The transient sand frontier: Senegal's moving sand procurement strategies

Abstract

This article probes the causes and implications from the displacement of construction sand procurement strategies from coastal areas to inland sand dune ecosystems in Senegal. It retraces how the gradual implementation of a beach sand mining ban triggered a transient sand frontier process in sand dune ecosystems that now sustain rising sand needs driven by rapid urbanisation in the coastal cities of Dakar and Saint-Louis. Vertical and horizontal limits to sand quarrying in the sand dunes lead to the extractive frontier constantly moving farther away from urban and periurban sand consumption sites. The resulting transient frontier process complements documented sand frontier scenarios where spatial extension, or commodity widening, combines with intensifying extractivism, or commodity deepening. In coastal Senegal, spatial extension rather proceeds in tandem with frontier closure. The sand transient frontier yields sand supply and price pressures that create challenges to Senegal development ambitions, most specifically those that entail the expansion of the concrete dependent affordable and premium city models. The development minerals agenda has so far proved insufficient to yield the discursive shift required for elevating sand supply as key to the achievement of development programs in Senegal. Connecting sand, the development minerals and the ‘strategic’ or ‘critical’ minerals agendas could help elevate sand supply-related challenges among policymakers' priorities.