchor (both in the Casamance, Southern Senegal):

A: In Kolda the representative of the ARD is a very good officer. That technician is trying to make a synergy in the area. There is an appropriation there, there is a leadership. He tells us ‘if you come, I present you so and so you can see’. We see what are the priorities of the [Regional Development Agency], who is working in the area and how you can add to the already existent efforts. It is one of the places where I think they are improving because there is a leadership, it is essential. The NGOs know you, even any NGO that comes to ask us for information, we always send them there to talk to them and tell them what the priorities and development strategy are, because it is better to insert them. Because if not then the problems come:

there is no sustainability, the determined public institution is not the appropriate one. I believe that public institutions must be strengthened within a development framework. You do not get to Spain, to a town, to a region and do what you want! And here we come and do what we want. That is a concept that we donors have to change. [...]

Q: How about the relationship with the Dakar [Development Agency]?

A: With that one we do not work. We work with the Saint Louis one, with Kolda’s and with the one in Ziguinchor. [...]

Spanish National government representative, Dakar, July 2012 my translation from Spanish (3-6-P25)

Regarding the Catalan Aid Agency, it had been closely working with Kolda Regional Agency since at least 2006. It was also in contact with migrants or migrant associations. These two agencies have established collaboration agreements between them at least from 2009. Further, and even though they did not have formal agreements at the time of the fieldwork, the Fons-Català was also in contact with the Regional Development Agency in Kolda. A Fons-Català expatriate was living in Ziguinchor, the capital of the Ziguinchor region, which is the most important town in Casamance. Even though travelling from Ziguinchor it is still difficult to access Kolda, it is much harder to get from Dakar to Kolda.

In the light of these views, I consider that during the years before 2012 (at least since the appointment of the active director in the Kolda Regional Agency), the Kolda subnational government at regional level and others at municipal had an intention to reach out to migrant associations using the the framework of development policymaking. I am, therefore, implying that – as was done in the case of Catalonia – (some) governments were proactive in exploring ways to connect migration and development. We shall see next what types of initiatives were undertaken, even if

sometimes they were at a very preliminary stage. On the other hand, Dakar policy-making at regional level was not perceived as interacting with any of the co-development processes. The processes behind the formal institutional factors that contribute to the migrant association agency being able to link Barcelona and Dakar incorporate a different set of governance scales. These are considered to be driven in Dakar by the existent dynamics at national level involving central government (as explained in chapter 4).