Senegal is Africa’s democratic litmus test

Senegal has so far avoided the rash of military-led governments that have characterised several West African / Sahelian states but its status as a democratic state remains fragile. All of Africa is watching events in the country with more than the usual interest.

I was in Senegal in 2024, two weeks before the election. From the airport taxi to the hotel, I spoke with ordinary people. When I asked about the vote, the response – especially from the young, was strikingly consistent: a quiet, almost grim determination that there would be change.

Beyond that, they said little. It was a marked contrast to the garrulous openness I have often encountered elsewhere in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, where people, uninvited, readily volunteer not just answers but entire life stories.

I was impressed by this restraint, by its discipline, all the more so because, on the surface, the outlook seemed bleak. President Macky Sall dominated the landscape: his image ubiquitous, his grip on the media powerful. More troubling still, the principal opposition figures were in prison.

Then, shortly after my arrival, both were released. Yet the central figure, Ousmane Sonko, was barred from standing. In response, he made a shrewd move: he put forward a proxy, Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

Back in London, I followed events closely. When the results came, I was astonished but also, in hindsight, not surprised. My interlocutors had been right. The new leadership, powered by youth and a movement rather than a machine, won outright in the first round. No run-off. Faye became President; Sonko, Prime Minister.

Since then, I have watched Senegal closely. For me, it represented something rare: a democratic alternative at a time when many states in West Africa were moving in another direction.

Across the region, frustrated young people, no longer willing to risk death crossing the Sahara or the Mediterranean, were demanding a stake in their own societies. They wanted opportunities at home and governments that responded to their aspirations rather than to the perceived interests of former colonial powers like France or distant “investors.”

Organised political force

I have long been wary of the charismatic military rulers who have ridden this wave elsewhere. Not because a soldier-statesman cannot become a philosopher king and transform an economy, but because history suggests otherwise.

My own experience in Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s was marked by cycles of incompetence, corruption, and authoritarianism. Military regimes also suffer from a deficit of legitimacy. When challenged, they repress – and having spilt blood, find it impossible to relinquish power easily.

Senegal seemed different. Here were charismatic figures rooted in a genuine grassroots movement, not a cohort of officers. The resilience of that movement was evident in Sonko’s ability to substitute himself and still prevail. This was not a personality cult; it was an organised political force.

Their agenda was ambitious: reorient the economy toward job creation for young people; better integrate the diaspora; assert sovereignty, including by removing French military bases and reconsidering the West African CFA franc. At its core was a commitment to recalibrating Senegal’s relationship with France.

Yet even at the outset, the risks were clear. They did not control the National Assembly. Their partnership contained an inherent instability – the possibility that the “proxy” might eventually assert his autonomy. And financing such an agenda would be difficult, with public debt already around 75% of GDP.

The first challenge was overcome after the dissolution of the National Assembly and elections that handed the ruling movement parliamentary control. But the second challenge – the balance between Sonko and Faye – has now erupted into the open.

President Faye eventually dismissed Sonko as Prime Minister, in what appeared to be an attempt to consolidate Presidential authority. Yet Sonko’s political re-emergence as Speaker of the National Assembly may ultimately have strengthened rather than weakened him.

In Senegal’s political system, the position makes him effectively the second most powerful figure in the country, while also giving him an institutional base independent of the Presidency.

The rupture has now become ideological as much as personal. Sonko’s party, PASTEF/Les Patriotes, has publicly laid down conditions for cooperation with President Faye as he seeks to form a new government.

The party insists that cooperation must remain faithful to the programme on which it was elected in 2024: clarifying the management of sovereign debt, blocking measures that increase the cost of living, continuing the renegotiation of strategic contracts, intensifying anti-corruption efforts, addressing opaque public funds and maintaining oversight of judicial reforms and ministerial appointments.

Most revealing was the party’s warning that Faye should not approach individual members directly during consultations over the new government. Any member doing so, it declared, would be acting in a purely personal capacity. Negotiations, it insisted, must occur only with the party’s authorised structures. It was a remarkable public assertion that the movement- not merely the Presidency – remains the true source of legitimacy.

Unsustainable programmes

Meanwhile, the fiscal situation has deteriorated sharply. Debt has risen to 132% of GDP. Both the previous administration and the current one have borrowed heavily, but not in ways that expand productive capacity. Rather than investments that generate growth and employment, much of the spending has gone into social programmes – important, but fiscally unsustainable at this scale.

Recent events underscore the strain. Senegal narrowly avoided default, meeting nearly half a billion dollars in debt obligations after mobilising local resources when an IMF programme was suspended following the discovery of $13bn in undeclared debt.

But these measures come at a cost. A university student has died during protests, teachers have struck, and sectors such as construction have shed tens of thousands of jobs. With billions more needed in affordable long-term financing, Senegal is trying to navigate a narrow path between solvency and social stability.

What happens in Senegal matters far beyond its borders. As John F. Kennedy observed, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The alternative in much of West Africa has been military rule: decisive perhaps, but often blunt and brittle.

Senegal still offers a different possibility. But for that experiment to survive, African institutions – from the African Development Bank and Afreximbank to the continent’s commercial financial sector and the diaspora – should work to help create homegrown financial mechanisms capable of supporting democratic transformation in moments of acute economic strain.

If Senegal succeeds, it will demonstrate that democratic, movement-driven change can deliver. If it fails, the consequences will echo across a region already at a crossroads.

Written by, regarded as one of Africa’s most perceptive commentators, Onyekachi Wambu. He is a regular columnist for African Banker and New African magazines.