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'Basic needs before infrastructure': fashioning a fairer Senegal
Zinga is hoping the next president will do more to empower women, train youths and boost the creative industry to turn Dakar into the fashion hub of West Africa. Picture taken February 13, 2019. PHOTO BY REUTERS/ Zohra Bensemra
19/02/2019
DAKAR (Reuters) - For fashion designer Sophie Zinga, working to create a fairer Senegal should be a priority for its next leader - and if he can turn the country into a magnet for the creative arts too then all the better.
The New York-trained Zinga, believes Macky Sall's outgoing government has not done enough to promote her industry and others like it, and blames a skills shortage among local tailors for failing to sell any of her designs for the first two years after launching her own label in 2012.
"I think Dakar could position itself as a premier destination in ...all of the creative sectors," she said.
So on Sunday she'll be voting for Sall's main rival, newcomer Ousmane Sonko, who short to prominence in 2016 after denouncing high-level corruption.
"We are not saying he is the best candidate," she said.
"But ... I think its a message to Macky Sall even for him to ...help us develop this country and develop it through education, through health care, basic needs before we go into big infrastructure."
(Reporting by Christophe Van Der Perre, editing by John Stonestreet)
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