The reigning African champions were eliminated from the 2026 FIFA World Cup on 1 July, beaten 3-2 by Belgium in extra time in the Round of 32. The Lions of Teranga had gone two goals up early, lifting hopes across the country and the continent, before Belgium’s comeback sent them home. What has followed is a dramatic unfolding of events that expose the disturbing and persistent patterns beyond the Senegalese team.
During the tournament, players were reportedly seen ordering food outside their designated hotel. The detail seemed trivial until it emerged that the team’s chef was not with the squad at all. The Senegalese Football Federation (FSF) initially pointed to visa problems, easy to accept given the treatment African teams and supporters have received from the United States and Canada as hosts.
But as scrutiny mounted, a different account surfaced. More than ten days after the defeat, the federation’s general secretary, Abdoulaye Seydou Sow, appeared on the Senegalese public broadcaster RTS on Sunday, July 12 and confirmed what social media had reported: the chef had been accused of sexual harassment by an employee recruited in the United States. Faced with the allegations, Sow said, “the federation chose to act without delay.” The chef was sent home.
“Everyone should congratulate the federation president and me because we protected Senegal’s honor and dignity,” Sow said. “We did not want to make the matter public, but once we became aware of the facts and the procedures that could follow, we acted immediately.”
Keeping him on American soil, Sow explained, might have invited intervention by US authorities. The removal was a precaution: to preserve calm in the squad and keep the matter from disrupting Senegal’s campaign. He went further, noting that the secretary general also stressed that certain behaviors that might be perceived in Senegal as mere joking can, under American law, be considered harassment. That the federation had acted with caution to avoid potential legal or media consequences that might damage the image of the team and the country. He spoke with pride of a man who believed he had guarded Senegal’s “honor and dignity”.
At no time did the official go beyond reputational handling to address safeguarding. It is a reputational one. The complainant is entirely absent from the account: we are not told whether an investigation was opened, whether she was supported, or what became of her. The chef was moved out of American jurisdiction, and the country wasn’t told if he was still in a position of authority. The federation solved exposure, not harm.
Sexual harassment at the global stage
His words sparked immediate anger online, and rightly so. In distinguishing Senegalese joking from American law, he made consent a matter of geography. His words echo what we live every day. Ask any Senegalese woman, and she will give you an inventory: the sexist joke, the vulgar remark, the hand that lands on you in a crowded place, the man who does not ask because he has never had to. This is what we are told is culture. Men joke, men pat, men say things, and nothing about it is deemed inappropriate.
The statement is as true as it is unflinching. It says out loud what is usually left implicit, and, in doing so, stamps society’s approval on it. What shocks is the casualness: that a man at that level would relay it to the nation as though we should carry on and accept it. To the man at the top of Senegalese football, he was standing up for his buddies and the nation’s collective pride, weighing both against a woman’s safety. He did not think to denounce sexual misconduct at all.
Sexual harassment violates human rights, yet the federation’s account makes no reference to the codes that bind it. Under FIFA rules, sexual abuse, harassment and exploitation are not subject to any limitation period, an acknowledgement that such cases often surface years later. So removing the alleged perpetrator from the scene doesn’t necessarily resolve the case. FIFA’s framework also requires member associations to appoint a safeguarding officer and maintain reporting channels for anyone working with, in, or around them. The FSF has not said whether it has either. Evading accountability in the name of the nation is the same instinct that drives the corruption and mismanagement dogging the FSF through this tournament.
Safety of Senegalese women
Sexual harassment is absolved rather than punished, as a joke, as culture, as a misunderstanding of foreign law, as something a man of standing would never really mean. The norms do the work the law was written to prevent, and our safety arrives last, after the reputations, after the pride, after the men. We simply remain an afterthought in every calculation that follows.
We have denounced it again and again, the harassment we go through, everywhere, at every age, from little girls to adolescents to grown women. On social media and in workplaces we are met with contempt, gaslighting, abuse, ostracisation, rape threats. We are told we are not beautiful enough to incite desire in any man, or not young enough, as though the problem were our failure to qualify. This is what honour costs us. Existing laws assume complaints will be made, but the ground is built to prohibit any victim from coming forward.
The cost is measurable. Sexual violence against women and girls remains endemic here, the latest shock being the gang rape and killing of a two-year-old girl by two men and an adolescent in Kanel. Such a horror should shake a nation. The reaction was mild because the ground had been prepared.
As we have denounced over and over, Senegal has entertained rape culture and paedophilia so thoroughly that a religious preacher can go on television and encourage men to pry on four-year-old girls as future wives; a renowned philosophy teacher can go on television and make rapey jokes; a convicted rapist can turn media analyst and appear in the public media every other day; a woman preacher can urge mothers not to let their husbands change their baby girls’ nappies, because men will be men and fathers may be attracted to their own babies. The list goes on, of men and women going bold and telling us to our face that they do not care about our consent or our safety, that men’s feelings matter more than our lives. That impunity is what allowed a maths teacher to kiss his student in front of her class, and what allows grown men to harass and touch little girls on public transport in broad daylight.
These disastrous actions of the Senegalese FSF and the toxic climate that made room for it, again, point to the lack of consideration Senegalese men as a group have for girls and women, despite the shouts at the top of their lungs that they will not harm them because they have daughters, sisters and mothers.
Sexual abuse does not happen in a vacuum. Its normalisation is sustained by collectively held beliefs, and it is a means of exerting power and control. The numbers bear us out: up to thirty percent of Senegalese women aged 15 to 49 have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. Senegal’s state commissioned first national stand-alone survey on violence against women, published in 2025, set out the magnitude of physical, psychological, sexual and economic violence for the first time.
Senegal’s dramatic exit from the World Cup and the mismanagement still feel raw and shocking, pushes for accountability are ongoing. We must underscore this urgent reality: women’s safety matters across geographies. A nation’s image must match the lived realities of its people, particularly its most vulnerable. Reputational fixes without addressing a culture of violence against women will only mean the scandals will keep coming, and women will keep paying the price.
Ndeye Debo SECK is a journalist and teacher of English, specialising in education policy, leadership and planning