Expected to take 18 months to complete, Sadio Mané dug the ground and laid a foundation stone on Saturday, Sept. 19, for an agro-industrial park at Bambali, the village in southern Senegal where he was born.
The SM10 Agro he is fully funding himself, will cost 11.7 billion CFA francs, about $20 million.
The project covers 500 hectares of orchards, four processing areas and capacity to handle 8,500 tonnes a year, with more than 1,000 direct jobs at startup. The industrial hub will also have a training centre and a research operation sitting alongside the factories.
Mangoes Are Central
Central to Mané’s huge investment in the agricultural sector is mango production and post-harvest management.
The location of the factory, Bambali, sits in Moyenne-Casamance, where the trees produce in abundance, and a substantial part of the fruits rot every year due to lack of storage facilities and nobody to sell them to. The footballer plans to process the fruits into purée, dried mango and mango butter for domestic sale and export, with guava alongside it.
“I want the fruits of the land to stay here,” he said.
Mané is known for several charity projects in his home country, Senegal.
What separates this from what he has done before is that it is meant to generate money. He funded a mosque, a school, a hospital and a petrol station in Bambali over the past decade, and opened a bakery last November.
He told reporters in Dakar this month that he now wants to go beyond supporting the community and start creating production, work and value in it. He chose agriculture as an area worth investing in to support his community and create jobs.
The 34-year-old retired from the Africa Cup of Nations after the 2025 tournament, having scored 52 goals for Senegal, more than anyone else, and provided 31 assists, also more than anyone else. He finished second in the 2022 Ballon d’Or and won the Socrates Prize the same year, awarded for social work rather than football.
He played for Liverpool and Bayern Munich before moving to Saudi Arabia.
Senegalese coverage this week placed Mané at the top of a list of five domestic investors putting serious money into agriculture, alongside Sedima, the poultry and agribusiness group founded by Babacar Ngom, the chemical producer Industries Chimiques du Sénégal, the sovereign fund Fonsis and the rice operation Ciriz.
