2024-02-25 13:10:00
The Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar (Ucad), one of the largest in West Africa with more than 90,000 students, reopens on Monday after months of closure following political unrest, the rectorate said on Saturday.
The Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar (Ucad), one of the largest in West Africa with more than 90,000 students, reopens on Monday after months of closure following political unrest, the rectorate said on Saturday.
This announcement coincides with various gestures aimed at appeasement on the part of the authorities, in a context of deep political crisis around the presidential election.
The university will reopen the day when President Macky Sall intends to initiate a dialogue with political and social actors to try to find an agreement on the date of the election.
The Senegalese were supposed to elect their fifth president on Sunday February 25. President Sall triggered a shock wave on February 3 by decreeing a last minute postponement. The Constitutional Council has since overturned it. But the Senegalese still do not know when they will go to the polls.
Ucad has been closed since June 2023. It was one of the centers of the deadly unrest which shook the country after the conviction of opponent Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison in a morals case on June 1 . Online teaching has replaced face-to-face classes.
The management of Ucad met on Friday and decided “the lifting of the measure suspending face-to-face teaching” from Monday, says a press release from the rectorate published on the institution’s Facebook page.
The concrete repercussions of this decision on the presence of students or their reception from Monday are not clear.
The authorities justified the closure by the need to secure the university and, for example, to take measures to prevent intrusions from the outside.
Since its inauguration in 1959, Ucad has been known to be a place of protest.
President Sall affirmed his desire to reduce current tensions. Hundreds of people detained in connection with the unrest of recent years have been released. Authorities authorized protests on Saturday and the previous week.
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