SOURCE: Sébastien Dekeister, Koppert Senegal/Freshplaza
The fruit fly issue in Senegal, exacerbated by climate anomalies, has severely impacted the mango export sector over the past three to four years. Between 2021 and 2024, export volumes fell from 21,000 to 9,000 tons (industry sources) due to a combination of factors, particularly the fruit fly infestation. This alarming situation has prompted growers and the government to launch a major effort to contain the fruit fly, including a large-scale trap installation in preparation for the 2025 campaign.
Initial feedback from exporting producers is positive. The 2025 campaign is currently in full swing, and export representatives are even aiming for the ambitious milestone of exporting 35 thousand tonnes. Sébastien Dekeister, General Manager of Koppert West Africa, a supplier of biological control solutions and an active participant in the fruit fly control campaign in Senegal, shares his insights.
Dekeister says, “‘Senegal, like other countries in the West African subregion, has a large mango industry that is plagued by fruit flies. The region is also home to other crops that harbor the flies, such as cashews, which foster contamination and outbreaks. Chemical control has shown its limits and is not capable of controlling this pest, which is subject to an EU quarantine. Growers logically opted for biological control solutions that are really effective throughout the cycle and even during the rainy season.”
Preparations for the fruit fly control campaign began in 2023 when the Senegalese Ministry of Agriculture introduced the “fruit fly tax,” a 15 FCFA/kg deduction on exported mangoes paid to the National Fruit Fly Control Committee. The tax financed a large-scale call for tenders to supply control solutions. Dekeister adds, “At Koppert Senegal, we responded to the call, proposing simple yet effective solutions for attracting and capturing flies. We delivered 1.7 million doses of pheromones for the 2025 campaign, which covered 17,000 hectares in the Niayes, Casamance, and other regions. This first experiment is a complete success, and enabled the industry to finally contain this problem, as evidenced by our regular checks and feedback from growers.”
According to Dekeister, government-managed calls for tenders remain the primary mechanism to channel the control solutions in West Africa, especially in quantitative terms of growers served and surface areas covered. He explains, “We work directly with some large-scale growers, but the state’s effort remains important given the specifics of West African agriculture and the limited capacities of growers. Public tendering has proven effective first in Côte d’Ivoire, where we have worked for many years, and now in Senegal. I believe that other countries, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana, will adopt this strategy as well, since the fruit fly is also impacting mango plantations there.”
“We maintain our commitment to West African growers through our subsidiaries in Abidjan and Dakar, which have been in operation for nine and three years, respectively. We offer solutions that precisely address growers’ needs, such as solutions against fruit flies, which are easy to adopt. For instance, the solutions we supplied to Senegal this season take just a few minutes to deploy, and we are even ready to propose a full range of new solutions effective against several species of flies attacking mango, but also hot pepper, another important crop in Senegal,” Dekeister concludes.