Senegal's Youth Turn On The President

Senegal’s Youth Turn on the President They Helped Elect SENEGAL Senegal In March 2024, Senegalese voters outmaneuvered a term-limited leader attempting to stay in power, propelling a young opposition candidate just released from prison into the presidency and giving his party a legislative majority later that year. It was students at the forefront of that victory. Now, two years later, many of those young voters say they feel betrayed by President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, blaming his administration for failing to disburse students’ financial aid payments and for the violence at recent protests over the stipends that killed one student. “We were just kids, but we were fighting for him – I can’t believe he is doing this to us today,” Khadija Ndiaye, 19, a history student, told the Associated Press, adding that she hasn’t received her payments for three months. “He said in his campaign videos that a student can no longer survive without a stipend. It is not normal today for him to stand before us and say that a student can survive without a stipend.” Ndiaye added that the government doesn’t understand or care about students’ realities. “(Officials’) kids are not even in Senegal, they’re in the United States, Europe, anywhere,” she said. “You’re never going to see the son of a minister or a president here at the university.” The ongoing protests broke out in December at Senegal’s top public university, Cheikh Anta Diop University, in the capital of Dakar, over unpaid government financial aid payments to students. The payments range from 20,000 to 60,000 CFA francs (between $36 and $109) per month, and are often the students’ only source of income, and at times, an entire family’s. Some students say they haven’t been paid in a year. Part of the problem with the payments lies in Senegal’s economic situation. After the new administration took over, it conducted an audit that found hidden debt inherited from the previous administration, which left a $13 billion budget hole. Talks with the International Monetary Fund for financial aid have stalled. As a result, bills have gone unpaid, the government’s reform plans have stalled and public grumbling has grown over cuts and a dire economic situation that has hit those under 35 – 75 percent of Senegal’s 19 million – the hardest. At the same time, repeated closures by the university over the past few years, also due to protests, have caused problems with the payment schedule. In 2024, students protested in support of Faye and current Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, who were key opposition leaders at the time. Their pledges to tackle corruption and turn around the economy raised the hopes of many young Senegalese, helping to bring them to power in spite of attempts by President Macky Sall to stay put: His regime jailed Sonko, barred him from running in the elections, canceled the vote, and instituted a deadly crackdown on protesters opposing his administration. The protests that broke out in December, meanwhile, were initially peaceful. However, violence broke out when university officials closed campus cafeterias after students refused to pay for meals, and when officials closed the dorms, forcing some students to return to their villages in the countryside. During these demonstrations, some students set buildings and cars on fire and clashed with police, who, human rights groups say, used “disproportionate force” against protesters, deploying nightsticks and tear gas, detaining students and allegedly “torturing” one to death. One student, Ablaye, recounted to Agence France-Presse how police repeatedly hurt him: Police officers forced their way into his room in the student dorm, dragged him out and beat him in the hallway. He says he was beaten again and again by three more groups of officers. “When I was bleeding too much, they took me to the Red Cross,” he said, displaying a dozen stitches on his head. “I knew it would be like this with this regime, it’s business as usual – a break with the past is impossible.” Still, the death of Abdoulaye Ba, a second-year medical student who was not a protester, was a tipping point, say observers. Since then, Senegalese officials have admitted to police brutality and promised an investigation into the student’s death. Interior Minister Mouhamadou Bamba Cissé expressed his condolences to Ba’s family. Even so, he said violence was caused by both parties. However, a state prosecutor said last week that Ba, who died of head injuries, was killed in a fall from his fourth-floor dorm room, setting off new outrage among the students. Student Madawass Diagne, who helped raise funds to pay for students’ journeys home after the student housing closed, told Reuters he voted for Faye and now felt let down. “We are (facing) the same injustices we were fighting against (before),” he said, referring to the prior administration. “It’s like (the president) betrayed a whole country.”