
Dr Rama Salla Dieng
Sabbatical Fellow, October 2022 - March 2023
Home Institution: University of Edinburgh
Dr Rama Salla Dieng is a Lecturer in Africa and International Development at the Centre of African Studies, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Before the University of Edinburgh, she worked for five years in Policy Research at the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and before that she worked at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Mauritius. She also taught at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS. Rama’s research focuses on agrarian change, feminist political economy of development, labour care and social reproduction, politics of development in Africa (Senegal and Mauritius), and social movement. Rama serves on the board of the African Studies Association UK.
Rama holds an MSc and a PhD in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London and a Double Masters in International Cooperation & Development and Risks Management in Developing Countries, from Science Po Bordeaux- IEP, France. She also holds a Maîtrise in Political Science, Université Montesquieu, Bordeaux, France. Rama is currently working on a monograph and is the co-editor of a Special Issue on Agrarian Change, Food Security, Sustainable Development in Senegal and Zimbabwe. She is also the editor of Féminismes Africains: Une histoire Décoloniale (Présence Africaine, Paris, 2021), the co-editor of a collective book on Feminist Parenting, Perspectives from Africa and Beyond (Demeter Press 2020), and a Lead editor of an anthology on Feminisms in Africa (2021), and the author of a novel (La Dernière Lettre, Présence Africaine Paris 2008).
Project Title: Genealogies of Racial Capitalism: Labour and Social Reproduction in Contemporary Land Rushes in the Senegal River Region
Recently, there has been growing concern across Africa by activists and policymakers alike around the question of land rushes (especially after the 2007-2008 land rush) - often framed as “land grabs” (see Dieng 2017), and their implications for local communities. The 2007-2008 land rush, which echoed the global food, climate and economic crises, did not happen in a vacuum. Since GRAIN’s 2008 report [Seized: The 2008 landgrab for food and financial security], several research publications, non-governmental organisations (NGO) documents and media reports have sought to make sense of the contemporary ‘land rushes’. A quick survey of the literature singularly highlights the lack of consensus on concepts: ‘land grab’, ‘appropriation’ or ‘acquisition’ for some, ‘deals’ or ‘rushes’ for yet another group of authors. In fact, ‘land grabs’ is often used interchangeably with, or opposed to, ‘acquisitions’ or ‘agricultural investment’ or ‘rushes’ – even if not all land deals are investments and not all investments in agriculture involve outright sale.
This research seeks to bring labour back into the broader analysis of implications of historical and contemporary land rushes for global-local dynamics of capitalist production and social reproduction in Senegal. This research further articulates a feminist political economy and political ecology analysis of labour dynamics in the racialised, classed and gendered processes of capitalist accumulation in recent waves of land rushes in the Senegalese agriculture.