The Senegal IMF programme is back on track. The International Monetary Fund and Dakar reached a staff-level agreement on Tuesday. It is worth $2.2 billion. The deal comes nearly two years after a previous facility was frozen over a debt concealment scandal.
The freeze traces back to 2024. Senegal’s new government accused the administration of former president Macky Sall of hiding the true scale of public borrowing. That discovery forced the IMF to suspend a $1.8 billion programme it had approved only the year before, the arrangement that preceded the current Senegal IMF programme talks.
The numbers behind the scandal have shifted as investigators dug deeper. Senegal’s Court of Auditors initially put outstanding debt at 99.67 per cent of GDP. The IMF later calculated total public debt reached 132 per cent of GDP by the end of 2024. Misreported borrowing was estimated at more than $11 billion. Some independent analysts placed the hidden figure closer to $13 billion. These estimates are still evolving, since even the Fund and Dakar’s own auditors have not fully converged on one number.
Budget figures told a similar story of understatement. The Sall government had reported a 2023 deficit of 4.9 per cent of GDP. The true figure, once reassessed, stood at 12.3 per cent. That deficit has since narrowed sharply under the current administration. It fell from 13.4 per cent in 2024 to 6.4 per cent in 2025, largely through spending cuts.
The new Senegal IMF programme runs for 36 months. It is designed to support economic and financial reforms from 2026 to 2029. It still needs approval from the IMF’s executive board. It also depends on financing assurances from Senegal’s international partners. The Fund says decisive corrective measures tied to the earlier misreporting remain a condition too.
Dakar has agreed to pursue debt relief through an enhanced version of the G20 Common Framework. This mechanism helps heavily indebted nations restructure obligations with both traditional and newer creditors. Senegal’s bonds fell to record lows after the announcement. Notes were trading below fifty cents on the dollar and euro.
Finance minister Cheikh Diba described the agreement as a technical breakthrough. He said it opens the door to fresh financing prospects, Reuters reported from Dakar this week. That is a marked shift in tone from the drawn out and often tense talks of the past year.
Economic growth held up reasonably well through the crisis. Senegal expanded by 6.7 per cent in 2025. Growth was driven largely by the first full year of oil production from offshore fields. Analysts still expect growth to cool considerably in 2026, even as the Senegal IMF programme moves toward finalisation.
Behind the economics lies a bitter political story. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his former prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, were once inseparable allies. Both are former tax inspectors. They built the Pastef party together and were jailed shortly before the 2024 election that brought them to power.
That alliance has since collapsed, largely over how to handle the debt crisis and the shape of any Senegal IMF programme. Faye favoured a conciliatory approach toward the Fund. Sonko dismissed conventional restructuring outright, once branding it a disgrace for the nation.
Matters came to a head in May 2026. Faye dismissed Sonko as prime minister and dissolved the cabinet. He appointed economist Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo in his place. Parliament reinstated Sonko as a lawmaker days later. Lawmakers then elected him speaker of the National Assembly. That post hands him real influence over any Senegal IMF programme reforms requiring legislative approval, given Pastef’s commanding 130 of 165 seats.
Sonko has not softened his scrutiny of the new Senegal IMF programme. He called for greater transparency around the proposed debt treatment in a Facebook post this week. He insisted any commitments tied to the deal would ultimately be debated on the floor of the National Assembly, where his party still dominates.
The rift widened further in July. Faye launched his own party, Kiiraay. The move formally cemented his break from Pastef and from Sonko, who remains the movement’s leader and its most influential voice in parliament.
The Senegal IMF programme now awaits board approval. Its fate may hinge as much on the uneasy relationship between the presidency and the National Assembly as on the economics of debt sustainability itself.
