Développement rural et recherche : le cas de PAPSEN en Moyenne Casamance.

The geographic Region of Casamance is an "anomaly" in Senegal in terms of resources but also of constraints vs. all the other regions of the country. This led to unique models of rural development although the three regions of the Casamance are very different between them. Nevertheless the common elements to the three regions are the isolation from the rest of the country, rice cropping and environmental resources. The Sedhiou region was for long time the less accessible of the Casamance and is now interested by strong demographic and agricultural dynamics. Nevertheless, rice cropping system in the valleys didn't evolve significantly during the last 30 years. The Rural Development Strategy of the Sedhiou region places the rice cropping in the valleys among the regional priorities. However three basic elements are required to support a rural development program in a given territory: i) the presence of unexploited or degraded resources, potentially valuable or recoverable; ii) the availability of technologies or economically viable solutions to overcome constraints and iii) a population that can benefit from the valuable resources and that is responsive to the adoption of the proposed technologies and solutions. Under the PAPSEN project, research and research/action are used to i) define a reliable reference socio-economic, biophysics and agro-technical framework and to ii) support the beneficiaries in the implementation of innovation. In conclusion, the research is functional to the development not only in terms of technical innovation but also of approaches and methods to better understand, analyze, model, project into the future agri-environment systems.