Senegal: The State relies on local content to escape the oil curse

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese abroad, Aissata Tall Sall, said on Tuesday that the State of Senegal will escape the curse of oil by having adopted the law on local content in the hydrocarbon sector.

Yes, Senegal, believe me, will escape this Fatwa that speaks of the curse of oil, which is based on nothing but the fact that in other countries, oil has very often been a source of conflict,'' she said.

To do this, she said, the head of state, in his capacity as an engineer who knows the issues related to oil has passed in 2019, a law on local content "full of wisdom", for having taken into account "the mistakes" of other countries exploiting hydrocarbons in relation to where they have not succeeded and where they have least succeeded.''

According to Aissata Tall Sall, this law adopted following "extremely important consultations and debates" now allows "each Senegalese actor, through his expertise, his experience, his work, his theoretical or practical knowledge of oil, to find an opportunity to work around this oil.

The will of the Head of State, she said, is that "what the Senegalese know how to do by themselves, they will do completely. What they know halfway, they will do with others to better acquire the expertise and be able to do it themselves.

"And even in the organisation of our territorial administration, the president, in a concern for territorial equity, has said that there are funds that will go to the communes in whose territory these resources were found, while the other part will be distributed to all the communes of Senegal," she said.

According to the head of Senegalese diplomacy, "the poor distribution of wealth has been the most triggering factor of all these hostilities, these civil wars that have ended in rebellions and secessionist tendencies.

"This is what has generated all the conflicts that you have seen because the populations have been left out in the cold, the populations that are suffering the consequences of exploitation. This has created frustration with the deprived populations who have started to drill gas pipelines, to drill pipelines and to get the oil out to get their fair share of the resource.

With this in mind, Aissata Tall Sall believes that Senegal will be "the exception that will escape the oil curse".

"So my conviction is that oil and gas will be exploited in 2023 and our people will see that they are going to be part of the game and not the object of the game. And I think that this is one of the elements that will allow us not to fall into this fatwa that predicts the curse of oil everywhere. Senegal will be the exception to this fatwa," she insisted.