To reclaim its sovereignty, Senegal must approach debt differently

In coordination with the African Union, Senegal can help set up a framework enabling African governments to demand a binding 20-to-30-year moratorium on debt service, resting on four provisions: the immediate suspension of all payments without accumulation of arrears; the mandatory allocation of freed resources to sovereign development expenditures, according to priorities set by national parliaments rather than creditors; a multilateral legal framework under UN auspices, shielding the mechanism from the regressive conditionalities of the Paris Club and the IMF; and a mid-term review clause based on human development indicators.

The solutionsThe position advanced here is not a wholesale rejection of external financing, but a call for a different sequence: debt treatment rather than restructuring; audit and accountability before new conditionality; fiscal space for productive investment rather than catch-up taxation; ownership and control over natural resources, rather than ceding them to foreign powers; sustaining social protection rather than curtailing essential services; and the grounding of any borrowing negotiation in a regional and continental balance of power rather than in a structurally unequal bilateral exchange.

This came after a previous deal was suspended following the discovery in July 2024 of concealed debt equivalent to approximately 25 percent of the country’s GDP, which brought public debt to over 130 percent of GDP, one of the highest ratios in Africa.