Ndongo Samba Sylla

Ndongo S Sylla believes neo-colonialism is an outdated term. More worrying for him is the trend of Afro-liberalism, which sees African elites allied with corporate transnational interests.

We speak over the phone from the Senegalese capital, where he works at the Dakar office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Sylla explains how ties to Western finance continue to obstruct economic independence. He offers a corrective: that Senegal – and the African continent more widely – could escape the current exploitative, export-based, freetrade model and instead develop a policy that is pro-people and ecology.

Sylla is the co-editor of Economic and Monetary Sovereignty in 21st Century Africa, author of The Fair Trade Scandal and coauthor of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: the CFA Franc Story.

Senegal is classified as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country,