By Rtd Lt Colonel Samsudeen Sarr
On 1 June 2026, Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye arrived at State House in Banjul for a one-day working visit. Yet, unlike ordinary diplomatic visits where leaders usually pretend to be transparent before disappearing behind closed doors, the objectives of this visit were unusually opaque. There was no detailed briefing before the visit, no joint communiqué afterward, and, perhaps most impressively, no press conference to clarify what exactly had been discussed.
Naturally, the official assumption was that the visit centered on bilateral cooperation and strengthening relations between Senegal and The Gambia. After all, that is the standard diplomatic script. Whenever leaders meet and nobody wants to explain why, “bilateral cooperation” becomes the safest phrase available. Yet the extraordinary secrecy surrounding this visit inevitably generated speculation, and plenty of it.
At the time of the visit, President Diomaye Faye had just dismissed his government, including his highly influential Prime Minister and political benefactor, Ousmane Sonko. For ten days, Senegal operated without a functioning government, which in African politics is either a crisis or merely a strategic pause, depending on who is explaining it.
This unusual vacuum raised obvious questions. Some observers speculated that Faye’s visit to Banjul may have served purposes beyond conventional diplomacy. One theory suggested that he needed a discreet location from which to consult potential cabinet members without leaks. The theory was not entirely absurd. In recent months, confidential activities within the presidential palace in Dakar had developed the remarkable habit of appearing in public. It seemed someone in Dakar had mistaken state secrecy for community radio programing.
Others speculated that President Faye sought indirect access to former President Macky Sall through President Adama Barrow, given the cordial relationship that still exists between Barrow and Sall. Whether true or not remains uncertain. However, events that followed made the speculation look less ridiculous than many initially thought.
Only three days after the Banjul visit, President Faye announced a new government with three former ministers from Macky Sall’s administration appointed to key cabinet positions. For a movement elected to dismantle the old system, bringing back old-system managers looked suspiciously like recycling rather than revolution.
For nearly a decade, Pastef’s identity was built on promises of systemic change, the dismantling of Senegal’s entrenched neo-colonial political and economic structures. That revolutionary vision, conceptualised by Ousmane Sonko and marketed to the electorate through Diomaye Faye, formed the basis of Faye’s overwhelming 54 percent electoral victory in 2024.
The electorate did not vote merely for a new president in a new suit. They voted for transformation, to retire the old machinery of power, and not to service it and put it back on the road.
Any significant retreat from that ideological platform understandably risks being viewed as a betrayal of public trust.
This explains why Pastef’s reaction has been extraordinary. Despite controlling a commanding parliamentary majority, 130 seats out of 165, the party refused to join Faye’s new government. Instead, it appears determined to become a formidable institutional counterweight to the executive, ensuring that every major financial and strategic decision is scrutinised, monitored, questioned, and if necessary, politically tortured under bright parliamentary lights.
Even more consequential was the elevation of Ousmane Sonko to the presidency of the National Assembly. Constitutionally, this grants him immense institutional leverage, arguably second only to that of the president himself.
Thus, while President Diomaye Faye may choose to revive policies reminiscent of the Macky Sall era, he lacks the authority, control, and political machinery that made Macky effective. In simple terms, Diomaye may inherit the steering wheel, but the engine belongs elsewhere.
Against this backdrop, one must ask whether it was prudent for President Adama Barrow to rush to Dakar on 11 June to revive bilateral agreements originally negotiated under Macky Sall’s administration and effectively frozen after Sall’s departure.
The visit produced a beautiful list of diplomatic declarations. Senegal and The Gambia signed agreements covering energy, border management, digital economy, youth development, technology, culture, tourism, higher education, research, and science. Both leaders emphasised cooperation, integration, implementation mechanisms, and all the elegant vocabulary diplomats deploy when everyone wants to sound productive.
On paper, these agreements look excellent though paper has always been the most successful beneficiary of African diplomacy.
One must distinguish between diplomatic poetry and measurable outcomes.
Many similar agreements were signed during the Macky Sall-Adama Barrow era. Yet despite seven years of warmth, smiles, handshakes, and carefully choreographed communiqués, very little changed regarding Senegal’s structural economic dominance over The Gambia.
The most glaring example remains Senegal’s longstanding economic strangulation of The Gambia’s re-export trade, a sector that once formed the backbone of the Gambian economy. Since the era of President Abdou Diouf in 1989, Senegalese policies have consistently undermined Gambian commercial competitiveness. Despite countless summits, meetings, councils, and declarations, this central issue remains stubbornly unresolved.
The hard truth is equally uncomfortable. The Gambia supported Macky Sall throughout his confrontation with PASTEF. During Sall’s crackdown, key PASTEF figures, including Sonko and Diomaye, were jailed, and the party itself was banned. Yet none of these measures succeeded in crushing the movement. PASTEF survived because of the extraordinary resilience of its militants and the determination of the Senegalese electorate.
That electorate ultimately made history by electing Diomaye Faye, then a relatively unknown figure, largely because Ousmane Sonko said, in effect, “Trust this man.” Sonko Moye Diomaye and Diomaye Moye Sonk) And they did.
Today, a similar sentiment persists among large sections of Senegal’s population. Their objective is increasingly to ensure that Sonko succeeds Diomaye in 2029. Given present dynamics, dismissing that possibility would be politically naïve.
This reality was further underscored during Sonko’s 16 June interview with RFI and France 24. When asked whether PASTEF was considering expelling Diomaye Faye from the party, Sonko performed the delicate art of political ambiguity. He neither endorsed nor denied the possibility. Diomaye, he said, would not be immediately expelled, but future disciplinary action remained possible. Any decision, he stressed, would follow party statutes and be decided collectively by party organs.
In my view, The Gambia’s strategic priority should not merely have been signing yet another round of bilateral agreements destined for official archives and ceremonial photographs. Rather, Banjul should have focused on helping restore political cohesion between Diomaye and Sonko.
Because divided leadership cannot deliver transformational change.
Diomaye alone lacks sufficient political capital to fundamentally alter the old system. His popularity is declining, and his room for maneuver is shrinking.
As Sonko once told Gambian authorities in Dakar, “If The Gambia and Senegal cannot resolve their neo-colonial problems and demonstrate to Africa and the world what successful unity can achieve, then we might as well abandon the campaign for African unity.”
