VZCZCXRO2043
RR RUEHMA RUEHPA
DE RUEHDK #0288 0651227
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 061227Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY DAKAR
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2008
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS DAKAR 000288 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT FOR AF/W, AF/RSA, DRL AND INR/AA 
PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHER 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS KDEM ECON SG
SUBJECT: (SBU) Visionary Monument or Bromdignagian Folly? 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Between December 1-14, 2009 Senegal will host the 
World Festival of Negro Arts (FESNAM).  The event will focus on 
African renaissance and is also meant to coincide with the unveiling 
of a fifty-meter high "African Renaissance statue" commissioned by 
President Abdoulaye Wade.  Wade conceived of this monument to cement 
his cultural legacy, but for many people the statue's 16 million 
dollar price tag confirms their belief that, despite the deep crisis 
in Senegal's public finances, the President is most interested in 
grandiose projects that the Senegalese people have little use for. 
End Summary. 
 
Need for a monument 
------------------- 
¶2. (SBU) According to the Department of Cultural Heritage of the 
Ministry of Culture, the idea for the monument came from Wade's 
conception of what "Africa's destiny should be."  The monument is 
being built on an extinct volcano on Dakar's western tip.  It is 
described by a GOS document as: "The monument represents an African 
man emerging from a volcano, facing the West, with his wife and he 
is holding his child up as if to show him to the world.  It 
symbolizes Africa, freed from centuries of imprisonment in the dark 
abyss of ignorance, intolerance and racism; Africa regaining its 
place in the world bathed in light, air, and freedom." 
 
Poor artistic quality 
--------------------- 
¶3. (SBU) According to a senior figure at the Ministry of culture, it 
is Wade himself who made the initial drawing of the statue after 
which the North Koreans finished the design but with a distinctly 
Stalinesque feel.  The Ministry of Culture and a private architect 
later stepped in to rework the design of the woman to return to it a 
touch of "female sensuality, especially in the way they had covered 
her and her thighs."  "Still," the rather disappointed contact said, 
"the features remain definitely Soviet." 
 
A grandiose, costly project 
-------------------------- 
¶4. (SBU) The Director of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry told 
Embassy staff that, in a recent visit to North Korea, he saw that 
all the pieces of the statue had been molded.  He said that the 
structure will be almost 165 feet high.  Given its placement on the 
extinct volcano, its highest point will essentially match that of 
the Statue of Liberty in terms of elevation above sea level. 
Underneath the plinth there will be a three-story building that will 
include three large conference rooms and exhibition halls.  At the 
tune of an additional three billion CFA (USD six million), the site 
plans include a privately built shopping center and a hotel. 
Financing the project has been murky and the subject of much 
discussion.  Originally, it was reported that the GOS had offered 
the North Korean builders and enormous tract of prime development 
land outside Dakar.  It is now rumored that the offer was declined. 
Instead, a businessman and political ally of the Mayor of Dakar, is 
said to have been given a tract of land in an upscale district in 
Dakar with instructions to develop it and use the proceeds to settle 
the bill. 
 
Comment 
------- 
5(SBU) The monument is meant to be part of President Wade's cultural 
legacy to his people.  However, in the minds of many this is nothing 
but a pharaonic project commissioned by an aging President obsessed 
with history and his place in it.  In many respects the monument, 
conceived by Wade as symbol of African emancipation, is more 
symbolic of what is wrong in Senegal - wasteful spending, an opaque 
deal, cronyism run rampant, relations with a pariah state; all 
happening while people stretch their meager budgets to be able to 
eat once a day. 
Bernicat