Agence de Presse Senegalaise (APS)

Agence de Presse Sénégalaise (APS) is Senegal’s national public news agency, founded by Ordonnance n° 59-054 of 2 April 1959 under Mamadou Dia, then President of the Council, and the principal supplier of wire news and official information to Senegalese and international media. Law n° 2020-03 of 7 January 2020 authorised the creation of the Société Nationale d’Agence de Presse Sénégalaise (SN-APS), replacing the previous EPIC (établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial) framework; the company’s statutes were subsequently adopted, with capital held by the State. The institutional mutation had been unanimously adopted by the National Assembly in December 2019 following Council of Ministers approval on 18 September 2019 under President Macky Sall. The agency operates under the supervision of the Ministère de la Communication, des Télécommunications et du Numérique (MCTN).

Media assets

News agency: APS

Publishing: APS Hebdo

Ownership and governance

APS was created by Ordonnance n° 59-054 of 2 April 1959 as an établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial (EPIC), a public establishment with an industrial and commercial character. Its institutional status remained the EPIC framework for six decades. On 18 September 2019, the Council of Ministers chaired by President Macky Sall approved a project to transform APS into a société nationale (national company). The institutional mutation was unanimously adopted by the National Assembly in December 2019 and authorised by Law n° 2020-03 of 7 January 2020, creating the Société Nationale d’Agence de Presse Sénégalaise (SN-APS); the company’s statutes were subsequently adopted, with capital held by the Senegalese state and the possibility of opening to other Senegalese public-law entities. The change implied a stronger financial commitment from the state to the agency’s operations, while preserving complete state ownership.

The current Director-General is Momar Diongue, holder of a maîtrise in modern letters, appointed in the Council of Ministers of 2 October 2024 by President Faye and officially installed on 8 November 2024, succeeding Thierno Ahmadou Sy (in role from November 2022 under President Macky Sall). Diongue is a long-standing journalist and political analyst who worked at the Nouvel Horizon magazine and most recently at the private television channel 2STV. At his installation he identified three priorities: securing dedicated headquarters for the agency (APS has long operated without owning its own premises), seeking additional revenue sources to complement the state subsidy, and continuing the digital and audiovisual modernisation programme begun under his predecessor.

The departure of Thierno Ahmadou Sy in October 2024 had been preceded by local press criticism reporting CDI staff expansion and infrastructure expenditures on regional bureaux during his tenure. Sy had been appointed in November 2022 by President Macky Sall. These figures are drawn from critical local-press reporting rather than from an official audit and should be read accordingly.

The current Chairman of the Board (PCA) is Sadikh Top, appointed in the Council of Ministers of 23 October 2024 and officially installed on 29 November 2024, succeeding Moustapha Samb (who had served as PCA for approximately ten years). Top is a former journalist at the daily Le Soleil and at Les Echos, and has been publicly reported as a member of PASTEF’s national secretariat for communication, making his appointment a politically significant choice paralleling the leadership changes at the other Senegalese state-media outlets during 2024.

The DG leadership chain at APS over six decades includes Georges Guiraud (1959-1961), Bara Diouf (1961-1964), Na Diallo (1964), Massata Ndiaye (1964-1965), Henri Mendy (1965-1967), Ciré Thiam (1967-1976), Amadou Dieng (1976-1993, who led the foundational 1972 reform integrating the Centres régionaux d’information), Abdou Guingue (1993-2000), Mamadou Koumé (2000-2010), Joseph-Henri Sarre (2010-2011), Doudou Sarr Niang (2011-2012), Thierno Birahim Fall (2012-2022), Thierno Ahmadou Sy (2022-2024) and Momar Diongue (2024-present).

The supervising minister is Alioune Sall, an information-systems and telecommunications engineer and PASTEF cadre, appointed in April 2024 in the first Faye government formed under Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, and retained as Minister of Communication, Telecommunications and Digital Affairs in the new government formed under Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo on 25 May 2026 (after President Faye dismissed Sonko on 22 May 2026 following months of tensions over IMF programme negotiations and economic strategy).

No statutory editorial-independence regime, arm’s-length appointment procedure, published editorial charter, ombudsman or external complaints mechanism specific to APS was identified during this review. The Director-General and the Chairman of the Board are both appointed by presidential decree at the discretion of the President of the Republic.

Source of funding and budget

The agency’s revenues come mainly from a state subsidy, supplemented by commercial dispatch sales (following the SN-APS reform, management announced the end of free access to APS dispatches and the introduction of paid/encrypted access, arguing that information has a cost and market value), institutional and private subscription contracts, and limited advertising revenue. Local media-sector experts estimate APS’s annual operating budget at roughly XOF 400 million (around USD 740,000), but no recent audited APS financial statement or complete agency-specific public budget line was identified during this review.

Staff representatives have voiced long-standing concerns about the stagnant subsidy. The Syndicat des professionnels de l’information et de la communication du Sénégal (SYNPICS) reported in mid-2021 that APS personnel had been waiting since January 2021, when the new société nationale status had taken effect, for an increase in the state subsidy that would allow staff to work under acceptable conditions. The subsidy reportedly remained largely stagnant through 2025 despite inflation, rising operating costs and the tighter fiscal environment.

The most concrete 2025 funding data point is the Fonds d’appui et de développement de la presse (FADP) allocation. The FADP’s 2025 envelope of approximately XOF 1.9 billion, administered by MCTN Director of Communication Habibou Dia, was effectively allocated to 164 beneficiaries. Public press companies received approximately XOF 609.34 million in aggregate (around 32.1 percent of the envelope), of which APS received XOF 197 million as a direct subvention plus XOF 36 million for rent and charges, the most precise verified public-funding figure for APS in the 2025 cycle. The remainder of the FADP envelope was allocated to private press companies and community radios (XOF 1.098 billion), the regulatory bodies CORED and CCNP (XOF 86 million), the CESTI training centre (XOF 125.75 million) and the FADP’s own operating costs (XOF 28.2 million). The Conseil des diffuseurs et éditeurs de presse du Sénégal (CDEPS) publicly criticised the 2025 allocation as an inequitable repartition favouring state-controlled media at the expense of the private press, and contested the 2024 freeze on private-sector subsidies. The FADP allocation should be read as a press-support / public-aid contribution rather than as APS’s total annual budget.

The 2026 MCTN budget was adopted by the National Assembly on 3 December 2025 at approximately XOF 85.1 billion in autorisations d’engagement and XOF 81.06 billion in crédits de paiement at ministry level, with public reporting referring to the modernisation of APS and RTS equipment among the ministry’s priorities; no APS-specific 2026 line allocation was identified in publicly available budget documents during this review.

Private-media representatives reported and criticised restrictions or withdrawals affecting public-sector advertising in private media during 2025; if confirmed by a formal ministerial decision, this would strengthen state-media revenue capture in principle, but operates in a context where the structurally weak Senegalese advertising market and the wider fiscal constraints limit any practical revenue uplift.

Editorial independence

APS’s editorial line is widely regarded as closely aligned with government positions. The 2019 governance assessment by the Media Foundation for West Africa identified APS’s structural alignment with executive messaging as a defining feature of its output. The Freedom House 2022 report on Beijing’s Global Media Influence in Senegal flagged Chinese state-media content-sharing arrangements and pro-Beijing narratives in Senegal’s wider media ecosystem.

The March 2025 Xinhua interview with APS Director-General Momar Diongue illustrates the continuation of close agency-to-agency public-diplomacy links. Diongue publicly characterised China as “a strategic partner essential for Africa,” praised the Belt and Road Initiative as a vehicle for Senegalese-Chinese cooperation, and expressed support for the Senegalese government’s “New Deal Technologique” digital-policy programme. International agency-to-agency relationships are common practice for national news agencies, and the Xinhua interview should not be treated alone as proof of editorial capture; it is consistent with, but does not on its own establish, the broader pattern of pro-Beijing framing identified in the 2022 Freedom House report.

The DG and PCA appointments under President Faye in October 2024 (Momar Diongue at DG, Sadikh Top at PCA) followed the broader pattern observed at the other Senegalese state-media outlets in 2024, politically significant appointments of journalists associated with the ruling political camp. Sadikh Top in particular is identified as a member of PASTEF’s national secretariat for communication. The appointment mechanism (presidential decree) was unchanged; only the political alignment of the appointees shifted.

There is no statutory framework or independent oversight mechanism guaranteeing or assessing the editorial independence of APS. A new sectoral regulator, the Conseil national de Régulation des Médias (CNRM), was created by Law n° 07-2026 adopted by the National Assembly on 3 March 2026, extending the previous CNRA framework (which covered audiovisual media) to print media, online platforms, foreign media accessible in Senegal, large-scale disinformation and AI-generated content. The Constitutional Council partially censured the law on 7 April 2026, striking down provisions that would have allowed the regulator to order permanent closure of media outlets without procedural safeguards and to call directly on the force publique. The CNRM’s existence and core mission were validated subject to strict-interpretation reservations. The reform brings news agencies and AI-generated content into the regulatory perimeter at sector level, but does not create an internal editorial-independence framework specific to APS.

These structural conditions place APS firmly in the State-Controlled (SC) category. APS is a société nationale created by Law n° 2020-03, succeeding the former EPIC framework, with capital held by the Senegalese state and governance dominated by executive appointment channels. Its Director-General and Chair of the Board are appointed by presidential decree, and no arm’s-length appointment process, independent funding settlement, published editorial charter, ombudsman or external complaints mechanism specific to APS was identified. The agency remains heavily dependent on public support, supplemented by dispatch sales, subscriptions and limited commercial revenue, but no evidence was identified that this revenue mix creates editorial autonomy. The 2024-2026 developments, the appointment of Momar Diongue as Director-General, the appointment of Sadikh Top as PCA, the continued reliance on state subsidy and public press-support mechanisms (including the XOF 233 million FADP 2025 allocation), and the new CNRM regulatory reform, have all proceeded within the same structure of state ownership, executive appointment authority and government-aligned national news distribution. The SC classification therefore continues to apply for 2026.

AI and digital policy

APS operates a multi-format digital wire platform combining dispatches, photo, audio and video, available through aps.sn and its mobile applications.

No published APS-specific newsroom policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, content-provenance standards such as C2PA, or the use of generative-AI tools in editorial production was identified during this review. At sector level, the 2026 CNRM reform explicitly extends the regulatory perimeter to AI-generated content and large-scale disinformation, but implementation remains legally and operationally unsettled following the Constitutional Council’s partial censure of 7 April 2026.

May 2026