Agence de Presse Ouest-Africaine
Agence de Presse Ouest-Africaine
Senegal news and analysis — Dakar politics, elections, the economy and society, with the latest updates from West Africa News Agency.
ECOWAS's permanent representative to the African Union, Hon Kolley, joined a panel on emerging human rights issues at a forum in Dakar marking 45 years since the African Charter's adoption. He cited the 2001 Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, ECOWAS Human Rights Day and the regional network of national human rights institutions, and called for greater focus on implementation.
Four translation students from Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis in Senegal are interning at the ECOWAS Commission's Translation Section under the PAMCIT programme, which the Commission currently chairs. They are among six students awarded study scholarships by the Commission, and they paid a courtesy visit to Director of Conference and Protocol Olukemi Robinson-Atabuh.
A study of 644 rice-farming households in Senegal finds that credit access has no significant average effect on adopting improved seed varieties, but is positively linked to adoption and planted area where land tenure is secure, and negatively linked to adoption where it is not.
The ECOWAS Gender Development Centre and Spain's AECID met in Dakar on October 20, 2026, to review their Institutional Support and Obstetric Fistula projects and to discuss new collaboration on the care economy and climate action. The two sides agreed to pursue technical consultations on a second phase of the support project and discussed attending the 10th Global Conference on Obstetric Fistula in Dakar in December.
The outgoing and incoming chairs of the ECOWAS Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff visited Nigeria's Chief of Defence Staff in Abuja on 13 October 2026 as the committee's leadership passed from Sierra Leone to Senegal. Lieutenant General Amara Idara Bangoura and Vice Admiral Oumar Wade sought continued Nigerian support for the committee's work. General O. O. Oloyede commended the outgoing chair and pledged support to his successor.
ECOWAS and UN Women convened an online consultation on 12 October 2026 to build a common regional position on the care economy, climate action and the green economy. Senegal, which chairs the ECOWAS Authority, presented a joint declaration that will feed into an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa on 28–29 October ahead of CSW71 in New York.
Senegal's recurring controversies over dance, dress, abortion and family law reflect a long-running argument about moral boundaries that dates back to the colonial-era Code. A scholar writing in The Conversation argues that conservative groups have acquired significant influence in the political arena, and that the country's political class has largely accommodated them. He traces how moralization became a shared electoral language across camps.
Senegal is set to accept a $2.2 billion IMF programme under the Extended Credit Facility after its public debt was revised to 132% of GDP. Academic Souleymane Gueye argues the Fund is intervening in a crisis it failed to anticipate and warns that fiscal consolidation alone risks repeating the structural adjustment cycle of the 1980s.
Senegal has recorded 114 confirmed diphtheria cases and 11 deaths across 12 of its 14 regions as of 20 September 2026, with the Ministry of Health warning the epidemic is progressing rapidly. The outbreak, first detected in Kédougou in late July, marks the country's first diphtheria epidemic in more than twenty years. A researcher who studied a related outbreak in Guinea explains how the disease spreads, why it kills, and why vaccination gaps are driving its return.
Young Nigerians won a constitutional amendment in 2018 lowering age limits for elective offices, but high nomination fees and rising campaign spending limits continue to block their path to power. A West Africa Youth Democracy Conference in Dakar brought delegates from 12 countries together to discuss the gap between legal rights and financial reality.
