Mamadou Dia (18 July 1910 – 25 January 2009)[1] was a Senegalese politician who served as the first Prime Minister of Senegal from 1957 until 1962, when he was forced to resign and was subsequently imprisoned amidst allegations that he was planning to stage a military coup to overthrow President Léopold Sédar Senghor.

His father, a veteran turned into a policeman, played a key role in transmitting the faith of Sufi Islam to his son and was an important example of rectitude for Dia.

In his book “Africa, the Price of Freedom” (2001, edited by L'Harmattan) he stated his belief that he was born (according to some papers belonging to his father he had found) in July 1911, not 1910.

Dia embarked on his political career in 1947 as a leader in the Grand Council of the Afrique occidentale française (AOF) and as Secretary General of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc (BDS) from 1948.

The pair's different views concerning the economy contributed greatly to their split: there was a serious liberal and pro-French versus conservative and patriotic policy divide.

As result of the grave power struggle between the two former political allies, a group of dissident parliamentarians whom Senghor supported tabled a motion of no confidence against the government—thus against Dia.

Dia attempted to restart his career in the early 1980s when Abdou Diouf introduced multiparty democracy, but the small, Dia-led People Democratic Movement found little support.

When he died aged 98 in Dakar on 25 January 2009, there was a massive outpouring of sentiment in national newspapers due to admiration for his obdurate attachment to his principles.

For industrial development to be a boon and not the ruin of mankind, it is crucial that it retain a human dimension, that it not give rise to a new kind of slavery under the pretense  of promoting productivity or efficacy, that it not create progress that is in reality perversion, desire of well-being and not of better-being […]” It is the philosophy of a modern Islam actively participating in a process of transformation of itself and of the world in conformity with demands of justice.

This interpretation of secularization put Senegal out of the heir of France (where takes the form of a permanent hostility to any manifestation of religion) and more in Anglo-Saxon model of relation between church and State: aim to guarantee the autonomy of religious communities.