A month before snap parliamentary elections, Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko on October 14 unveiled an ambitious plan for the country’s development over the next 25 years.

For his part, Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko considers that there is an urgent need to rebuild economic structures because “the development models that have been presented to us or applied to us so far will never be able to develop our country.”

“So this is the end of the era of reckless indebtedness used to invest in projects that have nothing to do with building endogenous and sovereign development,” the Prime Minister concluded and suggested that Senegal should orient itself to the mineral-poor Japan as a compelling example of successful development for all African nations.

“Senegal 2050”

Presented under the title “Senegal 2050,” the plan envisions putting an end to foreign dependency and debt within 25 years and achieving economic sovereignty through better utilization of natural resources, especially oil and gas, the development of human capital and improved governance. The aim is to reduce the country’s dependence on the export of raw materials by organizing deeper mineral processing within the country, thus boosting the development of Senegal’s private sector.

According to planning estimates, by 2050, economic growth is expected to average 6 percent per year, through the development of the oil and gas sector, and other industries, while per capita income is expected to triple. During the implementation period of the plan, it is envisaged that 100 percent of the population will gain access to electricity, from the current 68 percent.

Based on the fact that the discovered hydrocarbon reserves in Senegal’s offshore waters are estimated at 1 billion barrels of oil and 40 trillion cubic feet of gas, the new authorities expect the oil and gas........

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