As part of its national awareness tour on the issues and challenges of financial security in Senegal, the delegation from the National Coordination Committee for the Fight against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing was in Thiès on Tuesday, December 2, 2025.

An awareness campaign that is part of a dynamic of consolidating Senegal's achievements in this area, ensured by the National Financial Information Processing Unit (Centif) of Senegal.

The head of the Delegation, Khadija Fayel Diop, a member of the secretariat of the national committee for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, emphasized that this is a "national awareness campaign among the population on our work, in terms of the national strategy to combat money laundering, as well as the financing of tourism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

She reports that "through this campaign which started on November 10, 2025, we are currently travelling through the 14 regions of Senegal. We started it near Kédougou and are finishing it along the Thiès-Dakar axis."

In this struggle, the particularity of the city of Thiès, in the eyes of Ms. Diop, remains the fact that it remains "a strategic city, where there are many people who come from elsewhere and others".

And in terms of terrorist financing, she indicated, "we must be very vigilant." But also, in terms of combating money laundering, she noted, "like other cities in the country, all the underlying offenses are also found in the city of Thiès: corruption, embezzlement of public funds, but we also have other offenses related to fraud. Today, we have very emerging risks in online gambling, in cybercrime as well, and in other forms of financial crime."

Khadija Fayel Diop continued: “Despite the laws and all the institutional, legislative, and regulatory frameworks, financial criminals thrive in our cities and regions, just like in every country in the world. Faced with all this financial crime, we decided that we shouldn't just focus on Dakar, but that we need to cover the entire national territory to raise awareness among the population as effectively as possible, so that together we can ensure that we have a country where the economy is well regulated and where all financial crimes are properly managed, so that they cannot flourish.”

The Head of Delegation added that "at the national committee level, we are developing a national strategy to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism."

She said: "We had an initial strategy for the period 2019-2024, which covered 5 areas, and that strategy has now come to an end. We are currently finalizing another strategy that will run from the end of December 2025 until 2029, and we have a vision extending to 2035."

Khadija Fayel Diop particularly emphasized one of the key areas, which is ensuring that the regulatory and legal framework is truly compliant with international norms and standards, because, she added, "we do not operate in isolation; all the rules we define, all the laws, all the levels, all the regulations, have a basis linked to the FATF standards, which are 40 recommendations that tell you concretely how all countries in the world must act to ensure that money laundering is controlled and that the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction does not flourish."

It also provides information on, among other things, "the nature and scope of money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as the threat they represent," and on "Senegal's commitment to improving its legislation and procedures to combat AML/CFT by enacting a new law in February 2024, which allowed the country to be removed from the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) grey list."

This was an opportunity for the governor to reiterate that the Thiès Region, due to its strategic location and the high mobility of people and capital, is at the heart of national concerns.

As the leading mining region of Senegal, an economic hub with promising sectors such as tourism, industry, agriculture, livestock and fishing, and an urban agglomeration area, the commercial circuits around these sectors deserve special attention in the analysis of risks related to money laundering and terrorist financing.

This, he said, is the whole point of this regional awareness workshop, which aims to bring national action closer to local actors, to exchange information on the specific risks in each region and to promote collective ownership of vigilance and reporting mechanisms.