El Malick N’diaye: Who is the new president of the National Assembly of Senegal?

The new president of the National Assembly of Senegal is named El Malick Ndiaye. He was elected, Monday, President of the National Assembly, at the installation of the 15th legislature this Monday, December 2, 2024.

Aged 42 (born July 24, 1982) in Dahra Djolof, a town in the northwest of Senegal, El Hadj Malick Ndiaye becomes the youngest president in the history of the parliamentary institution.

The only candidate in the running, he was elected to the hemicycle perch by his fellow deputies with 134 votes for and 22 against, 7 deputies abstained among the 163 voters.

National Secretary for Communication of Pastef Les Patriotes, this close friend of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko has held the position of Minister of Infrastructure, Land and Air Transport since April 5, 2024.

A graduate in management, international trade, transport and logistics, El Malick Ndiaye becomes in fact the second personality of the State.

Head of the departmental list from Pastef to Linguère in the early legislative elections of November 17, 2024, the now former Minister of Infrastructure and Land and Air Transport confirms his meteoric political rise.

Pastef executive, El Malick Ndiaye began his political involvement in the early 2000s, thanks to the first democratic change which brought President Abdoulaye Wade to power.

The new President of the National Assembly then sharpened his political weapons by rubbing shoulders with leaders of the Senegalese left such as the former Prime Minister and President of the National Assembly under the 12th legislature, Moustapha Niass, the historian Abdoulaye Bathily and even Landing Savané of the AJ-PADS.

During the 2012 presidential election, he got involved with Professor Ibrahima FALL, candidate of the Taxaw Tem movement whom he considers as a political mentor in the same way as Ousmane Sonko.

After the 2012 presidential election marked by the victory of candidate Macky Sall, El Malick Ndiaye began to gain media and political notoriety.

He joined the Pastef-Les Patriotes party in 2015-2016 and established himself as one of the figures of this party created in 2014 and led by Ousmane Sonko.

Renowned for his loyalty and courage, he will be promoted to National Communications Secretary of Pastef.

El Malick Ndiaye will reveal himself politically at the height of the repression by the regime of former president Macky Sall, marked by a campaign of arrest and imprisonment of supporters of the Pastef leader and senior party executives.

When the current head of government Ousmane Sonko and the President of the Republic Bassirou Diomaye Faye were imprisoned in the last moments of President Macky Sall’s regime, El Malick N’diaye particularly distinguished himself in the political and media arena.

He persisted in denouncing the detention of his party comrades and other activists arrested in connection with the political events that shook the country between 2021 and 2024.

Like his party comrades, he ended up being arrested and imprisoned for several days for “disseminating false news likely to bring discredit to the functioning of institutions”.

Pastef’s communications officer will subsequently benefit from provisional release but will be forced to move around under surveillance, with an electronic bracelet.

This private sector executive who makes a career within large groups in the field of logistics and transport, establishes himself as a strategist in political communication.

As proof, despite the multiple legal twists and turns leading to the conviction of its leader Ousmane Sonko preventing him from being a candidate in the presidential election of March 2024, he has never varied in his speech consisting of saying that “the Pastef will in all cases have a candidate.

“There is no doubt that the very last realization of the project and the conquest of power in 35 days has arrived.” This is his reaction after the publication of the final list of presidential candidates which included Bassirou Diomaye Faye, designated as Plan B of the Pastef party.

El Malick Ndiaye, who benefits from the trust of the Diomaye-Sonko duo, will be appointed Minister of Infrastructure and Land and Air Transport in April.

His first months at the head of this strategic department were marked by several initiatives and ongoing reforms aimed at laying the foundations for the modernization of transport in Senegal and the relaunch of the activities of the national company Air Sénégal which flew in the zone of turbulence.

At just 42 years old, El Malick Ndiaye enters the political history of Senegal by becoming the 13th president of the National Assembly.

His election to the presidency of the National Assembly led President Bassirou Diomaye Faye to carry out a slight rearrangement of the government led by Ousmane Sonko late in the night from Monday to Tuesday.

Yanhokha Diémé inherits the Department of Infrastructure, Land and Air Transport occupied by the new President of the National Assembly El Malick Ndiaye.

Head of Pastef’s list in Dakar during the early legislative elections of November 17, Abass Fall joins the government. He was appointed Minister of Labor, Employment and Relations with Institutions, replacing Yanhokha Diémé.