Africa Will Be Free When the IMF Stops Colluding to Steal Its Wealth
In countries like Senegal, the IMF has been complicit with irregular debt practices and fraudulent accounting in order to undermine sovereignty and favour multinational corporations.
In February 2025, Senegal’s Court of Auditors released a report that found ‘anomalies’ in the management of public finances between 2019 and 2024, during the presidency of Macky Sall (2012–2024). For instance, the court found that while Sall’s government had suggested that the budget deficit for 2023 was 4.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it was in fact 12.3%.
The court went to work on this reconstruction of public finances because of a very significant accusation made by Senegal’s new prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, at a press conference in Dakar in September 2024. What the auditors found, and what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) validated, was that the actual debt ratio in 2023 was 99.7% of GDP – not 74.7% – and that the deficit had been underestimated by 5.6% of GDP (in August 2025, the debt ratio was revised to 111% of GDP).
The financial situation in Senegal, Prime Minister Sonko said, is ‘catastrophic’ because of three problems inherited from the decade of Sall’s rule:
● An ‘unbridled debt policy’ that increased the country’s public debt while erasing the possibility of any growth to pay off that debt
● An administration that hid this indebtedness and the deep problems in the economy from the Senegalese people (who nonetheless rejected Sall’s chosen successor, Amadou Ba, in the March 2024 presidential elections and chose Bassirou Diomaye Faye instead)
● ‘Widespread corruption’, including the defrauding of the country’s COVID fund by four ministers