Senegal imports about 200,000 tons of rice annually. These import consume a large share of the national budget and represent a heavy outflow of foreign exchange. Despite the implementation of various agricultural projects aimed at increasing domestic rice production, Senegal still relies on imports to fill its deficit and there is no evidence that the situation will change in the near future. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze selected factors which are believed to impede expansion of rice production in the Casamance (southern) region of Senegal. The following factors are studied: 1) climatic uncertainties (effects of the drought); 2) the competition between groundnuts and rice for the allocation of family labor; 3) the institutional constraints upon the marketing system in general and processing in particular; and 4) the effects of migration. The results of this analysis suggest that results from the present rice production-marketing subsystem could be significantly improved if more consistent price and marketing policies were defined and applied, and if production and credit were reorganized.