Africa-Press – Senegal. The President of the Republic, by making Amadou Ba the candidate of Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY) in the presidential election of February 25, 2024, is betting on a senior official with ministerial experience large-scale, coupled with a long-standing political commitment.
The candidate of the presidential majority to succeed Macky Sall is a tax specialist who has spent his time under the harness, from the base to the top of the administration of taxes and domains, to which he devoted twenty-five years before starting a rich ministerial career.
Three years after the abolition of the post of Prime Minister of the Senegalese institutional architecture, Macky Sall is banking on this executive of the high administration of taxes and domains and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Economy and Finance, to materialize his restoration in 2022.
Relations between the head of state and the man he chooses for government orders, on September 17, 2022, date back to at least 2006. That year, Amadou Ba became director general of taxes and lands, an appointment that he publicly said was owed to the Prime Minister at the time, a certain Macky Sall.
Regarding studies, the BBY candidate, chosen by the President of the Republic among his closest collaborators, including Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo, Mame Boye Diao, Mahammed Dionne and Aly Ngouille Ndiaye, holds a master’s degree in economic sciences (1980) from the University of Dakar (now Cheikh-Anta-Diop University) and a patent from the former National School of Administration and Magistracy (1988). He then joined taxes and domains and rose through the ranks, from his first assignment to Diourbel (center) as a trainee inspector at the general directorate of the tax administration.
After his initial professional training in Senegal, the young civil servant set his sights on the International Institute of Public Administration in Paris to improve his skills. He then went to Baltimore, United States of America, to quench his thirst for know-how. The National Tax School of Clermont-Ferrand, in France, welcomed him for a training course.
Head of tax and estates inspection in Dakar-Plateau (1990-1992), Amadou Ba then became insurance commissioner controller at the insurance directorate, until the mid-90s, and rose to the position of inspector inspector of tax investigations.
Amadou Ba, the architect of the General Tax Code and the emerging Senegal Plan, according to certain officials
The current head of government led the large business center of the tax and domains department, then the tax directorate (2004) and the general tax and domains directorate (2006). For certain officials of the tax and financial administration, he is the architect of the General Tax Code in force since 2013 and the Emerging Senegal Plan, the financing of which he negotiated with international economic partners in 2014.
Appointed Minister of Economy and Finance on September 2, 2013, in the government of Aminata Touré, Amadou Ba began an important ministerial career during which he will only lead so-called sovereignty ministries: Economy, Finance , the Plan, then Foreign Affairs.
But in November 2020, he was dismissed from the government at the same time as other heavyweights, including Mouhamadou Makhtar Cissé (Energy) and Aly Ngouille Ndiaye (Interior): the former ministers are victims of their overflowing ambitions and would have begun to silently prepare the succession of the leader, according to rumor.
But, through these reunions of which politics has the secret, the senior civil servant, coupled with an activist from the Alliance for the Republic (APR) and former member of the Socialist Party (PS), returns to the government and takes over its leadership. Previously, he was considered the darling of the media, even if he no longer sat in the Council of Ministers and exercised no official function.
Amadou Ba is a handsome man. Beautifully cut suits and always impeccable dressing.
Born on May 17, 1961 in Dakar, it is from this city that he made his political base by joining the APR, the political party of Macky Sall, which got him elected deputy in July 2022.
We are mistaken in taking him for “a neophyte in politics”
Married and father of three children, Macky Sall’s fourth Prime Minister is described in those around him as a fan of sport, reading and mental games.
The Head of State appointed him Prime Minister because of several qualities listed by the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, Oumar Samba Bâ, on September 17, 2022, at the presidential palace: “competence”, ‘ ‘dedication’, ‘pragmatism’ and ‘effectiveness’.
Speaking during a meeting at the presidential palace this Saturday, September 9, the head of state spoke of the reasons which led to the choice of Amadou Ba, citing his “diversified career”, as well as his ability listening skills and his “unifying” qualities.
The current Prime Minister, as a providential man, has been running the Ministries of Livestock and Sports for several months at the same time, replacing Aly Saleh Diop and Yankhoba Diatara.
“Political analysts, adversaries and even his supporters have finished being wrong about him [taking him for] a neophyte in politics,” notes the Seneweb information site about him in September 2022, considering his candidacy in the legislative elections of 2017 (unsuccessfully) and 2022 as “the resurrection of a dinosaur”.
According to the same media, the candidate chosen this Saturday, September 9, 2023 by Macky Sall to lead BBY to the 2024 presidential election was already one of the socialist leaders of Parcelles Assainies, in the 90s. Close to Mamadou Diop, who was mayor of Dakar for a long time, Amadou Ba was elected PS municipal councilor of the capital in 1996.
The man was born in Grand-Dakar and spent part of his childhood in this populous neighborhood where he was nicknamed Bayal, according to Seneweb.
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