Former Senegal prime minister and presidential candidate dies

DAKAR - Former Senegalese prime minister and a candidate in last month's presidential election, Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne, died Friday at the age of 64, a member of his team told AFP.

Dionne, who served as prime minister between 2014 and 2019 under former president Macky Sall, died in Paris where he had been sent for medical treatment in the middle of his election campaign, Mohamed Moustapha Diagne told AFP.

Dionne was one of 19 candidates in the March 24 presidential poll, which anti-establishment figure Bassirou Diomaye Faye won in the first round.

A former ally of Sall, Dionne was head of government until 2019 when the president abolished the post.

Sall reinstated the position in 2022, but entrusted it to Amadou Ba, who was later selected as the governing coalition's presidential candidate.

Dionne then ran against Ba in the March presidential election.

Sall wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he was "saddened" by the news of Dionne's death.

"Senegal loses a valuable executive and I a long-time companion," he added.

Dionne had served at the Central Bank of West African States, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and headed the economic office of the Senegalese embassy in France.

He authored the 2023 work "Le Lion, le papillon et l'abeille" (The Lion, the Butterfly and the Bee) in which he predicted that Africa would be a "land of major geostrategic potential and influence in the 21st century".