DAKAR, Senegal (SCANS) — Authorities indefinitely closed the campus of Senegal’s premier public university Tuesday and ordered thousands of students to evacuate their dormitories following the death of a medical student during a violent crackdown on protests over unpaid financial aid.
The death of Abdoulaye Ba, a second-year dental surgery student at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), has become a flashpoint for a generation of young Senegalese who say the government they helped propel to power has failed to deliver on promises of economic relief and reform.
Classes were suspended and the university’s social services center ordered all housing and dining facilities vacated by noon Tuesday, forcing many students from rural provinces to scramble for transport and lodging. The move follows a night of chaos on Monday that saw security forces exchange volleys of tear gas with stone-throwing students.
Social media footage verified by news agencies showed a four-story dormitory engulfed in flames and thick black smoke as students leaped from windows to escape the heat. On Tuesday, the campus grounds remained littered with the charred skeletons of cars and the debris of broken barricades.
Government officials confirmed Ba’s death but remained vague on the circumstances, describing the fatality as the result of “serious events.” Interior Minister Mouhamadou Bamba Cissé, speaking at a news conference, acknowledged “acts of violence observed on both sides” and promised a full inquiry. He added that 48 members of the security forces were injured and 105 students had been detained.
However, student leaders and witnesses offered a more harrowing account. Cheikh Atab Sagne, president of the Student Association of the Faculty of Medicine, Pharmacy and Dentistry, said Ba was not an active participant in the protests. Instead, he alleged that police stormed the dormitories and severely beat Ba inside his own room.
“He suffered fatal head trauma and severe blood loss,” Sagne said. “He was our comrade, a son who was the sole hope of his widowed mother.”
The unrest highlights a deepening fiscal crisis in the West African nation. The administration of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who took office in April 2024 amid a wave of youth-driven optimism, is currently grappling with a $13 billion budget deficit. The financial strain has led to months of delays in student stipends, which average about 40,000 CFA francs ($65) a month—the only source of income for many in a country where 75% of the population is under 35.
“We were the ones who fought for them to be in office,” said Ousmane Sow, an economics student, as he packed his belongings to leave campus. “Now they are doing the same things to us that their predecessors did. This is a lesson for us: nobody is coming to save us.”
Rights groups, including Amnesty International Senegal, have condemned what they called a “disproportionate use of force” by police. Similar protests have been reported at public universities in Saint-Louis, Thiès, and Ziguinchor as the scholarship crisis spreads nationwide.
For many students, the indefinite closure of UCAD—one of Africa’s most prestigious institutions with 80,000 students—is a bitter reminder of previous shutdowns that have left academic years overlapping and degrees delayed.
“They say they want to protect us, but by closing the campus and taking away our stipends, they are killing our future,” said Ndeye Diatta, a student leaving the dorms Tuesday. “First we lost our money, and now we have lost a brother.”
