Senegalese often consider the arrival of their current president, Macky Sall, to power in 2012 as a defining moment in the country's history. Sall benefited from two successive missions, which took him about 12 years, during which he accompanied a number of presidents of the region, both future and departing.
He witnessed elections, coups, and crises in the neighborhood around him, and saw his friend, former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, being taken to prison. After them, their countries often entered the furnace of political and ethnic crises and conflicts.