Senegalese “repatriates”, the future of the country?

Leaving to return better. This is the choice of some Senegalese who have returned “home,” as Ousseynou Guèye says in Le Soleil . This digital entrepreneur now heads a structure of around forty employees in Dakar. Trained in political science in Senegal and France, he worked at Google before returning to the country in 2019. And he says he cannot “afford to acquire skills and share them with another country” when more than half of the population lives below the poverty line in Senegal.

Mame Kankou Traoré Mboup is one of those “repatriates” portrayed by the Dakar daily. In 2021, she “did not hesitate to answer the call of her native country after twenty years in France.” A Senegalese high school graduate in the early 2000s, she flew to France, like 17,000 of her compatriots, and enrolled in a business school. “I learned my trade in digital marketing in two large French organizations, before joining a media company specializing in construction and architecture for more than ten years. Later, I made a commitment to fight to facilitate real estate investment in Senegal,” explains the now director of a luxury real estate agency in Dakar.

A trend verified by studies, as Abdoulaye Niang, sociologist and president of Kocc-Barma University in Saint-Louis, a specialist in migration issues, explains in this two-article dossier in the Dakar daily : “Today, real estate has established itself as the main investment sector for the diaspora,” says Professor Niang, who attributes this trend “to galloping urbanization, the certain profitability of the sector and the security it offers.”

Senegalese expatriates represent 4% of the population. These talented individuals, better trained abroad than in Senegal due to a lack of sufficient investment, are a financial boon for the state. Each year, 1,600 billion CFA francs (2.5 billion euros) in financial transfers enter the country of Teranga, or around 10% of the national GDP. “The largest share is intended for subsistence expenses,” analyzes Professor Diang .

“If the diaspora wants to contribute more significantly, it must shift its investment focus to sectors such as agriculture and processing SMEs.”

In Dakar, the new government, embodied by President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, both from Senegal's tax inspectorate, is not mistaken. Radio Télévision Sénégal is reporting on the launch by the former political opponent turned head of government of the "1,000 Agricultural Volunteers program, a unique initiative designed to support the 2025-2026 agricultural campaign and strengthen Senegal's food sovereignty," in which the diaspora is invited to participate.

Defined by Ousmane Sonko as a “strong patriotic act ” and a “ proof of love for the nation”, this program is in line with Professor Niang, who considers that “this love for one’s own people, for the land, can be transformed into a patriotic bomb for economic development”.

Mariame Wone, a “repatriate” quoted by Le Soleil and director of a coaching and training center, does not say the opposite: “I am a pure product of the Senegalese school system. If I can participate in the development of its youth – and even those who are not so young – why not? It is a mission that I have given myself.”

While the desire to regain control of sovereignty has never been so strong in the country of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the new Prime Minister has notably promised to facilitate the return of these Senegalese talents “to the fold” .