Senegal: Analyzing PM Ousmane Sonko's Declaration of General Policy

A message of "rupture," but the content is technocratic and reformist.

On December 27, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko gave his long-awaited “Declaration of General Policy.” The Declaration is required of any new prime minister under Article 55 of the Senegalese Constitution. Originally scheduled for September of this year, the Declaration was postponed after President Diomaye Faye - a close ally of Sonko - dissolved the National Assembly (which he was allowed to do under the Constitution) and announced snap legislative elections for November. For context, Faye came to power in an upset this past March, defeating the then-ruling party’s candidate Amadou Ba and ending the political dominance of President Macky Sall (in power 2012-2024). From Faye’s inauguration in April through September, the new president and his prime minister were contending with a National Assembly still somewhat dominated by Sall’s coalition. In the November legislative elections, Faye and Sonko’s party, the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (French acronym PASTEF) won a supermajority, 130 out of 165 seats. Sonko’s Declaration thus came as a capstone to two major electoral triumphs for PASTEF in 2024.

Sonko (who, until 2024, was much more prominent nationally and internationally than Faye) and PASTEF are often dubbed “radicals,” especially in Western media coverage, and a major question concerning Faye’s presidency and Sonko’s time as head of government is how radical they will really be. On the one hand, Faye has moved towards expelling French troops and has, along with Sonko, talked of reimagining and reinvigorating Senegal’s economic and political sovereignty; on the other hand, Faye and Sonko have seemed relatively deferential to private investors and the International Monetary Fund.

Sonko’s Declaration is a lengthy document that has been summarized by various French-language media outlets (for example, here) as well as by the Prime Minister’s own office. The word that Sonko’s team appears to want the media and the public to retain is “rupture,” especially rupture with the Sall era. In the official summary, the Prime Minister’s office laid out seven forms of rupture, evoking the idea of ambitious, competent, modern, long-range governance in contrast to what Sonko depicts as the corruption and inefficiency of the Sall period.

In terms of specific policies, Sonko places fiscal policy at the center, arguing that the state needs more revenue and better targeted expenses - Sonko wants to both bring back taxes suppressed by Sall, such as a tax on incoming calls, but also to eventually reduce taxes while growing the pie, so to speak. Sonko also plans a reform of the tax code. One can see plainly here his (and Faye’s) background as a tax inspector and anti-corruption activist. Similarly, Sonko goes sector by sector - agriculture, commerce, tourism, education, etc. - promising modernization, competitiveness, and state support for private sector activities. Such rhetoric and plans are not radical; indeed, reform is not necessarily rupture. The Declaration comes across as quite technocratic, in fact, with an emphasis on long-term plans for updating every sector of government. The language used - making Senegal a “hub”, improving “good governance and transparency,” etc. - could have easily come out of a World Bank report or a United States Institute of Peace brief.

Where, then, is the “rupture”? Above all, Sonko points to a rupture with the Sall era - a return in some ways to pre-Sall policies, and a break with alleged corruption and mismanagement. One key policy mentioned in the Declaration is the abrogation of Sall’s amnesty law aimed at moving past the violence of the 2021-2024 period, when tensions between Sall and Sonko were at their height; Sonko disavows any intention to seek “vengeance,” but he wants to put “responsibility” for events on the perpetrators. Rupture, then, but also a reckoning.

The rupture also has to do with that much-used Sahelian buzzword, “sovereignty”; one of the five pillars of Sonko’s 2025-2029 strategy is “creating a Senegal that is sovereign in terms of the economy, energy, food, pharmaceuticals, science, technology, and security.” Here we will see how far the rupture goes - or whether Faye and Sonko are seeking to channel and benefit from popular sentiment, in Senegal and across the “coup belt” from Mali to Chad, against French neocolonialism. I wonder, though, if the vocabularies used to describe the “rupture” are indeed so like the vocabularies used in Paris and Washington, whether a meaningful advance of sovereignty will actually be achieved. At the same time, one could argue that many Senegalese do in fact simply want a government that works better - if Faye and Sonko can follow through on the promise of a government that has more resources and spends them more effectively, that could be enough to win them substantial popularity.

In any case, for the moment, Faye and Sonko continue to remain ascendant, politically; the media rollout of the Declaration appears to have been quite successful, with Sonko deepening his image, at home and abroad, as an agent of change. With the elections and the Declaration behind them, the new president and prime minister will now be assessed on how they govern.