Every two years, the big trade fair for military and civil aviation takes place in Dubai. If billions are billions in Portuguese, how do you “translate” trillions? It was in this “harem of leather, gold and myrrh” that “Tightrope Senegal” pointed the azimuth to the West from Doha! As?
So, suddenly, he ordered nine Boeing 737 MAX 8s, with an option for six more. At 100 million a piece, the important thing last week was not the money, but the fact that Air Senegal was once again opting for American planes, for fleet renewal, 20 years later. This engagement presupposes consequent maintenance/financing/training, which reinforces Dakar’s strategic position, while hub West African aeronautics. Furthermore, Air Senegal has already expressed interest in opening new routes to “the Americas”, thus consolidating the fall, for our side, of the Humpty Dumpty that Senegal became from April 2, 2024, with the election of the current President (PR) Bassirou Diomaye Faye, based on the promise of a total split with France, which completely opened the flank to the “Russian neighbors”, in Mali. For them, access to the Atlantic is imperative and has been heavily disputed.
Since this April, we have tried to guess the paths of the Senegalese duo Diomaye Faye/Sonko, PR and PM, regarding the options for small and large strategy. And behold, what stands out to us is a residual purchase, in the face of the untranslatable trillions of Arabs, whose entire meaning is a “strategic option of the plan”!
Installing Boeing again in Dakar is “putting a spear in Africa, with the weight of an anchor”! It is to deny Russian plans to build deep-water ports in the NATO Atlantic. It is to reinforce the “Atlantic wall”, together with Mauritania, which keeps the Russians isolated in the Sahelian hinterland. It means not allowing the expansion of the Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Niger and Burkina) and reinforcing the incomplete puzzle that ECOWAS has become with the lack of these three! It is to continue the CFA Franc, a single currency that supports the “economy of the poorest in the parallel economy” on the street, and which finances social peace “in a way”!
The duo Diomaye Faye/Sonko, flags and cry of the new pan-Africanism, said it all as a defiant opposition to the “French Macky Sall”. Afterwards, they were confronted with “the constraints of exercising power”. Geography doesn’t change, Miss Universe wants to end hunger, but can’t, just like Trump wants to end the eighth war and win the Nobel Prize. I just wanted some Sanjo sneakers for Christmas. Neither Trump nor I will get them!
Political scientist/Arabist www.maghreb-machrek.pt. Write according to the old spelling