An Oasis of Stability in a Sea of Turbulence: Has Senegal anything but Stability to look Forward to?

By Benjamin A. Okonofua

Senegal, a country of 13.5 million people, is one of Africa’s most robust democracies. It successfully transitioned from one civilian rule to another in 1960, when it gained independence from France, and its political system transformed into a multi-party democracy. All these despite tremendous social, political, and economic upheaval in many African states, especially bordering states like Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau. Though the regional environment is highly volatile, including threats posed by the growing radical Islamism in the Sahel-Saharan region, Senegal also faces enormous domestic challenges that make its socio-political stability fragile. Senegal is the site of the longest-running low-level separatist insurgency in Africa, a conflict that has defied many attempts to form terms for a truce or outright settlement. Because of this external and internal context, this report considers Senegal’s stability a material contradiction. Senegal’s stability, though tenuous, is likely to continue to hold due to a confluence of factors favorable to stability, including its integrative national constitution; its legacy of democratic governance; the existence and dominance of non-radical Sufi brotherhoods; high levels of interaction between civil authorities (and populations) and Senegal’s military; and huge remittances from Senegal’s diaspora communities. Click here to read the full report.