Tensions after the CAN: Dakar and Rabat call for calm

The Senegalese Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, announced that he had “talked at length” with his counterpart from the Kingdom of Morocco, Aziz Akhannouch, in a context marked by tensions around recent sporting events.

“We have agreed, together, under the high instructions of His Majesty King Mohammed VI and His Excellency President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, to continue to work, in a spirit of appeasement, serenity and relaxation, to consolidate the centuries-old and very deep ties that unite our two countries,” declared the Head of Government.

In a post on Facebook, the head of government of Senegal indicated that he was “carefully following, with the accredited consular and diplomatic authorities and the Moroccan authorities, the situation of the supporters arrested in Rabat as well as that of compatriots living in Morocco”.

At the same time, he calls for “caution regarding the flow of communications, particularly in social networks and certain media, which are, for the most part, disinformation”.

Ousmane Sonko thus invited “our respective compatriots and all friends” to “dispassionate this episode which, in no case, can go beyond the simple sporting framework”. “Our common challenges are much more important,” he stressed.

The two Prime Ministers also “reciprocally welcomed the holding, from January 26 to 28 in Rabat, of the 15th session of the Great Joint Commission between the two States, under the effective presidency of the two Prime Ministers”. A major bilateral meeting, whose “date was scheduled by mutual agreement at the end of December 2025” and which had not been held since 2013, the year of its last session organized in Dakar.

Finally, Senegal wanted to “reaffirm its historic attachment and its tireless action for friendship and relations of peace and respect between States, peoples and nations”, concludes the declaration signed by the Prime Minister.