Mody Niang

Mody Niang was born in 1945 in Koki, a village in the Louga region of northern Senegal. He began his working life in 1964 as a primary school teacher in Ndiaganiao.

He later studied at the University of Dakar, where he obtained a licence, and taught history and geography. He then trained at the École normale supérieure in Dakar, which prepared him for a career in school inspection.

From 1981 Mody Niang worked as an inspector of elementary education, a post he held until his retirement in 2003. Alongside this career he wrote for the Senegalese press from the early 1980s, and after retiring he became a prolific columnist and essayist. His writing focused on public institutions, government decisions and the management of state resources, and he became known for criticising corruption and the political use of public funds.

His books, many of them published by L'Harmattan or Éditions Sentinelles, include Me Wade et l'alternance: le rêve brisé du Sopi (2005), Qui est cet homme qui dirige le Sénégal? (2006), L'héritage politique de Léopold Sédar Senghor: entre ombres et lumières (2006), Abdou Diouf. 40 ans au cœur de l'État socialiste au Sénégal (2009), Le clan des Wade: accaparement, mépris et vanité (2011), 20 ans de gouvernance socialiste vue par un citoyen sénégalais (2022), the second volume of La gouvernance des Wade (2023), and two volumes on the presidency of Macky Sall published in October 2024. In February 2013 he received the Clairafrique prize for the essay, awarded at the close of the ninth Caravane du livre et de la lecture.

He served as technical adviser and spokesman of the Office national de lutte contre la fraude et la corruption (OFNAC), then led by Nafy Ngom Keïta, and left in 2016. In his resignation letter he cited his age, his health and the difficulty of continuing his public commentary on successive governments while in the post.

In 2020 he wrote the preface and commentary for the journalist Pape Alé Niang's book on the management of the Centre des œuvres universitaires de Dakar (COUD). Its former director, Cheikh Oumar Anne, sued, and on 27 October 2020 a Dakar court convicted Pape Alé Niang of defamation and Mody Niang of complicity in defamation, giving each a three-month suspended sentence and a fine. The Dakar appeal court upheld the verdict in May 2025, and the Supreme Court rejected their appeal in February 2026.

On 7 August 2024 the Council of Ministers appointed him chairman of the board of the Société sénégalaise de presse et de publications (SSPP), publisher of the national daily Le Soleil, succeeding Abdoulaye Bamba Diallo. He was formally installed on 11 September 2024. In March 2025 he resigned, explaining in a statement that he had written to President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko to say that, for health reasons, he could not carry out the role as effectively as they were entitled to expect. Mame Birame Wathie succeeded him.

Mody Niang described his writing as the work of an ordinary citizen concerned with how his country was run. He was a committed supporter of Ousmane Sonko and the Pastef party, and when he left Le Soleil he insisted that his resignation had nothing at all to do with that commitment, pledging to keep supporting the president and prime minister on the path of Jub, Jubal, Jubbanti, the party's call for integrity and reform, for as long as they did not stray from it.

His outspoken positions won him a loyal readership as well as critics, and SenePlus noted that his criticism rarely left the political class indifferent.

Mody Niang died in Dakar on Saturday 17 October 2026, aged 81. His family announced the death that morning, and it was reported by the Senegalese press agency APS, Radiodiffusion Télévision Sénégalaise, Le Soleil, SenePlus and other outlets. No cause of death was made public; he had stepped down from Le Soleil in 2025 for health reasons.

The lifting of the body took place at 11 am at the Hôpital Principal de Dakar, and he was buried the same day in Koki, his home village in the Louga region.

Mody Niang is remembered as a schools inspector turned public conscience, whose books and columns made governance, public ethics and accountability central themes of Senegalese public debate over four decades. RTS described him as a committed voice for good governance whose writing marked public debate, and his collections of articles, especially those covering the Socialist Party years and the Wade presidency, form a citizen's chronicle of modern Senegalese politics.