To reclaim its sovereignty, Senegal must approach debt differently

Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund and Senegal announced a new loan programme worth $2.2bn. This came after a previous deal was suspended following the discovery in July 2024 of concealed debt equivalent to approximately 25 percent of the country’s GDP, which brought public debt to over 130 percent of GDP, one of the highest ratios in Africa.This is what might be called a democratic betrayal of debt: The Senegalese people, who had been assured that their country was a model of macroeconomic stability, were presented with a bill that had been accumulating in secret for years.The discovery caused outrage and much public debate about how Senegal has been managing its debt. The idea of economic independence gained momentum and helped the governing Pastef party secure 80 percent of seats in the parliamentary elections in November that year.Today, almost two years later, the sovereignty agenda that animated the Senegalese voters is in jeopardy, not through formal renunciation, but through a gradual shift of framework, vocabulary and objective. The government is treating the international financial institutions as the only viable recourse for managing foreign debt instead...