Demanded by part of civil society, the citizen audit of Senegal’s debt will carry weight in the ongoing renegotiation only if it settles its method before announcing its conclusions.

The citizen audit of Senegal’s debt will serve no purpose if it does not settle its method before delivering its conclusions. Yet the debate centres on its principle, which almost no one disputes any longer, and very little on how it should be conducted.

The timetable makes this gap costly. The government is preparing the restructuring of around 5 billion dollars of Eurobonds1, and the holders of these securities made it known on 13 October, in a letter reported by Reuters, that they would refuse any haircut. In this negotiation, every argument about the legitimacy of a loan will be scrutinised by lawyers paid to contest it. An audit whose criteria have not been set in advance will not pass this test.

A well-founded demand

The demand stems from an observation that no one can any longer dismiss. In February 2025, the Court of Auditors established that central government debt stood at 99.67% of GDP at the end of 2023, whereas official documents showed 74.4%2. The taxpayers who repay these loans have the right to know what they were used for and under what conditions they were signed. They are also entitled to ask whether some of them were illegitimate.

Criteria set before the files are opened

Odious debt, a concept of international law, refers to a loan contracted against the interests of the population. It further requires that the lender knew this at the time of signing. A debt that has simply been misused confers no right of this kind: it engages the responsibility of those who managed it, not that of the creditor. The audit must state in advance into which category it will place each loan, and on what evidence.

Ecuador showed what an audit backed by explicit criteria can produce. The commission set up in 2007 by President Rafael Correa concluded that part of the sovereign bonds were illegitimate, and the country stopped servicing them in December 2008, before buying back most of them in 2009 at around a third of their value3. The Greek commission of 2015 delivered more radical conclusions without any consequence ensuing: the third memorandum, signed in August of the same year, set them aside. Neither of these two experiences can be transposed to Senegal without adaptation to national budgetary law and to the contracts signed between 2012 and 2024.

Contracts to be obtained

No audit can rule on a loan whose contract it has not read. It needs the loan agreements with their amendments, as well as the guarantees and the decisions that authorised each commitment. The report by the firm Forvis Mazars, delivered to the government in June 2025, has still not been published in full. The only public document remains the July 2026 statistical bulletin on public debt, which puts public-sector debt at 128.6% of GDP in 20244. For as long as the technical audit commissioned by the State itself remains inaccessible, commercial confidentiality protects the signatories of the loans more than the country’s interests.

A committee whose conclusions are binding

A committee made up of activists would have no authority before creditors. A committee reduced to technicians would have no legitimacy before citizens. The Court of Auditors and the National Assembly will therefore sit on it alongside academics and independent experts. Trade unions and citizens’ organisations bring the participation that distinguishes this exercise from an inspection mission, and which makes its conclusions public and enforceable.

Sorting rather than rejecting everything

The useful work consists of sorting. A loan signed on the basis of an irregular authorisation can be challenged in law, and the audit must establish which ones fall into that category. A loan that was properly authorised remains due, even when it reflects a debatable political choice or costs more than the budget can bear: the audit can then assess it and document its renegotiation, but it cannot cancel it. This sorting builds on the work of the Court of Auditors and Forvis Mazars, which it complements by examining borrowing choices and by publicising its conclusions.

The audit therefore has a deadline that does not depend on its promoters. If its conclusions arrive after an agreement has been signed with the Eurobond holders, they will describe a debt already renegotiated, on terms set without it.

Chérif Salif Sy

Notes

1 Restructuring announced according to a Bloomberg dispatch of 3 September 2026, as part of Senegal’s Debt Treatment Plan (Ptds), from which debt denominated in CFA francs is excluded.

2 Court of Auditors, report on the state of public finances, published in February 2025. Debt ratios vary according to the scope and date used: 99.67% at end-2023 (Court of Auditors), 105.7% at end-2024 (IMF), 117% at end-2025 (S&P). The often-cited figure of around 119% for central government at end-2024 comes from cross-checking the work of Forvis Mazars and has not been confirmed against documentary evidence.

3 Commission for the Comprehensive Audit of Public Credit (Caic), set up in July 2007, final report of November 2008. The December 2008 default concerned the bonds maturing in 2012 and 2030; the 2009 buyback was carried out at around 35% of face value.

4 Ministry of Finance and Budget, Statistical Bulletin on Public Debt 2019-2024, July 2026. This scope (public sector) is broader than that of central government used by the Court of Auditors.