Democracy wins in Senegal: a new dawn in the African horizon

Afrikki network and its member organizations extend their congratulations and best wishes to the newly elected President of Senegal – Mr. Bassirou Diomaye Faye – and his people.

Bassirou Diomaye Faye in Dakar, Senegal, on March 25.

This victory has rekindled the hopes and rewarded the efforts of citizens engaged for years in the struggle for the just recognition of their fundamental rights against increasingly oppressive regimes.

This election, and the manner in which it was bitterly won, will go down in history as an example of resilience, perseverance, collective sacrifice and the mobilization of institutions and forces from all sectors of Senegalese society. 

This election, demanded and obtained by the people, is a great victory. Those who paid for it with their lives or their freedom are its eternal heroes.

May the wave of hope raised by this victory sweep across the continent from west to east. May it sweep away the Afropessimism and the fatalistic rhetorica that condemns Africa to autocratic, military regimes that, in the name of stability and security, should be passed from father to son. 

We believe that this hope will not be in vain, and that it will herald the long-awaited democratic Spring of the African people. 

We look optimistically to the horizon, to the promise held out by African, pan-African and anti-colonial democratic resistance.