Summary

  • At his 5 October handover, new ARTP Director General Cheikh Tidiane Sarr set out a wide agenda: data-led telecom regulation, real-time service-quality measurement and reform of Senegal’s postal sector.
  • Law 2018-28 already requires the director general to work under a time-bound performance contract, signed by the finance and telecommunications ministries, the ARTP College and the director general, with annual evaluation by an independent firm selected by the College.
  • The public test is whether the targets behind Sarr’s ambitions become visible in that contract and in follow-up reporting. The sources reviewed do not show his individual targets or an evaluation result.

An ambitious brief, before the measures

At the 5 October handover from Dahirou Thiam, Sarr described his priorities as continuity, transformation and a stronger demand for results. He said the Authority should anticipate changes associated with 5G, prospective 6G, cloud services, the Internet of Things, high-throughput satellites and digital finance. His stated direction is “fifth-generation” regulation that uses data, more transparent service-quality measurement and modern control tools.

The Senegalese Press Agency reported that he referred to the International Telecommunication Union’s GEN5 framework and had presented the main lines of his directorial project to the selection committee.

The agenda extends beyond electronic communications. Sarr said ARTP should support the restructuring and strategic recovery of SN Poste, improve financing for the universal postal service and contribute to a unified framework for postal and logistics regulation. Those are announced priorities, not completed changes. The handover statement supplies no baselines, milestones or named measures for judging them.

A performance mechanism already exists in the law. Article 237 of Senegal’s Electronic Communications Code, Law 2018-28, makes a performance contract part of the director general’s appointment. It is concluded for a defined period between the finance ministry, the ministry responsible for telecommunications, the ARTP College and the director general. The contract is evaluated annually by an independent firm chosen by the College.

Article 233 assigns the College decision-making powers over specified regulatory matters and says it monitors commitments under that contract; Article 234 puts general directions, action plans, annual programmes and reports within its deliberations.

That division matters. Sarr can set an administrative agenda and prepare regulatory files, but the code places specified regulatory decisions and review of the director general’s commitments in the College’s remit. The governing question is not whether a promising speech proves performance. It is whether objectives, authority and evaluation can be connected closely enough for the public to see who is responsible for each result.

One live process must be kept on its own timeline. ARTP opened a consultation on the sector’s development prospects and regulation of new actors and emerging technologies on 30 September, five days before the handover. It invites the digital ecosystem, user associations and the public to comment under Article 208; submissions close at 18:00 Dakar time on 21 October. The consultation is not Sarr’s initiative on the evidence available, and it is not an adopted rule. Its timing does, however, give the new administration an immediate test of how an existing public input process will feed into its broader technology agenda.

The first check is therefore documentary: what the consultation record says after the deadline, what targets the performance contract sets, and what the annual evaluation reports. Without those links, “data-led regulation” remains a direction rather than a public accountability system. With them, the agenda can be tested across both telecom quality and postal-service commitments.

Sources