Senegal's newly-elected president Bassirou Diomaye Faye is set to be inaugurated in Dakar on Tuesday, April 2, and French President Emmanuel Macron has his sights set on forging a stronger partnership between the two countries. Macron called Faye on Friday, March 29, in a conversation that lasted half an hour and led to "a very positive discussion," according to the Elysée Palace. Macron is determined "to pursue and intensify the partnership between Senegal and France," the French president told Faye, who has gone from imprisoned opponent to president in the space of a few days.
As early as March 25, the day after the first round of the presidential election in which the 44-year-old former tax and property inspector created a sensation by winning with over 54% of the vote, Macron congratulated Faye in a message on X in French and Wolof – the most widely spoken language in Senegal. "Looking forward to working with him," the president tweeted.
After weeks of political crisis triggered by the postponement of the election by outgoing president Macky Sall, the Elysée hailed the March vote as an example of democratic vitality in a region where, for the past three years, one coup d'état after another – in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger – has forced French soldiers to leave the Sahel. Dakar's new government is looking for a rebalancing, but Paris still wants to maintain peaceful relations with the country.
In France, Faye is less well known than his mentor, Ousmane Sonko, whom he replaced as candidate for the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) party because Sonko was unable to run. But it's no mystery that both men, both former tax and estates inspectors, share a sovereignist platform. Sonko, who came third in the 2019 presidential election, has long been one of West Africa's most critical voices towards the former colonial power. "It's time," he said at a press conference in Dakar in July 2021, "for France to take its knee off our neck. Seven centuries of misery, human trafficking, colonization and neo-colonization, that's enough. It's time for France to leave us alone."
At the time, the mayor of Ziguinchor was in the midst of legal turmoil, prosecuted in a rape case denounced by his camp as a plot by those in power to keep him out of the presidential election. His arrest in March 2021 sparked riots in which 14 people were killed, some of them by live ammunition fired by security forces. Several French shops were looted and vandalized. Paris was accused of supporting the repression. "If, one day, PASTEF comes to power, we'll have to pack our bags," confided a worried French diplomat at the time.
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