Albares travels to Senegal and Gambia to address “development and stability” in Africa

Eduardo González The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will make a new tour of Africa this week, specifically in Senegal and Gambia, with the aim of continuing to discuss “the development and stability” of the continent. This is Albares' second trip to the region in the last two weeks. The previous one took place last Tuesday, when he traveled to Cape Verde to deal with the highest authorities of this country about the regional situation in West Africa and the Sahel. As reported that day by diplomatic sources, the minister will travel to Senegal and Gambia on June 26 and 27 to continue addressing “the development and stability” of the African continent. Gambia The tour will begin on Wednesday, June 26, in Gambia, a country with which Spain maintains good bilateral relations, which were especially revitalized as a result of the 2006 migration crisis. Since then, the relationship has revolved around two fundamental axes: cooperation on migration matters and development cooperation. That crisis also gave rise to the first visit to Banjul by a Spanish Foreign Minister (specifically, Miguel Ángel Moratinos) in June 2006, which was followed by another in October of the same year. The last visit by a Spanish Foreign Minister to Banjul took place in March 2019, when Josep Borrell traveled to this country as part of a tour of Africa to present the then recently approved Third Africa Plan. Borrell was received by his Gambian counterpart, Mamadou Tangara, the same one who will receive Albares on this occasion. Tangara himself was received on May 25, 2023 in Madrid by Albares and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to agree on the holding of political consultations and the reinforcement of cooperation in security matters. Bilateral relations are based, above all, on cooperation in the fight against illegal immigration, with special attention to strengthening Gambian capabilities in border control, which takes the form of both training and the donation of material to the Ministry of the Interior and the Gambian Navy. Operational support from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior has also been deployed and a Joint Investigation Team against human trafficking and smuggling has been launched. Regarding development cooperation, The Gambia no longer appears in the latest Master Plan, although the country continues to benefit from Spanish funds through projects of international and regional organizations, especially the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). On the other hand, some Spanish NGOs continue to work in Gambia, especially in the areas of childhood and gender equality. In 2017, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) began operating again in the country with EU funds. The links between both societies have been strengthened with the growing community of Gambians in Spain (about 25,000) and with the presence of Spaniards in Gambia (cooperators, tourists and small businessmen). Senegal That same Wednesday, Albares will travel to Dakar, where he will remain until Thursday. As in the case of Gambia, the real turning point in relations between Spain and Senegal occurred following the so-called “cayuco crisis” in the summer of 2006, with the irregular arrival of approximately 30,000 Senegalese immigrants to coasts of the Canary Islands. From then on, relations began to be based on the search for a common strategy in the fight against illegal immigration. In December 2006, the first visit of a President of the Spanish Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to Senegal took place. Mariano Rajoy visited the country in May 2015 and the current head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, did so in April 2021. Former Foreign Ministers Miguel Ángel Moratinos and Arancha González Laya visited Senegal in December 2016 and November 2020, respectively, and José Manuel Albares traveled to Senegal in July 2022, within the framework of political consultations between the two countries, and on December 15, 2023. In this second trip - his first official trip in the current legislature and within a tour that began in Morocco and included Mauritania -, the Minister of Foreign Affairs met with his then Senegalese counterpart, Ismaïla Madior Fall, and with the then president of the country, Macky Sall, the fight against irregular migration and against mafias that traffic people. Senegal is a country of origin and transit of the current wave of canoes to the Canary Islands. Nearly 36,400 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands in 2023, a good part of them from Senegal and Mauritania. On that tour, Albares also visited the Civil Guard detachment in the port of Dakar, which has 33 troops, in addition to five national police, four boats, a helicopter, thirteen all-terrain vehicles for joint patrol work on land, sea and air, and, since last October 17, a CN-235 Civil Guard plane to patrol the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania. Since then, the Presidency of Senegal has been assumed by Bassirou Diomaye Faye, after winning the elections on March 24, 2024. After the elections, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement in which it “warmly” congratulated the new President Faye and stressed that the elections had been carried out “in a democratic, transparent and peaceful manner, reflecting Senegal's deep-rooted democratic tradition.” On April 29, Albares met by telephone with his new colleague from Senegal, Yassine Fall, with whom he addressed the “excellent” bilateral relations, including migration and economic relations, and other regional issues, such as the situation in the Sahel, the fight against drought, development financing and support to ECOWAS.

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