For several weeks, Alphoussény Diémé’s office has been constantly busy. The mayor of Djinaky, a commune of 25,000 inhabitants in Casamance, southern Senegal, sees worried parents coming in from morning to evening. “They come to us almost daily to ask about the status of their civil registry files,” he sighs, “but we don’t know what to tell them.”
According to the mayor, around 3,000 files, mainly birth certificate requests, are waiting to be processed. They involve children, some of whom have since become adults, born during the conflict that destabilised the region for more than four decades, starting in 1982. 1
In the Bignona region, where the commune of Djinaky is located, around 55,000 families were deprived of birth certificates due to massive population displacements and difficulties in accessing administrative services during the crisis. The signing of a peace agreement in May 2023 between the Senegalese state and the “Jakaay” faction of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) allowed approximately 250 fighters to officially lay down their arms and families began taking steps to regularise their situation.
“It hit us all of a sudden”
At the beginning of 2025, with a new peace agreement protocol signed on February 23 with the MFDC’s southern faction, families were supposed to start receiving their documents: “At our level, everything has been done and sent to the justice department. We are waiting for the feedback to update the registers,” assures the mayor of Djinaky. “Some children are very bright at school, they are supposed to take their certificate soon, but without a birth certificate, they can’t register. It’s as if they are stateless.”
This blockage finds its origin 7,000 kilometres away, in Washington, in the famous Oval Office of the White House. On January 20, under the gaze of the world’s television cameras, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending U.S. aid programs for 90 days, including those of USAID, the development aid agency. This radical decision was aimed at reassessing funding priorities and eliminating expenditures deemed ineffective. With a single stroke of the pen, Donald Trump created a shockwave felt around the world, exposing the dependence of some countries on foreign aid.
“We didn’t expect it… It hit us all of a sudden,” admits Alphoussény Diémé. “USAID covered various expenses related to the issuance of birth certificates, such as fiscal stamps or document printing, as the cost was often unaffordable for families.”
The program, called Aliwili and implemented by several NGOs in partnership with the Senegalese government, was not limited to civil registry issues: it also involved the resettlement of displaced populations through the construction of hundreds of homes, the reintegration of former combatants and their families, and the rehabilitation of certain infrastructure, such as roads, vegetable plots, and wells, with a total budget of 16 billion CFA francs (25 million euros).
“U.S. aid had reassured”
“This project was the realisation of the peace process between the Senegalese state and the Jakaay faction of the MFDC,” explains Henri Ndecky, the head of the Coordination of Civil Society Organizations for Peace in Casamance (COSCPAC). The 2023 agreement stipulates that, in exchange for the fighters laying down their arms, the state commits to their reintegration and, more broadly, to the development and opening up of the region. Marginalisation was one of the main causes of the conflict.
“We had to mobilise funds quickly,” recounts Henri Ndecky. U.S. aid had reassured everyone about the state’s ability to uphold its commitments.
In Casamance, local authorities and civil society are unanimous in calling for the resumption of the USAID program as soon as possible. “We’ve been asking for roads for years, but the state does nothing without its partners. We have no other solution for the moment: partners must continue to intervene,” warns Lamine Coly, coordinator of the Initiative for the Reunification of the Political and Armed Wings of the MFDC (Irapa), a structure established by the rebel group to negotiate with the authorities.
However, he excludes any reconsideration of the peace process: “No one has an interest in revisiting the past, but the program was supposed to serve as a showcase for moving towards a comprehensive peace agreement between the State of Senegal and all the factions of the MFDC.”
“These are issues of sovereignty”
The mayor of Djinaky also hopes for a swift resolution of the situation, but he questions the responsibility of successive governments: “We are talking about civil status, nationality, fundamental rights: these are issues of sovereignty. If the state had taken responsibility from the beginning, we wouldn’t be relying on the U.S. government’s decision.”
The effects of the sudden suspension of U.S. aid are not limited to Casamance. Across Senegal, development programs are now halted or running at a slower pace.
In public health, many community health centres that rely on subsidies for purchasing medications and recruiting staff are struggling to maintain their services. They work in areas as diverse as maternal and child health, family planning, nutrition, and the fight against HIV. Support programs for the education system, agriculture, and good governance have also been interrupted, leaving hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries abandoned.
Over the past five years, Senegal has received an average of 120 million dollars (114 million euros) per year from USAID, not including programs funded by other U.S. bilateral cooperation agencies. Among them is the Senegal Compact Power (led by the Millennium Challenge Corporation), which aims to improve access to electricity for nearly 13 million people, or 7 out of 10 Senegalese, in rural and peri-urban areas. Launched in 2021, it plans an investment of 600 million dollars, with 550 million in U.S. grants, and the remaining 50 million to be covered by the Senegalese state.
Senegalese “must work hard”
The USAID freeze and the concerns raised by the situation prompted a reaction from Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko during a speech on February 3 in Fass Touré (North): “Should we continue to depend on foreign aid?” he asked. "We must work hard on implementing our own programs. “If we do this, we will be mentioned in the coming years among the best-managed countries.”
This stance is far from surprising. It is at the core of his ideology. Since his entry into politics in 2014 and the creation of his party, the Senegalese Patriots for Work, Ethics, and Brotherhood (Pastef), Ousmane Sonko has advocated for a program of change, focused on reclaiming Senegal’s political, economic, and monetary sovereignty. Ironically, the head of government was speaking that day at the launch ceremony of a drinking water supply project, funded with 95 million euros from Chinese cooperation.
“It’s an entire development model that needs to be revised,” exclaims El Hadj Abdoulaye Seck, an economist with the Front for a Popular Anti-Imperialist and Pan-Africanist Revolution (Frapp), a movement close to Pastef. “Since independence, our leaders have yielded to the ease of aid,” he continues. The goal has always been to obtain liquidity quickly to fund programs for the upcoming elections.
The constraints “that are not suited”
El Hadj Abdoulaye Seck reminds us that this dependence comes at a cost. Firstly, Senegal finds itself at the mercy of the goodwill of donors. Furthermore, and most importantly, aid is not limited to grants and also takes the form of loans at preferential rates, known as “concessional loans”. Not only do these loans weigh on the debt, but moreover, they come with conditions, just like the grants: governance criteria or economic reforms that are not suited to our realities and push countries to renounce their sovereignty.“The Senegal Compact Power program includes, for example, a”reform“component that calls for a”restructuring“of Sénélec, the national electricity company, and an”increased involvement of the private sector in the production, transport, and distribution" of electricity, activities that Sénélec has held a monopoly on until now.
The debate on aid dependence has certainly been reignited and now takes on a very concrete dimension: “One could consider the suspension of U.S. aid as an opportunity for Senegal if we follow the logic of the new government, as it encourages putting this notion of sovereignty into practice,” analyses Babacar Ndiaye, Director of Research and Publications at the Senegalese think tank Wathi. “Now, the question is how things will unfold. If USAID’s activities are permanently halted, the Senegalese state will need to find an alternative.”
A critical financial situation
The ruling party, Pastef, did not wait for Donald Trump’s decree to develop its sovereignist vision. The focus of this strategy is the Vision 2050 Plan, an ambitious roadmap aimed at strengthening the country’s economic autonomy and tripling the per capita income by 2050. Launched with great fanfare in early October 2024, this plan focuses on addressing territorial inequalities and diversification, through key sectors such as agriculture, extractive industries, and information technology, with significant investments in education and healthcare.
The main hurdle for this plan is its financing: the implementation of phase 1 by 2029 is estimated at 18,000 billion CFA francs (27 billion euros), which is the entire GDP of the country (28 billion euros in 2023, according to the World Bank). The public budget must provide 62% of this amount. However, Senegal is in a critical financial situation: the latest report from the Court of Auditors, published in early February, estimates public debt at 99.67% of GDP as of December 31, 2023, an increase of almost twenty percentage points in five years. The magistrates point to, among other causes, the proliferation of project loans from various donors: USAID, Eximbank China, the World Bank, the French Development Agency, and the Islamic Development Bank.
To regain fiscal flexibility without resorting to new loans, the Senegalese government is first focusing on sustained growth, averaging 6.5% per year, thanks to the exploitation of oil and gas, which began in 2024. It also plans to better mobilise internal resources: broadening the tax base, reducing the state’s spending, and streamlining public expenditures.
“There are people who receive healthcare and food thanks to aid”
Finally, the authorities plan to involve the diaspora: in 2023, funds transferred by Senegalese abroad amounted to 1,600 billion CFA francs, more than the aid provided by all international donors combined. To capture this crucial source of funding for the country’s development, the government is preparing to issue bonds this year targeting its nationals abroad.
The Senegalese authorities do not completely rule out the idea of international cooperation and frequently mention “win-win partnerships”, without providing further details. For Babacar Ndiaye of Wathi, the reevaluation by the United States of their aid programs, under Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, lays the groundwork for a new form of cooperation, more transactional and almost exclusively focused on business, “similar to partnerships with non-Western powers, such as China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia”.
According to the researcher, it remains to be seen how the sovereignist discourse will withstand bilateral relations that are sometimes imbalanced. This new paradigm also helps redefine what falls under international aid and what does not. He continues: “Certain issues, such as health and education, will fall under the responsibility of the state; we can no longer wait for others to do things for us.”
Some in Senegal urge caution: “On both sides of the Atlantic, populists are seizing on the issue of aid to please their electorate,” warns Fadel Barro, co-founder of the citizen movement Y en a marre. “But the immediate question is not whether we should do without aid or not, because there are people who receive healthcare and food thanks to aid.” For the activist, Senegal must first focus on internal reforms to build a “state that serves the people”, with the separation of powers and a more democratic and transparent management of resources: “We have not identified what our needs are.” “Today, it is the donors who decide the priorities instead of Africans, and that is their freedom. But what are we doing?” he concludes.
