In the area of foreign policy, the most serious step the new head of state plans to take is to reassess relations with the former metropolis. According to the South African Mail and Guardian, both the President and the Prime Minister are unanimous in agreeing that the partnership with France needs to be significantly adjusted to take Senegal’s interests more fully into account.

Paris has been closely following the situation in Senegal since the new President came to power. According to reports from the Élysée Palace, President Macron called President Faye on 29 March to congratulate him “warmly” on his election victory and, during a half-hour conversation that was “a very positive discussion”, stressed that France wished to “continue and intensify” bilateral ties.

For his part, the Senegalese President reiterated that Senegal would remain a “loyal ally”, recognising the partnership with Paris as “necessary” but which would need to be adjusted.

Pointing to France’s particular interest in maintaining ties with Senegal at the same level, Le Monde notes that even before the official announcement of Diomaye Faye’s victory, the day after the election on 25 March, President Macron congratulated him on his victory in his X (Twitter), not only in French but also in Wolof, the most widely spoken language in Senegal, stressing that he was “looking forward to working with him”.

In a recent interview with Radio France-Info, Faye said that the Senegalese would like this cooperation to be more fruitful for them than it is now. According to him, “we have been talking about this for a long time, but unfortunately we have not been listened to”.

At the same time, given the “left-wing rhetoric” of Senegal’s new leaders, as well as its economic dependence (France remains the country’s largest investor), the Élysée Palace is in no hurry to make official assessments of the processes taking place in the country, adopting a general wait-and-see attitude.

In this context, it is interesting to note a comment made by a former representative of the French Development Agency in Senegal, whose mission is to combat poverty and promote sustainable development, in which he stressed that “it is easy to make speeches about the sovereignty of a country, but it is quite another thing to govern it and to take measures against the French presence in that country when it is against one’s interests”.

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