Despite closing the market for two thirds of the year, i.e. 8 out of 12 months, to help producers sell their produce, it will still be some time before Senegal's onion production will be self sufficient.
During the 4 months the foreign market was open, 132,000 tons of onions were bought from abroad. This has an enormous cost. Dr Macoumba Diouf says that solutions to this problem are at hand, if they can fill this gap by increasing seeds and “spreading production over the rest of the year, having instalments that would allow for onion conservation where they would not spoil for 2 or 3 months, this would solve the onion import problem”.