Sijh Diagne (photo by Michael Bucher)

In March 2020, Sijh Diagne (MBA 2017) was asked to serve as an advisor to Senegal’s minister of economy, planning, and cooperation. He was charged with leading the country’s private-sector development; but just as became the case worldwide in 2020, expectations changed rapidly. “When I decided to take on that role, the world looked very different than it did later that spring,” recalls Diagne. “I had no idea that job would turn into pandemic response and economic recovery.”

Worldwide, crisis management involved similar challenges, including layoffs and shutdowns, unemployment, and vaccine distribution. But because Senegal is a developing country, with an emerging economy, Diagne needed his team to mitigate risk, protect the public’s health, and educate the population. That all needed to be accomplished without losing ground on key initiatives that would continue to bolster Senegal’s economy, like infrastructure investments and a booming agricultural industry.

After less than a month of deliberation, the government of Senegal, through the ministry’s work, launched a $1.3 billion economic resilience plan, representing 7 percent of GDP, the largest in Africa second to South Africa. Senegal was one of the first African countries to come up with a resiliency plan. It included all the necessary health support for patient treatment and contact tracing, including procurement of all supplies of oxygen and medical equipment; support for the private sector and employment; distribution of food kits and food stamps to more than a million households; and water and electricity payments for a portion of the population. It also included a financing and guarantee mechanism that would provide additional liquidity to companies, for the payment of salaries and other fixed costs.

Diagne’s work now focuses on crafting economic-recovery and emergency youth-jobs plans; working with the Health Ministry to set up a local vaccine manufacturing plant and securing vaccines for the country; helping obtain concessional financing, especially leveraging Special Drawing Rights (international reserve assets that supplement a country’s official reserves); and negotiating agreements to fund some of flagship projects laid out in the 2019–2023 Priority Action Plan, a development model that supports growth through economic and social policy. “We are focusing on food, health, and pharmaceutical sovereignty as key priorities,” says Diagne.

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