Youba Sambou (born 1944) is a Senegalese politician from Casamance who served in the government of Senegal as Minister of the Armed Forces from 2000 to 2002.
During the 1960s and 70s, he taught mathematics and physics at several lycées, before being appointed as a headmaster, initially in Diourbel and eventually (after a short administrative interlude in Paris) in Bignona in the 1990s.
When PDS came to power in 2000, Sambou was named Minister of the Armed Forces in the cabinet of Moustapha Niasse, replacing Cheikh Hamidou Kane Mathiara of the Socialist Party.
The sinking of the MV Le Joola with more than 1800 victims took place during his tenure and he had to resign on 1 October 2002, along with Prime Minister Mame Madior Boye.
Following a court action undertaken in 2003 by 22 families who had lost relatives in the tragedy, an international arrest warrant was issued on 12 September 2008 by a judge in Évry (Essonne) for Mame Madior Boye, Youba Sabou and seven other people, but the warrants for the two former ministers were annulled on 16 June 2009 by the Chambre de l'instruction [fr] of the Court of Appeal of Paris, on account of the roles that they held at the time of the disaster.