THE words of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye were honey to taste. Following the bitter ending of the 12-year rule of Macky Sall, highlighted by the widespread belief that France is at the heart of Senegal’s misery, a forlorn country enthusiastically lapped up Faye’s promise of a future untainted by French shenanigans.Sall started well.
It’s a decision it would later regret. The country had to drag Sall through an economy in a shambles, a country falling apart, and over one dozen dead in street protests to get him out of office. By this time, he had already exceeded his constitutional term limit. Sall, in short, became the very thing that he campaigned against.And France? That’s a different story.
Let’s dial back. Like a number of colonies, especially the French ones, Senegal was a part of France, in law and spirit. Senegal’s first President Leopold Sedar Senghor and an in-law of France, was one of the nine African deputies at the Constituent Assembly in Paris in 1945 that prepared the constitution of the Fourth Republic, which brought de Gaulle to power.
At independence, even though Senegal was better off than a number of other countries, it still relied heavily on French subsidies to pay its bills. Of course, things have changed somewhat in the last six decades, but only somewhat. Faye and those in his corner would soon find that the truth is more nuanced. In today’s world, capital or investment is not monolingual. Whether it’s French, English, Arabic or Mandarin capital, it finds a home wherever it is made welcome, wherever it can find value.