Doha: President of Senegal H E Bassirou Diomaye Faye emphasised that Africa requires a unified voice to confront and address its challenges, including poverty and climate change, and find fundamental and radical solutions to various problems.
In his speech at Doha Forum yesterday, the Senegalese President highlighted the major challenges facing Africa, particularly in the Sahel region, including security issues such as extremism, violence, drug trafficking, and human trafficking.
He stressed the need to establish peace and create platforms to enhance dialogue and consultation among different countries, especially in West Africa. He pointed out that his country played a fundamental role in peacemaking, due to its absolute belief in the importance of building bridges of communication between countries.
The President pointed out that Senegal is committed to managing its natural resources responsibly and sustainably, emphasizing the importance of public participation in these resources with transparency and governance measures.
Since the beginning of natural resource exploration, Senegal has set up a joint council to oversee this process transparently, involving civil society and labor unions to ensure integrity and transparency.
He mentioned that, according to the Senegalese constitution, these resources belong to the people, cautioning against over-reliance on them and underscoring the necessity of diversifying income sources and ensuring equality among all regions in order to not only focus on cities, and ignore the requirements and needs of rural areas. He also stressed the importance of using these resources to develop other sectors such as agriculture to achieve food independence and digital businesses to engage the youth, given that 70% of the Senegalese population is under 35.
