Fatou Sarr makes early bid for Senegal’s top job

Top scholar Fatou Sarr has high ambitions, and the support of U.S. Ambassador Janice Jacobs and the community surrounding the USAID-funded school on Bassoul island, Senegal. Photo: Richard Nyberg. USAID

Fatou Sarr is 13 and a child prodigy – a singer, a dancer, and already an acclaimed poet in Senegal’s Sérère language. And that’s just the beginning. She has her eye on the presidency.

Fatou is making the right moves early in life. She is already quite famous at home, on the island of Bassoul nestled among Senegal’s pristine, oyster-laden mangroves. But she is also beating the odds, with the help of USAID’s middle school construction and development program.

Born into a family of five brothers and two sisters, long-term education for Fatou was almost a dream. Her illiterate mother takes care of the family on the meager earnings of her husband, a navigator on shipping boats who spends weeks on end with fishermen deep into the Atlantic Ocean.

Fatou’s elder brother dropped out of school after four years because he thought it was too hard for their mother to care for the family. He now works as a carpenter, while the other brothers and sisters carry out the household chores.

The youngest child, Fatou is the only one in the family attending school. At the age of six she was already determined to go to school like some of her friends. Her parents accepted her decision even though they were not completely convinced that school was the most appropriate place for their daughter. Despite her hard living conditions, she was the highest achieving elementary school student in her district.

As one of the 1,200 Ambassador’s Girls Scholarship recipients, she is hitting the books and maintaining high marks in the middle school that was built on her island by USAID two years ago. Unlike many children who complete primary school, she will not be forced to leave her island and family for distant shores where there is a middle school. Far too many children of Bassoul and other isolated and remote communities have dropped out at the age of 12 for want of a hospitable family able to afford an additional child to feed and clothe.

But that’s not Fatou’s fate. She’s made up her mind.