« Un défaut du Sénégal serait une catastrophe ! » Quand la finance ouest-africaine vient au secours de Dakar - Jeune Afrique

Senegal's deteriorating fiscal position has triggered a rare coordinated intervention from regional financial institutions, signaling growing anxiety about potential sovereign default across West Africa's largest monetary union. The intervention underscores a critical vulnerability in the WAEMU (West African Economic and Monetary Union) architecture that European investors have largely underestimated when evaluating their exposure to the region's most creditworthy economy. Senegal's debt crisis emerged gradually but dramatically. The country's public debt climbed to approximately 68% of GDP by 2023, driven by ambitious infrastructure investments, pandemic-related expenditures, and deteriorating tax revenues. When President Bassirou Diomaye Faye took office in April 2024, he inherited a fiscal time bomb—a budget deficit exceeding 10% and limited fiscal space. Unlike some African nations, Senegal had maintained its reputation as the WAEMU's financial anchor, hosting the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) and serving as a gateway for regional investments. The regional response reveals precisely why this matters for European stakeholders. A Senegal default would destabilize the entire 8-country monetary union, potentially triggering capital flight from other members including Ivory Coast and Mali. The BCEAO's foreign exchange reserves, technically backing the CFA franc's peg to the euro, would face severe pressure. For European financial institutions holding