Following the victory of Bassirou Diomaye Faye on Sunday, March 23, 2024 as President of Senegal, the West African country will become the first in the African continent to elect the youngest president.
This is after Senegal’s ruling coalition candidate Amadou Ba has called the opposition’s Diomaye Feye to concede victory in Sunday’s presidential election when unofficial results showed that Mr Faye had a strong lead over Mr Ba, a government official said.
President Sall congratulated Mr Faye saying the win is for the people of Senegal.
Prior to the election, Mr Faye had been in prison for 10 days before the polls. The message of Mr Faye has centered on the promise of radical change.
The first set of results which was announced on television overnight showed that Mr Faye had a majority win of votes. The led in the count triggered celebrations in the nation’s capital, Dakar.
However, the official results from the election are expected in the coming days.
The polls followed months of political turmoil in one of Africa’s most stable democracies, after outgoing President Macky Sall tried to postpone the election until December. The other 15 candidates in the election had already conceded defeat.
The yet to be declared president, Mr Faye, turned 44 on Monday.
Mr. Clean as he is now called, Mr Faye says fighting poverty, injustice and corruption are top of his agenda. He maintains that Gas, oil, fishing and defence deals must all be negotiated to better serve the Senegalese people.
He is also expected to usher in an era of “sovereignty” and “rupture” as opposed to more of the same. Senegal’s president-elect says he will drop the much-criticised CFA franc currency, which is pegged to the euro and backed by former colonial power France.
Mr Faye wants to replace it with a new Senegalese, or regional West African, currency, although this will not be easy.
“He will have to deal with the reality of the budget to begin with… But I see that he has a lot of ambition,” former Prime Minister Aminata Touré, who served under outgoing President Macky Sall told the BBC.