Senegal News - Breaking
Updated: Jan. 3, 2012
Senegal, long one of Africa’s most stable and admired countries, is embroiled in a miasma of political, economic and social problems as unmistakable as the fine dust that blows in from the Sahara every winter.
From the air, Dakar, the capital, looks like a metropolis on the move, a buzzing quadrilateral jutting into the Atlantic. Cars speed along a supple four-lane highway that hugs the rugged coastline. Cranes dot the seaside, building luxury hotels and conference centers, as investors from Dubai revamp the city’s port, hoping to transform it into a high-tech regional hub.
But on the ground the picture shifts. Jobless young men line the new highways, trying to scratch out a living by selling phone cards, cashews and Chinese-made calculators to passers-by. The port is full of imported food that is increasingly out of reach for most Senegalese.
The usual regional trappings of power — a $27 million monumental statue overlooking the capital, a new presidential plane, tinkering with the country’s Constitution — have not gone down well in a poor but proud West African country used to something better. They have led to a season of revolt, on the North African model, in this coastal country, a former French colony.
Hotly Contested Presidential Elections
Senegal’s political class is in seemingly permanent crisis. Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade, 85, after promising to step down, is seeking a third term in office in a hotly contested presidential election in 2012. The attempt to extend his time in office is a violation of the country’s Constitution, critics say, and it has unleashed a wave of protests.
In November 2011, the Senagalese singer and songwriter Youssou N’Dour, one of the biggest stars in the world music genre, announced that he was putting his career on hold to plunge into the political fray.
It’s not clear in what capacity Mr. N’Dour will be involved — as a candidate for public office or just lending his prestige and support to someone already in the running — or for how long. He announced that he would stop performing from Jan. 2 onward. “I am freeing myself from all artistic engagements to enter the political arena,’' Mr. N’Dour said in a live broadcast on a television station he owns.
During the broadcast, he also announced the formation of his own political movement, one of several opposed to Mr. Wade. Mr. N’Dour, who won a Grammy Award in 2005 for his CD '‘Egypt’' and has recorded with artists as diverse as Lou Reed and Neneh Cherry, has long been active in political causes, both at home and internationally.
An Aging Leader to a New Generation
Mr. Wade has in many ways staked his legacy on the rebirth of Dakar from a quaint colonial city to a major regional center, a kind of mini-Dubai for West Africa. It is the bequest of an aging leader to a new generation of Senegalese, the men and women he calls the Generation of Concrete.
Once a darling of international donors, who have spent millions to help Senegal build schools and clinics, pay off its debts and plan infrastructure projects, the country has found itself criticized by representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank over public spending and policies that have worsened the effects of rising food prices.
Above all, Senegal’s people seem to have lost their seemingly endless optimism. In recent years, tens of thousands of Senegalese have boarded rickety wooden fishing boats to try to sneak into Europe. Many thousands are believed to have died in these perilous crossings.
The discontent is keenest among young people, and their chosen mouthpieces: rap artists who have become the griots, or musical storytellers, of their generation, providing a soundtrack to their frustrations. But as the summer of 2011 brought riots with tear gas and tire burnings, as well as several large-scale demonstrations, these rappers have been doing more than chronicling the country’s perilous future — they have been firing up the crowds of young men who surged through the city’s streets, leading the demonstrators and — picked on by Mr. Wade’s police officers — serving as martyrs for the anti-government cause.
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