See you in Dakar for a new territorial pact on migration
Ahmed Youssouph Bengelloune
President of the Association of Departments of Senegal
From December 1 to 3, 2025, Dakar will host an unprecedented event in the history of territorial governance in Senegal and West Africa: the First Forum of Regional Governments on Migration. This initiative is led by the Association of Departments of Senegal (ADS), in collaboration with the United Regions Organization – ORU Fogar.
We hope that this event, bringing together regions from across the globe, will serve as a moment of strategic reflection and coordinated action. It will gather all relevant stakeholders to define concrete responses to the challenges of migration—particularly irregular migration—which continues to claim lives and impoverish our territories. The Forum’s ambition is clear: to generate endogenous and sustainable solutions to migration challenges.
Too often, migration policies have been designed in capitals or by international institutions, disconnected from the realities on the ground in regions of origin, transit, or return. And yet, it is precisely local and regional governments that hold a decisive part of the answer today.
We are beyond the time for mere observation. The numbers are stark. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over 4,000 African migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2024, many of them from West Africa. Senegal, despite the multiple efforts of public authorities and civil society, remains one of the countries most affected. Between 2023 and 2025, hundreds of young people perished in the Atlantic, off our coasts, on makeshift boats, often fleeing a future they see as hopeless.
Faced with this tragedy, local and regional governments cannot remain passive. They are the first to witness mass departures, to comfort grieving families, to manage difficult returns, and to bear the economic and demographic consequences of this silent exodus. The Forum we propose must therefore deliver a swift, structured, and reality-based response.
Together with our technical, institutional, and financial partners, we aim to focus on three strategic areas: youth employment and entrepreneurship, by mobilizing territorial development tools and structuring agricultural, artisanal, or digital value chains; productive investment from the diaspora, by increasing the attractiveness of our territories; and vocational training and career guidance, to offer youth concrete opportunities adapted to local economic realities. These are all levers that departments, municipalities, and regions can activate—if they are supported and recognized as key actors in migration management.
This Forum also serves as a solemn call to action: to local and regional elected officials, to raise their voices and share their initiatives; to the State, to deepen the decentralization of migration policies and recognize subnational governments as strategic partners; to development partners, to invest in the structuring projects promoted by the territories; to civil society and diaspora organizations, to engage in practical, local solutions; and finally, to young people themselves, to actively participate in shaping their future in Africa.
Beyond panels and speeches, this Forum will result in a locally driven action agenda for territorial governance of migration. Pilot projects will be identified, partnerships signed, and a permanent platform for dialogue between local governments will be established. The goal of our local and regional governments is to continue this commitment well beyond the Forum and to anchor our responses in the long term.
Because they are at the heart of citizens’ lives, local and regional governments can be the catalysts for a profound shift in how we address migration. Together, let’s make Dakar in December 2025 the starting point of a new territorial pact for humane, safe, orderly, and development-driven migration.
