On May 20, you organized a virtual round table serving on employment, territories and local development in Senegal, discussions that you believe showed the potential for economic transformation of regions that can become a reality when local elected representatives have a vision., A strong commitment and ability to mobilize resources in service of their projects.
Yes, quite. We organized this roundtable discussion with our partner, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, in a series of 40 interviews with local elected officials from different regions of Senegal that were published on our Senegalese policy website. But also a few months after the sudden and violent socio-political crisis that revealed, or rather confirmed the discomfort of young people in search of jobs, income and hope.
Since these events in March, the Senegalese president has not given more speeches without talking about job creation and opportunities for young people. The authorities have also decided to give more local communities space to create economic opportunities for young people.
We invited two local elected representatives, Magatte Wade, Mayor of Ngaye Mékhé, located in the middle of the Dakar-Saint Louis road junction, and Serigne Gueye Diop, Mayor of Sandiara, located about one hundred kilometers from Dakar. We did not choose by chance: they are two elected officials who have great ambitions for the economic and social development of their regions.
By giving them the floor, we wanted to understand exactly the real scope for action that exists at the local level to create value and jobs and the major constraints to unleash the potential of the regions. It quickly became apparent that the previous professional experience of these elected officials enabled them to increase their willingness and ambition to do well in their ability to act methodically.
Is it necessarily necessary to have locally elected officials with a high university degree, extensive regional or even international professional experience and address books in order to have positive changes in the municipalities?
The issue is sensitive and it would be dangerous to forget that elections at both local and national level must first enable citizens to be represented and that voters have the right to form their opinion on the basis of very different assessment criteria. Being a college graduate is really no guarantee of integrity, commitment to the public good or even productivity at work.
But it is indisputable to listen to one mayor who was especially the communications director of a large African financial institution and another who is a brilliant researcher, who had a rich career in multinational companies, there is no There is no doubt that their personal background nourishes their ambitions and their confidence in the ability to mobilize resources to carry out their projects.
When Serigne Diop, the mayor of Sandiara, talks about the policy of industrialization, he cites the experiences of several countries in South America, South Africa or Nigeria where he has worked. When he decides to create a financial city in his city Sandiara to cater to banks, insurance companies, auditing companies, “data centers”, he explains that it is about doing as the Moroccans, South Africans or Kenyans.
The two mayors but also all the other speakers you invited spoke a lot about education, science and technology as inseparable from policies to promote employment and entrepreneurship.
Absolutely. It’s not about creating jobs to create jobs. The aim is to stimulate the creation of textiles for successful small and medium-sized enterprises. This presupposes that young people come from educational centers that deserve the name. The mayor of Ngaye Mecké, the capital of leather processing in Senegal, believes that small businesses are needed to manufacture intermediate products for the leather industry, such as buckles, glue, paint, nails, dyes …
These exchanges repeated what we considered to be one of the most important lessons from the global health crisis for African countries: to prioritize everything that contributes to building the capacity to produce much more locally. In the next 5, 10, 20 years by revolutionizing education systems and financial incentives.
The entire virtual round table is available on the WATHI Youtube page and interviews with local elected officials on the website senegalpolitique.org
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