Tag Archives: Senegal

Sahel News Roundup, 1/6/23

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Burkina Faso

A reported massacre at Nouna (map) claimed at least twenty-eight victims and once again focuses critical attention on the country’s state-aligned vigilantes in the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, who have been accused of perpetrating the massacre.

A Catholic priest was assassinated on January 2 at Soroni (map):

Mali

The jihadist group JNIM strikes near Bamako once again:

Jeune Afrique (French) has a deep dive on the Wagner Group’s presence in Mali. the most interesting details to me concerned Wagner personnel and their relations with specific officers in the Malian military, notably Defense Minister Colonel Sadio Camara and Air Force Chief of Staff General Alou Boï Diarra, whom Jeune Afrique calls the “principal architects of the cooperation between the Russian group and the Malian General Staff.”

See also the “malaise” (French) in Mali following Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s critical remarks (French) about Wagner’s presence there.

Chad

A coup attempt? (French)

Meanwhile, there is controversy (French) over the appointment of General Idriss Youssouf Boy as President Mahamat Deby’s chief of staff. This summer, Boy was fired (as Deby’s personal secretary), jailed, acquitted, and freed, all in connection with an embezzlement scandal at the Chad Hydrocarbons Company. More here and here (both French).

Senegal

The case of detained journalist Pape Alé Niang calls attention to issues of press freedom in the country.

Mauritania

Ex-President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, facing a corruption investigation since 2020, was prevented from leaving the country (after having been allowed to travel to France in September 2022 for medical reasons) and is summoned to appear before an anti-corruption court on January 12 (Arabic).

Niger

There are concerns over bird flu in Niger, but the authorities say it is under control (French).

Roundup on Floods in the Sahel

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Flooding has become a regular and tragic recurrence in the Sahel, a challenge compounded by poor infrastructure – which makes flooding a political issue as well as an environmental and humanitarian one.

A few snapshots:

Senegal:

Torrential rain fell across Senegal on Wednesday, causing floods in the capital Dakar and bringing down a section of one of the main highways into the city.

Cars, scooters and pedestrians inched through torrents of brown knee-deep water as unusually strong downpours battered the semi-arid city, where sandy roads and flat-roofed houses are poorly equipped for the July to October rainy season.

Mali: “Inondation : les populations priées d’évacuer le lit du fleuve.” From Studio Tamani, this segment discusses authorities’ efforts to evacuate riverine areas.

In Burkina Faso’s Le Pays (French), an editorial argues for both increased proactivity on the part of citizens as well as much more ambitious efforts by the state to relocate and care for vulnerable populations.

RFI (French) reports on flooding that has killed roughly a dozen people and left some 16,000 people homeless in Niger, with brief comments from the mayor of a heavily affected commune in the Zinder Region (southern Niger).

Al Wihda Info (French) describes flooding in the Lamé sub-prefecture, southwestern Chad.

Unfortunately, there is very likely more flooding to come. In 2021, in the zone stretching from Mauritania to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a total of 1.4 million people were affected by seasonal flooding. Out of the countries in that zone, Chad and Niger were the second- and third-most affected countries, respectively, after the DRC – 256,000 people were affected in Chad, and 250,000 in Niger.

Roundup on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ Trip to Senegal, Niger, and Nigeria

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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is wrapping up an April 30-May 5 “Ramadan solidarity visit” to Senegal, Niger, and Nigeria, timed to coincide with the days around Eid al-Fitr. This was Guterres’ first visit (!) to Africa since the start of the pandemic.

Here is the official agenda:

On Saturday, the Secretary-General will begin a Ramadan solidarity visit to Senegal, Niger and Nigeria, during which he will also highlight the impact of the Ukraine war on the African continent.      

The Secretary-General will meet and share an Iftar dinner with President Macky Sall of Senegal, who assumed the Presidency of the African Union earlier this year. He will also take part in Eid celebrations with President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger and he is scheduled to meet President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.     

In the three countries, the Secretary-General will have meetings with senior government officials as well as civil society representatives, including women, youth groups and religious leaders. He will meet families deeply affected by violence and instability in the Sahel, including people internally displaced and refugees. Mr. Guterres will also see first-hand the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities and will assess progress and challenges to the COVID-19 recovery.

Guterres lamented what he called a “triple food, energy and financial crisis” in Africa, now made worse by the fallout from the war in/on Ukraine. In Senegal, he called for “vaccine equity” as well as debt relief for debt relief for African countries, appealing in particular to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In Niger, he lavished praise on the country’s democracy and military, conforming to a longstanding Western trope that treats Niger as the model Sahelian country. One announcement in Niger was a new role for Niger’s immediate past president, Mahamadou Issoufou, a chair of an Independent High-level Panel on Security & Development in the Sahel. In Nigeria, finally, Guterres is visiting both Borno State and the capital Abuja.

A few tweets:

Muhammadu Buhari’s Comments on Third Terms Underline ECOWAS’ Credibility Gap on Democracy

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Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was in Niamey, Niger on September 7 for an ordinary summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). He made headlines for the following comment:

More of his remarks quoted here:

As leaders of our individual Member-States of ECOWAS, we need to adhere to the constitutional provisions of our countries, particularly on term limits. This is one area that generates crisis and political tension in our sub-region.

Related to this call for restraint is the need to guarantee free, fair and credible elections. This must be the bedrock for democracy to be sustained in our sub-region, just as the need for adherence to the rule of law.

The obvious though unnamed targets of these remarks are Guinea’s Alpha Condé and Cote d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara, both of whom are seeking third terms in elections that fall, respectively, on October 18 and October 31 of this year. One could also, although I’m not sure that this was Buhari’s intention, read his remarks as applying to other leaders in the region who have not sought third terms but who made the electoral playing fields very uneven when running for re-election – I am thinking of Senegal’s Macky Sall and Niger’s Mahamadou Issoufou, both of whom jailed their main opponents while running for (and winning) second terms. And then there is perhaps the most egregious anti-democratic case in the whole region – Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, who won a fourth term this past February and whose family has been in power since 1967.

Buhari has many faults, but I think he has credibility on this issue of third terms – I do not expect him to seek a third one when his time is up in 2023, and he has repeatedly pledged not to do so. You never know, of course.

The context for Buhari’s remarks about third terms was the ongoing ECOWAS response to the August 18 coup in Mali, which removed second-termer Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. ECOWAS leaders’ domestic efforts to bend and extend rules have implicitly weakened their credibility in negotiating with different actors in Mali – first the anti-Keïta protesters who threw Bamako’s politics into turmoil from June until the eve of the coup, and then more recently with the junta (the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, French acronym CNSP).

Newsworthy though Buhari’s remarks are, I don’t see pressure from him or others resulting in a course change for Condé or Ouattara. Once presidents start down the third term route they are usually (although not always, as the cases of Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo and Mauritania*’s Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz exemplify) determined to go through with it.

I should probably do a separate post on the ECOWAS summit’s conclusions regarding Mali, but the final communiqué is here (French). The key paragraph on Mali is paragraph 16, page 6, where ECOWAS calls for a 12-month transition back to an elected president, and demands that the CNSP designate an interim president and prime minister, both of them civilians, by September 15. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

*Not an ECOWAS member currently.

Revisiting Senghor-Era Senegal

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At Africa Is A Country, Florian Bobin has two new pieces about Senegal during the era of its first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001, in office 1960-1980). The pieces are adapted from Bobin’s articles in Research on African Political Economy.

In the first piece, Bobin discusses Senghor himself, arguing that the image of Senghor as a men of letters has drawn a veil over the harshness of his rule:

Although Senegal did not experience the same political crises as its neighbors, the mythification of “poet-president” Senghor has blurred our understanding of his political actions. Under the single-party rule of Senghor’s Senegalese Progressive Union (UPS), authorities resorted to brutal methods; intimidating, arresting, imprisoning, torturing and killing dissidents. Recalling he was both a poet and a president is a matter of fact, but associating both, while refusing to recognize the authoritarianism he displayed, is historical nonsense.

The second piece discusses the intellectual and activist Omar Blondin Diop (1946-1973), Bobin connects Diop’s presumed assassination to the wider theme of Senghor’s authoritarianism:

The assassination of Omar Blondin Diop cannot be understood as an isolated incident, but as one tragic episode in a long series of tenacious acts of state-led repression in Senegal. Decolonization in Africa has often been the story of the birth of newly independent states in the 1960s. However, the persistence of foreign interests backed by national governments became a common sight in former French colonies. Well into nominal political independence, burgeoning autocracies largely stifled revolutionary prospects of emancipation from capitalism and imperialism. We don’t often hear of resistance movements in Senegal during Léopold Sédar Senghor’s rule (1960-1980) because his regime successfully marketed the country as “Africa’s democratic success story.” Yet, under the single-party rule of the Progressive Senegalese Union, authorities resorted to brutal methods; intimidating, arresting, imprisoning, torturing and killing dissidents. Omar Blondin Diop was one of them.

I’ve never really dug into the Senghor period. By the time I started doing research in Senegal in 2006, both he and even his successor Abdou Diouf were long out of power, and most of my friends and interlocutors were relatively young people with few or no memories of the Senghor period. He was often held up to me in a sort of one-dimensional way as an example of Senegalese interreligious tolerance, as the Catholic president of a Muslim-majority society. I think what Bobin is doing in these pieces is very useful – as Bobin acknowledges, Senegal’s history is different from many of its West African peers, but that doesn’t mean Senghor’s record can’t be examined critically.

Out of curiosity, I flipped back to my go-to reference on Senegal, Leonardo Villalón’s Islamic Society and State Power, to see how he characterized Senghor. Among other passages on Senghor, Villalòn makes a really interesting point in one endnote (7):

I have not read these works on Senghor. But perhaps Bobin’s work fits into a tradition of sorts – a greater willingness to criticize Senghor in Anglophone, versus Francophone, scholarly literature.

Roundup of IMF Statements on Disbursements to Sahelian Countries amid COVID-19

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On April 15, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved six-month debt service relief for twenty-five low-income countries, including the Sahelian countries Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger.

The IMF has also given disbursements to each of those countries to help offset the impact of COVID-19.

Burkina Faso ($115.3 million, approved April 14):

The immediate challenge is to contain the spread of COVID-19, strengthen medical care, implement the social distancing and other containment measures, and mitigate the socio-economic impact of the pandemic, especially on the most vulnerable.

[…]

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Burkina Faso is rapidly unfolding, with the short-term outlook worsening quickly. The pandemic comes at a time when Burkina Faso was already gripped by a heightened security crisis. The authorities responded by putting in place measures to help contain the spreading of the virus, including by closing schools and universities, banning mass gatherings, and suspending international travel. Though absolutely needed to contain the outbreak these measures, together with the global response, have significantly worsened the economic outlook in the near term, with real economic growth declining substantially, and both the fiscal and balance of payments deficits widening significantly.

Chad ($115.1 million, approved April 14):

Due to a significant deterioration of the macroeconomic outlook and weakening of fiscal situation, urgent external and fiscal financing needs have emerged. The IMF’s support will make a substantial contribution to filling immediate external needs and preserving fiscal space for essential COVID-19-related health expenditure. It is also expected to help catalyze additional donor support.

Mali ($200.4 million, approved April 30):

This assistance will help support urgent spending on health services and assistance to affected firms and households, while preserving overall social spending.

[…]

The COVID-19 shock hit the economy hard amid an already challenging social and security situation. The economic outlook has deteriorated significantly, and growth is expected to slow to below 1 percent, increasing already high unemployment and poverty.

Mauritania ($130 million, approved April 23):

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic human, economic, and social impact on Mauritania. The short-term economic outlook has deteriorated rapidly and growth is expected to turn negative this year, with severe hardships for the population, and the outlook is subject to considerable uncertainty. These developments have given rise to urgent balance of payment and fiscal financing needs.

[…]

The IMF’s financial assistance under the RCF will provide a sizable share of the financing needed to implement the anti-crisis measures. Additional concessional and grant financing from the international community will be critical to close the remaining financing gap and help Mauritania respond effectively to the COVID-19 crisis.

Niger ($114.5 million, approved April 14):

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a pronounced negative economic impact on Niger and downside risks are significant. The economic downturn, fiscal pressures, and tightening financial conditions are giving rise to large financing gaps in Niger’s public finances and balance of payments this year.

[…]

A substantial widening of this year’s budget deficit is appropriate, reflecting unavoidable revenue shortfalls and pressing spending needs for health care, social protection, and support for hard-hit businesses.

Senegal ($442 million, approved April 13):

The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting Senegal hard. The sharp global economic downturn and domestic containment measures have led to a substantial reduction in economic activity, with sectors such as tourism, transport, construction, and retail particularly hard-hit, and the pandemic in Europe is also translating into lower remittances. As a result, the short-term economic outlook has deteriorated significantly, with large uncertainties surrounding the duration and spread of the pandemic.

 

Senegal: Presidential Candidacies of Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall Blocked

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Today, Senegal’s Constitutional Council turned down the candidacies of Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall for the 24 February presidential elections. The candidacies had been provisionally advanced last week after they met the requirements for candidates’ dossiers, such as collecting signatures. Twenty other candidacies had been rejected at that stage.

Wade is the son of former President Abdoulaye Wade (in office 2000-2012), and Sall is the former mayor of Dakar. The Council ruled that Sall, who has been sentenced to a five-year prison term on embezzlement charges, lacks the right to run, while Wade cannot run because he lacks an elector’s card – which he lacks because of an earlier judicial sentence. Both candidates have been blocked for essentially the same reason, although the applicable sections of the electoral code (L27 and L31 in Sall’s case, L115 in Wade’s) are different.

There are now five candidates remaining:

  • Macky Sall, the President (BBY)
  • Ousmane Sonko, parliamentary deputy (Pastef)
  • El Hadj Issa Sall, parliamentary deputy (PUR)
  • Madicke Niang, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (dissident PDS)
  • Idrissa Seck, former Prime Minister (Rewmi)

And a victory by the president looks virtually assured now.

Senegal’s Presidential Elections: The Seven Candidates So Far

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Senegal will hold presidential elections on 24 February. As of 9 January, seven candidates had been approved by the Constitutional Council. Here are their micro-bios, with their party affiliations in parentheses:

  • Macky Sall, the President (BBY)
  • Khalifa Sall, former Mayor of Dakar (Taxawu Senegaal)
  • Karim Wade, former Minister of State for International Cooperation, Regional Development, Air Transport, and Infrastructure and son of ex-President Abdoulaye Wade (PDS)
  • Ousmane Sonko, parliamentary deputy (Pastef)
  • El Hadj Issa Sall, parliamentary deputy (PUR)
  • Madicke Niang, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (dissident PDS)
  • Idrissa Seck, former Prime Minister (Rewmi)

Twenty-seven candidacies were initially presented. Among those rejected, the one getting the most attention is Malick Gakou (Grand Parti), who the Council said was 546 signatures short on his dossier.

The definitive list of candidates is supposed to come out on January 20.

Senegal: More on Macky Sall’s (and Marième Faye’s) Visit to Touba

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Earlier this week I posted about the upcoming Magal celebration in Senegal. The Magal is a mass gathering of the Mouridiyya, one of the country’s two major Sufi orders; the event commemorates the return of founding Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba (1853-1927) from exile in Gabon during French colonial rule. The Magal takes place in the Mouridiyya’s hub, the city of Touba.

The event attracts courtesy calls from various politicians, including President Macky Sall – who, as one specialist pointed out to me, is not particularly popular in Touba. In the first round of the 2012 elections, then-incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade won an outright majority in the Mbacké Department, where Touba is located (and then went on to lose the overall election to Sall in the second round). As I discussed in my last post, this year the Mouride hierarchy had to publicly intervene to stop a junior shaykh from “sabotaging” Sall’s visit to Touba this year. Although it is partly, as mentioned above, a simple courtesy call, this visit is possibly more important than the average such call, as this is the last Magal before the February 2019 presidential elections.

Some press reports indicate that Sall’s visit went well. And reporters are calling attention not just to Sall but also to the First Lady, Marième Faye. One headline reads, “Macky in Touba: This Gesture by Marième Faye, Calculated or Not, Reinforces His Popularity.” From the article:

Having arrived late to the great room of Khadim al-Rasul [servant of the Prophet, a common title for Ahmadou Bamba among the Mouridiyya] residence at the moment when her husband, President Macky Sall, was going to begin his speech beside the Khalife General of the Mourides, the First Lady, Marième Faye, suddenly crouched down in the middle of the audience, a few steps from the doorway she had just crossed. Like a simple disciple.

Photos here.

Such images and moments have a longer history, as articles like this one spell out. From the Catholic President Leopold Senghor to the somewhat reservedly Tijani President Abdou Diouf to the overtly Mouride President Abdoulaye Wade and the openly Mouride President Macky Sall, the relationship between the Senegalese presidency and the Sufi orders – and we might say the Mouridiyya in particular – has been dynamic, even if certain deep continuities persist. Wade’s public displays of Mouride affiliation were controversial, particularly among intellectuals in the capital, one of whom coined the now-famous descriptor of “the Republic on its knees” in reference to Wade’s prostration to the Mouride Khalife General in 2000. Has something changed since 2000, in terms of how these moments play out in Senegalese public life? It’s beyond my expertise to say – but the parallels are interesting. I’m also reminded of something several young Mourides said to me when I lived in Senegal in 2006-2007, namely that it was divinely ordained that Senegal would first have a Christian president, then a Tijani president, and then all the rest would be Mourides thenceforth. Wa-Allahu a’lam.

Here, finally, is the president’s speech (in Wolof):

 

Senegal: Politicians Visit Touba in Advance of the Magal [Updated]

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The Magal is one of the most important annual religious events in Senegal. A mass gathering in Touba, the epicenter of the Mouridiyya Sufi order, it commemorates the return of the order’s founder Ahmadou Bamba from exile in Gabon during French colonial rule. This year’s Magal is scheduled for 26/27 October 28 October, and as such will be the last gathering before Senegal holds its presidential elections in February 2019.

The occasion can take on political ramifications, which are obviously a bit heightened this year. There has been a bit of controversy amid the planning for President Macky Sall’s annual pre-Magal courtesy trip to Touba. The head spokesman* of the Mouridiyya, Cheikh Bassirou Abdou Khadre Mbacké, had to explicitly tell Serigne Modou Bousso Dieng, head of the Association of Young Religious Leaders of Senegal, not to disturb the president’s visit. Dieng told the press that he submits completely to those instructions, but he added that “I remain convinced that Touba does not enjoy major consideration from President Macky Sall. In view of what this city represents on the religious plane and in terms of population, it merits more regard and this is not the case!”

Dieng, who is already a declared candidate for the 2019 presidential election, has previously said that he will withdraw if the former ruling party, the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS), nominates former foreign affairs minister Madické Niang. The latter recently received some rhetorical support from another of Senegal’s three most prominent Sufi families, the Sy branch of the Tijaniyya in Tivaouane; that family’s head said that former President Abdoulaye Wade should retire from politics (and stop attempting to impose his son Karim as the PDS’ 2019 candidate). In any case, back in Touba, the stage appears set for a smooth visit by the president circa October 25.

It is worth noting, however, that certain politicians are heading to Touba before Sall gets there. One is former prime minister and likely presidential aspirant Idrissa Seck, who arrived Monday for a four-day stay, heading out of town just before Sall’s arrival.

*[Update: I misidentified Khadre – he is the spokesman, not the head/khalifa general of the Mouridiyya. The khalifa is .Mountakha Bassirou Mbacké. See more from Ousmane Diallo here.]