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Links between Senegal and France go back more than three centuries. Senegal was France's oldest colony in black Africa, and the two countries have maintained the close ties developed during the colonial period since political independence in 1960. The article argues that decolonization in fact reinforced the ties between Senegal and France, rather than the opposite, and that this "special relationship" is only now changing. Senegal has recently begun to diversify its foreign relations, both within Africa and elsewhere. President Abdoulaye Wade, who won the 2000 presidential election and whose party now controls the government, has sought closer relations notably with Washington but also with London. As one of the leading promoters of the New Partnership for African Development, Wade has also sought to build stronger links within Africa, particularly with South Africa and Nigeria. The days of the Franco-Senegalese "special relationship" appear to be numbered.
Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal, died on December 20, 2001. Poet and statesman, "father of the nation," but also from 1984 a member of the Academie Francaise, the pinnacle of France's literary establishment, Senghor was an enthusiastic Francophile. He led his country through the turbulent post-war period of transition from French colonial rule to political independence in 1960 and served as its president until 1980, maintaining close relations with France throughout this period. As president of Senegal, he earned a reputation as an enlightened African leader who bequeathed to his country stability, a relatively open society with a vigorous free press, and a functioning democracy. Yet, in a country where life expectancy barely reaches fifty, many of those who lined the streets of Dakar to watch Senghor's funeral procession were not yet born when he left office and would thus have known little of him. Even for those who were alive during the Senghor era, he remained a distant figure, part of a political elite that, literally, rarely spoke their language: although French is the country's official language and the links between the two countries date back three centuries, only some 20 percent of the population is actually literate in French. Wolof, not French, is the most widely spoken language.1
Thus, many Senegalese knew him above all as l'homme de la France (the man...