Senegal sets up GouvNum, a committee to bring order to the state’s digital projects

It took twenty months. On February 19, 2025, Senegal’s cabinet approved a draft decree creating the Digital Governance Committee, known as GouvNum. Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Mohamed Lô installed it late last week, his office said in a statement relayed by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Digital Affairs. Accounts differ on the date: Friday, October 16, according to the tech site We are Tech, and October 18 according to other outlets citing the government.

The committee reports directly to the head of government. It brings together representatives of line ministries and state-owned bodies, while the Ministry of Telecommunications and Digital Affairs, headed by Samba Diouf, runs its permanent secretariat. Under the 2025 draft decree, it is to meet at least once every six months and submit an annual report to the president.

A gatekeeper before the budget

Its job, according to the statement, is to “ensure that projects comply with the common architecture”. In practice, GouvNum is supposed to pool and rank the state’s digital investments, stop two agencies from each paying for their own tool to meet the same need, and look at total cost, from purchase to maintenance. The security of government systems, their ability to exchange data with one another (interoperability) and the protection of personal data also fall within its remit.

The text approved in 2025 went further on one point: funding for digital projects was to be reviewed and approved by the committee before being written into the state budget. That is where its real weight will be tested. When the decree was adopted, the ministry justified the new body by the failure of the Digital Senegal 2025 strategy, citing “the absence of coherence and convergence in the governance of the various central and sectoral initiatives”.

Targets set for 2034

GouvNum is billed as a cog in the New Technological Deal, the digital arm of the Senegal 2050 national transformation agenda. The programme, which runs from 2025 to 2034, is costed at about 1,100 billion CFA francs, or nearly €1.7 billion. Its targets are ambitious: lift the digital economy to 15% of GDP, create 150,000 direct jobs, move 90% of administrative procedures online, extend connectivity to 90% of the country and give 90% of citizens a digital identity.

Getting the committee off the ground was backed by Goin’Digital, a project worth about €13 million funded by the European Union, Germany and France, and run by Germany’s GIZ and Expertise France until July 2027. GouvNum should not be confused with the National Digital Council, installed in October 2025 by Mr Lô’s predecessor, Ousmane Sonko: that body is advisory, whereas the committee is meant to make decisions.

Reports published since the launch do not say when the first regular session will be held, or which ongoing projects will be scrutinised first. Nor do they say whether the committee will be able to halt a project already funded by a donor.