Do we like them?

Do we like Bassirou Diomaye Faye?

Our score: 2 out of 10. He signed a law doubling prison terms for same-sex relations; the only good found is thin, mostly an IMF deal and a pledge of cleaner politics.

Faye is a former tax inspector from Senegal who rose through Pastef, the party built around Ousmane Sonko. Reuters reports he was arrested in April 2023 and charged with contempt of court and defaming magistrates, which he denied. He was still in prison when he made the candidate list, and a general amnesty law freed him in March 2024, just before the vote he went on to win.

Here's the part that matters most for us. On 30 March 2026 Faye signed a law that doubles the maximum prison term for same-sex relations from five to ten years, with fines of up to 10 million CFA francs. It also sets three to seven years for promoting or financing same-sex relationships. Parliament passed it 135 to 0, and the UN rights chief Volker Türk called it “deeply worrying”.

The wider crackdown is grim reading. Africanews reports dozens of men have been arrested under the anti-LGBTQ laws since February, often on accusations and phone searches. Human Rights Watch condemned the February arrests of 12 men in Dakar and called for their release and for the laws to be repealed. To be fair, those arrests came under the older law, and the HRW piece doesn't mention Faye. But he is the one who signed the tougher version after them.

The recent drama is political. On 22 May the AP reported that Faye fired Sonko after months of tension, including open disagreement over a proposed IMF loan, and the government was dissolved. Sonko's reply on X was that he would “sleep with a light heart”. On 25 July Faye launched his own party, Kiiraay, saying responsibilities would be duties and not rewards. That is a stoush between two allies, not a scandal.

On the economy, the IMF reached a staff-level agreement in September on a new 36-month, $2.2 billion programme. It replaces one frozen after the government said it found debt the previous Macky Sall administration hadn't reported. Africanews says Faye reportedly prefers a conciliatory approach to the Fund, while Sonko has rejected restructuring. Whether that helps ordinary Senegalese depends on reforms that still need IMF board approval.

The good stuff is thin on what we could verify. He went from a prison cell to the presidency in about a fortnight, according to Reuters. He has pitched his new party as guided by ethics and transparency. We found no court judgments against him and no charity record. We didn't verify the press-freedom complaints made about his government, so we've left them out rather than guess.