In Senegal’s National Assembly, the question of transparency for the country’s highest authorities has moved to the center of political debate. A bill introduced by lawmaker Amadou Ba, of the ruling Pastef party, seeks to amend Article 37 of the Constitution to require the president of the Republic to declare his assets at the start and end of his term. But it is a government-backed amendment expanding the scope of that original text that is now drawing the most attention.
Presented by Justice Minister Moussa Sarr, the amendment proposes extending the same constitutional obligation to the prime minister and the speaker of the National Assembly. Meeting on Wednesday, August 12, the Committee on Laws, Decentralization, Labor and Human Rights adopted this extension, despite reservations raised over its form, including from within the ruling majority itself.
If the bill is ultimately passed, the country’s three leading political figures, the president of the Republic, the speaker of the National Assembly and the prime minister, would fall under the same asset declaration regime, with disclosures made public through the Constitutional Council. Parliamentary debate, which resumes as part of the National Assembly’s first extraordinary session for the 2026-2027 legislative year that opened Monday, will now need to work through the precise details of the reform and its practical implications for oversight of public officials’ integrity.
The initiative comes at a moment when accountability sits at the heart of Senegal’s institutional debate, a theme that has featured prominently in the discourse of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko since they took office, built around a promise to break with past governance practices. The subject remains a sensitive one, however: Senegal’s anti-corruption body, the OFNAC, has itself recently flagged delays in the submission of asset declarations among certain officials at the presidency and in state-linked institutions, underscoring the persistent difficulty of fully enforcing these obligations even under the current rules.
Debate over the bill comes as the National Assembly is also set to examine several other measures during the same session, including a resolution from the Pastef parliamentary group calling for a commission of inquiry into a number of contested acquisition deals. The parliamentary climate is otherwise tense, with opposition figure Barthélémy Dias recently denouncing what he called a « circus » in the Assembly and calling for new legislative elections.
Even so, the outcome of this debate over asset transparency will be closely watched, by political actors and civil society alike, as a test of whether Senegal’s new leadership is prepared to turn its promises of good governance into concrete action.
