Source : Sahel weather February 2025

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Ahmadou Al Aminou Lô, Minister Secretary General of the Government of Senegal, made it clear during an appearance on the national television program Point de vue that the country's socio-economic situation is not going well. To turn things around, "we need a fair social plan, bringing things back into proportion [and] tightening our belts (...) starting with the State", he advocates. "These are not redundancies (...) the government has no room for maneuver (...) the State is committed to making life less difficult", he tries to temper this secondly. The other important announcement is the abolition of state agencies to lighten the books, and the abolition of electricity price subsidies for industry and the wealthiest. Senegal "can't go further into debt", so "the only weapon left is the tax weapon", justified Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo.

In the aftermath, the unions went into battle, deploring the government's lack of dialogue with them. Faced with threats of strike action, the government took steps to calm the situation. At a meeting on February 27 between the unions and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, the latter urged them to "put strikes and demonstrations on hold for a while", until the government managed to turn around the country's economic situation. "No one wants social confrontation, because no one wins. We must all avoid pushing each other towards radicalization", declared the Senegalese Prime Minister. Achieving a "social dialogue pact", in his words, is crucial. "The whole social system, worker protection, the new Labor Code, fairness and equity in remuneration systems - we're going to work on that together. But it has to be built, it doesn't fall from the sky. And we want to do that in complete transparency," explained the Prime Minister.

Effective accountability

The long-awaited accountability process, which has been a hobbyhorse of the regime since long before it came to power, is now well underway. The long-awaited report from the Cour des Comptes - published on February 12 - has been the talk of the town. According to the document, which reports on economic management between 2019 and March 2024, Senegal is more than 18,000 billion in debt. "The total outstanding debt of the central budgetary administration amounted to 18,558.91 billion CFA francs at December 31, 2023, and represents 99.67% of GDP," the report informs. A rate "higher" than that announced by the former ruling regime. As a result, the deficit declared by the previous regime is lower than that established by the Cour des Comptes. For the year 2023, the Court calculated a deficit of 12.3%, compared with 4.9% announced. The report also points to obvious financial mismanagement. Among the shortcomings in terms of management of public funds are nebulous and opaque transactions, authorized expenditure outside the circuit of the public treasury with the creation of special accounts, etc. In this connection, the Minister of Justice announced the opening of new investigations to clarify the facts revealed in the report.

Naturally, all eyes are on the tenors of the previous regime, in particular former president Macky Sall, who now lives in Morocco. "It's a political process. We have always worked in complete transparency (...) I'm not afraid of anything, they can sue me if they want," he reacted, a few days after these revelations. "Inevitably, he [Macky Sall] will face justice. He is primarily responsible for extremely serious acts that have been committed (...) He cannot escape justice because he was behind all of this", said on RFM on February 28Senegalese government spokesman Moustapha Ndjekk Sarré . Furthermore, at the very beginning of March, an inter-commission worked on a draft law that would allow prisoners in Senegal or Morocco to serve their sentences in either of the two countries. In addition, at the end of a ten-day visit to Senegal, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, noted that prison overcrowding was "dramatic and inhumane (...) a powder keg that could explode at any moment".

Prospects for stability

A new step in the Casamance peace process. On February 23, Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko signed a peace agreement in Guinea-Bissau with one of the factions of the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC). Implemented under the mediation of President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, this new protocol is part of the Diomaye Plan for Casamance, launched in January with the stated aim of promoting development in the region.

At the same time, the first financial returns from the sale of Senegalese oil have been announced. According to Woodside, the company that extracts the black gold from Sangomar, the country's production for 2024 amounted in the fourth quarter to over 13.3 million barrels of crude produced in 2024, of which 12.9 million barrels have already been sold. Total revenue: over 595.5 billion CFA francs. According to the economist and permanent secretary of the Comité d'Orientation Stratégique du Pétrole et du Gaz, Cheikh Khadim Bamba Diagne, Senegal's share of this windfall is less than 70 billion FCFA.