I first set foot in Senegal in the mid-2000s. From the moment I landed at Aéroport International Blaise Diagne (Blaise Diagne International Airport), I fell in love with the rhythm of the country, the warmth of its people, the poetry in its Wolof greetings, and the sweet, crimson taste of Bissap juice that seemed to flow everywhere.
Senegal was a place that nourished both body and spirit. Nothing marked me more than my visit to Gorée Island. Walking through the Door of No Return, feeling the cold stone walls of that slave house, I carried away a wound that was also a vow: Africa must never again bow its head to chains, visible or invisible.
Back then, I struggled to speak with everyday Senegalese in the streets of Dakar. They spoke Wolof or French, and I was caught in silence. That frustration inspired me to learn French because I realized how tragic it was that as Africans we could not even fully converse with one another. From Gorée to downtown Dakar, the truth was obvious: our freedom was still incomplete.
It is with these memories in mind that I watched, with deep unease, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s recent visit to Paris. He was elected as a symbol of rupture, a promise to turn Senegal away from the tired rituals of dependency and into a new era of sovereignty. Yet there he was, smiling over breakfast with Emmanuel Macron, embracing him warmly, and offering up the same diplomatic platitudes that countless African presidents have recited before him.
Croissants in Paris, while back in Dakar the breakfast tables are bare. Families whisper about the rising price of rice, about cooking oil prices that drain their pockets, about their sons and daughters, graduates with brilliance in their eyes but no jobs in their hands. Fishermen stare at an empty horizon because Senegal’s seas have been sold off in opaque deals. In Touba, in Ziguinchor, in Kaolack, the real conversations are about survival. At the Élysée, the language was “reviewing cooperation,” “strengthening investment,” and “security agreements.” These are words we have heard for decades. They have become the music of dependency.
Let us be clear: whose security are these agreements protecting? Whose investment? France has always pursued its own agenda in Africa. It has sought resources, markets, and influence. Time after time, our leaders have walked to Paris, embraced the French president, and returned with polished chains presented as progress. Faye’s election was supposed to be the end of that pilgrimage. To see him fall back into it feels like betrayal.
The greatest omission of his Paris visit was the elephant in the room: the CFA franc. If there was ever a moment to show that a new era had dawned, it was this breakfast at the Élysée. Imagine if Faye had said: “We are beginning the irreversible journey toward monetary sovereignty.” Imagine if he had declared that Senegal would no longer be tethered to the French Treasury by an umbilical cord disguised as currency. That would have been a breakfast worthy of history. Instead, we heard silence on the CFA, as though the golden cage of Francophone economies did not exist.
This is not about hostility toward diplomacy. Any Pan-Africanist knows that diplomacy is necessary. What we reject are gestures without deliverables, handshakes without sovereignty, and smiles that hide chains. When Faye embraced Macron, it was not just a hug between two presidents. It symbolized the embrace of an old order that millions of Senegalese, and indeed millions of Africans, voted to end.
I write this not from malice but from hope. I believe in Senegal. I have walked its streets, I have tasted its food, I have heard the voices of its people, and I have seen the greatness that awaits if we break free from old scripts. That is why I urge President Faye: do not squander this moment. You were elected to be different. Show us that the breakfast in Paris was not a surrender but a strategic step toward liberation.
The people are watching. Africa is watching. And history is waiting for you to prove that your embrace in Paris was not the embrace of chains.
