Kaolack Region
Kaolack's Groundnut Basin hub aggregates 1.7M tonnes annually for China export, with $191.7M agro-industrial zone targeting processing beyond current 15% rate.
Kaolack serves as the Groundnut Basin's commercial hub, the markets and transportation infrastructure that aggregate 1.7 million metric tonnes of annual regional production for processing and export. The city's position at the Saloum River head of navigation created the trading function that persists regardless of transportation mode changes, the geographic logic that colonial infrastructure reinforced.
The $191.7 million agro-industrial zone centered on Kaolack represents Vision 2050's effort to transform the region from commodity corridor into processing center. The peanut processing rate of 15% that current infrastructure achieves leaves value-addition largely occurring elsewhere, the transformation that agropole investment targets addressing.
China's emergence as primary peanut export destination creates market dependence that the 2024/2025 export ban temporarily interrupts—the food security concerns that commodity export orientation generates. Whether Kaolack's processing infrastructure can capture more value domestically—or whether the region remains the collection point for exports that others process—shapes whether commercial hub function translates into development.