Rédaction Africa Links 24 with La rédaction
Published on 2024-04-12 02:24:24
From time to time, bad news reaches me with a cynical tenacity. Like the one received on April 5 announcing his passing. I spoke yesterday with Caty, his beloved wife. She said, “Mahammed was my guide, my advisor, my friend, my husband, my everything. He was a perfect man, I dare say.”
Mohammed (By Celestin Monga)
From time to time, by chance, good news also arrives in my mailbox. Like the unusual message received in September 2013 from a certain Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne. I did not have the honor of knowing him. He introduced himself as the Head of Africa Programs at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), based in Vienna, Austria, and said he was “the president of my fan club.” I immediately distrusted it because from a very young age, I learned the effect that compliments (real or artificial) have on the human brain: they unconsciously lower defenses.
Intrigued nonetheless by the main message, inviting me to give a speech at the institution’s General Conference scheduled the following month in Lima, Peru, I mentioned it to my supervisor Kaushik Basu, the First Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group, whom I was advising. Without hesitation, Kaushik encouraged me to accept the invitation. He believed that UNIDO was one of the best United Nations agencies and Amartya Sen, his former thesis advisor, confirmed this.
So I met Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne in Peru, on the sidelines of the conference. Standing in a corner of the room, away from microphones and cameras, he then revealed to me the true reason for his invitation. After confiding that he was preparing to leave his international career to return to Senegal as Director of Cabinet and Prime Minister to President Macky Sall. Then, he added, piercing me with his gaze, “Few African executives who think of our condition hold high decision-making positions in international organizations. UNIDO is preparing to recruit two Deputy Managing Directors. I would like you to apply for these positions. Even if you don’t want to, do it for Africa. We will support you.”
Surprised by this decent proposal, I promised to think about it. I had been working at the World Bank in Washington D.C. for over fifteen years and had reached the rank of director. I loved the wealth of knowledge the institution encompassed, but I also knew that my unlikely and random journey in this glass and non-transparent house was constantly provoking the wrath of the temple guardians who could not stand the undiscipline of my ideas published regularly in unauthorized books, nor my heretical attitude – I did not play golf on weekends with the gurus and I did not socialize with the career climbers. So I did not have to think long.
After this first contact in Lima, Mahammed and I continued our exchanges.
So I applied for the job offers published a few months later, after his departure from UNIDO. The recruitment process lasted a year, with eight rounds of interviews – including sequences with psychologists or staff representatives I wanted to be the leader of. My appointment at UNIDO, and my stay at this wonderful institution, allowed me to deepen my view on major international issues and renew my metabolism. It also brought me the many positive externalities that life in Vienna offers. I owe it first and foremost to Mahammed.
Everything about this man was unusual. His strange kindness in a high-caliber African executive generated guilt but was eventually contagious. His warmth was energizing, his gaze always sincere and deep. His eyes, full of attention for his interlocutor, dissuaded any nonsense. His faith in Africa and his sense of responsibility as privileged “elites” were intimidating.
He spoke with an ardor that reflected his enthusiasm and seriousness. His inner truth emerged from every syllable, even humorous, which he uttered with disarming honesty.
Generous and humble, he had a high idea of the responsibility of Africans who have had the good fortune to go to school and confront other ways of seeing and doing. He loved movement and self-examination. It was a way of life. “Jaar jaar! …”, he told me in Wolof to explain the importance of having an itinerary, a path.
In his presence, time stretched: the exchange was always intense, the words luminous and the silence exhilarating. Every economic discussion with him – on debt or monetary policy – was an exploration of ignored spaces, as if we were strolling together in a fascinating and unknown house to open abandoned cabinets and drawers and discover Russian dolls together. It was an exercise in humility, a challenge for the Bantu bearer of semi-certainties that I am…
Not a hint of the frivolity and immobile agitation that give many of us the false sense of “having succeeded” in life. One day when I am in Dakar, he promises to pick me up to go for a drink. I wait for him in front of the Savanah hotel where various vehicles park every minute. He is late. No problem: a statesman constantly manages the mysterious emergencies of the Republic. While I wait, a vehicle parked nearby for a long time “signals with its headlights.” I do not get offended: we have a magical spirit and a sense of spectacle. After a few minutes, the driver of this ambiguous car slowly opens the door and gets out: it was Mahammed, who had been waiting for me for a while and was driving his own vehicle!
“You’re ruining the profession of Prime Minister,” I say, amazed by such incivility. Here and elsewhere, it doesn’t happen like that. A high-ranking dignitary of the Republic does not stoop to driving. He smiles, pats me on the shoulder, and takes me to a café in the city where all the employees do not hesitate to address him informally and engage in conversation. The pains and betrayals that make up the fabric of our intrinsically wretched lives beyond our supposed purchasing powers have never shaken Mahammed’s keen awareness of our duty to live. To live for others, to perhaps give ourselves a valid reason to exist. Even when he sometimes found himself in that inevitable place where life reflects back to us our impossibilities, “the-common of great disenchantment” (as Patrick Chamoiseau puts it), Mahammed remained stoic in his faith.
From time to time, bad news reaches me with a cynical tenacity. Like the one received on April 5 announcing his death. I spoke yesterday with Caty, his beloved wife. She said, “Mahammed was my guide, my advisor, my friend, my husband, my everything. He was a perfect man, I dare say.”
Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne, my big brother, was buried today, April 10, 2024 in Touba.
Celestin Monga.
Read the original article(French) on Senegal Direct
