Controversial Senegal Statue
Senegal Statue PHOTO! Here is the Senegal Statue photo that headlines NPR this morning. The Senegal Statue and its controversy, a $27 million failure says its critics, headlines NPR’s Morning Edition.
Opposition leader Abdoulaye Bathily says the following about the statute:
“People are so frustrated by this…. The economy has collapsed. … The education system is in a crisis. The health system is in crisis. And yet Abdoulaye Wade is squandering public money. So all these things, people are seeing it, and it is creating so much frustration.”
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade declares himself to be the “intellectual owner” of the bronze family of man, woman and infant which is 50 meters tall just higher than New York’s Statue of Liberty. Wade decided that he should take a 35 percent cut in the revenues of a site which is expected to be one of Dakar’s top tourist draws when it is completed in December.
Wade, who has long stalked the world stage reminding the rich to make good on pledges of aid to the poor insists his share would go to a variety of good causes he sponsors rather his own pocket. But for many Senegalese, the affair has left a bad taste.
“I have never seen a president being in a business deal with the same state of which he is the highest representative,” said Ousmane Sow, a high school teacher in the capital.
Wade supporters disagree, arguing that he had already drawn sketches for the monument in a book, “A Destiny For Africa”, which he wrote in his early political career.
The Monument of the African Renaissance
But others complain it is the latest in a line of glamour projects including plans for West Africa’s biggest theatre or a four-lane corniche serving Dakar’s wealthy suburbs that Wade has favoured over urgently needed basic infrastructure.
