Senegal as a starting point
With a New England winter storm as an ironic counterpoint, a delegation of Senegalese officials arrived at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics Friday. In the lead was Macky Sall, who is only the fourth president of the Republic of Senegal since the nation was founded in 1960. The country of 12 million is at the westernmost edge of Africa, where March temperatures hover around 80 degrees. Speaking mostly in French, with part of the audience listening on portable translation devices, Sall drew a picture of a nation close in values to the United States, and of a continent on the verge of power and prosperity. “Africa is the continent of the future,” he said — young and rich in resources. At the same time, he acknowledged the economic, political, and demographic challenges ahead. In Senegal, for example, per capita income is $2,000 a year, adult literacy is around 40 percent,...