Senegal

Senegal is easy to admire, but the latest news from Senegal is worrying, and it forces observers to grapple with the country’s complexities and challenges. 

Senegal is a major center of West African Islam, and its imams, mullah, and brotherhoods are influential across the Sahel. The holy city of Touba, 120 miles east of the Senegalese capital of Dakar, i…

Tareian King is an intern with CFR's Africa Program and a student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. She is also the founder of Nolafrique, an e-commerce platform that enables ar…

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently completed his first trip in his current role to Africa. Over three days, he visited Dakar in Senegal, Luanda in Angola, and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where he a…

This is a guest post by Latanya Mapp Frett, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Global, the international arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Zahra, a teenage Muslim girl living in…

For many of us, the American lack of attention toward Africa is short-sighted and frustrating. It is to the great credit of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy that it has devoted the e…

President Obama met Nelson Mandela in 2005, when he was a senator from Illinois and speaks of him with glowing terms. Many Africans and Americans had hoped that the president’s trip to Africa would p…

Senegal has never had a military coup, and the opposition won last year’s presidential election. It is also a predominately Muslim nation. President Obama arrived in Senegal the evening of June 26. A…

This is a guest post by Kyle Benjamin Schneps; a dual master’s degree candidate at Columbia University and junior fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies in Dakar, Senegal. On 2 April 2013, Jo…

A week following the dark news of a military coup in Mali, Senegal’s presidential runoff is profoundly encouraging for African democrats. Incumbent president Abdoulaye Wade has conceded to, and congr…

Yesterday Senegal went to the polls and struck a powerful blow on behalf of democracy in Africa and in the Islamic world. President Abdoulaye Wade has held power for twelve years, and changed the co…

In a previous blog, I stated that the date of Senegal’s presidential runoff would be Sunday, March 18. This is only partially incorrect; civilians will vote on March 25. But President Wade allowed S…

Senegal’s constitution requires that a presidential candidate receive fifty percent of the total votes or face a run-off. Incumbent president Abdoulaye Wade received only thirty-five percent of the v…