Senegal president in Mauritania for first foreign visit

NOUAKCHOTT: Senegal’s new President Bassirou Diomaye Faye on Thursday visited neighbouring Mauritania on his first official trip abroad since his election at the end of March, the two presidencies said.

Faye arrived in the capital Nouakchot late morning, according to a journalist.

The 44-year-old leader will conduct a “friendship and working visit” due to last a few hours, the presidencies said, during which he is set to hold talks with his Mauritanian counterpart Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, before a meeting of delegations from the two West African states.

Senegal and Mauritania share the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) liquefied natural gas field on their maritime border, jointly developed by British energy giant “BP,” the American company “Kosmos Energy,” the Mauritanian hydrocarbons company “SMH” and the Senegalese stateowned “Petrosen.”

Production at the gas field, on which the two neighbours are pinning their hopes for development, is scheduled to begin later this year.

Faye, who became Africa’s youngest democratically elected president on a promise of radical reform, had vowed on the campaign trail to prioritise key assets such as the oil, gas and fishing sectors.

Senegal has a fisheries agreement with Mauritania and is partly dependent on the country for its fish supplies.

The heads of Senegalese fishing organisations have asked Faye to bring up the release of Senegalese pirogues boarded for inspection in Mauritania ater being accused of failing to comply with Mauritanian legislation, Senegalese media reported on Thursday.

In November 2021, work began on a bridge linking Rosso-mauritania and Rosso-senegal, a town on both banks of the Senegal River and vital for trade between the two countries — but no completion date has been given.

Anti-establishment figure Faye swept to a first-round presidential victory on March 24, beating the governing coalition’s candidate former prime minister Amadou Ba, to become Senegal’s fith president since independence in 1960.

Faye is due to travel on Saturday to The Gambia, a tiny country surrounded by Senegal, according to a Senegalese government statement.