Abdou Diouf

Diouf was born into the Joof family at Louga, to a Toucouleur mother and a Serer father, and was schooled at the Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis before studying law at Dakar and at the Sorbonne in Paris, graduating in 1959.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-en} His 1960 dissertation at the French school for overseas administrators took as its subject Islam and Wolof society.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-fr} Under Léopold Sédar Senghor he rose through regional governorships and ministries to the premiership in 1970, at the head of the government for a decade.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-en}

When Senghor resigned at the end of 1980, Diouf succeeded him on 1 January 1981 and went on to win the presidential elections of 1983, 1988 and 1993, the last with 58 per cent of the vote.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-en} In the 2000 election the long-time opposition leader Abdoulaye Wade beat him in the second round on 19 March, 58.5 per cent to 41.5 per cent; Diouf conceded defeat and left office on 1 April 2000, in one of Africa's early peaceful transfers of power between elected rivals.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-en} Elected secretary-general of the Francophonie at its Beirut summit in October 2002, he took office on 1 January 2003, was re-elected in 2006, and served until the end of 2014.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-en}

The article texts give his birthplace as Louga; Wikidata's structured value is Nguer Malal, a commune in the Louga region, and this record follows the articles while keeping the variant.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-en}{cite:source/wikidata-abdou-diouf}

On faith, everything the sources offer is structure: Wikidata's single religion value is Sunni Islam, the French infobox gives Islam, the English, Arabic and Urdu articles file him among Senegalese Sunni Muslims, and the Arabic infobox's religion field is empty.{cite:source/wikidata-abdou-diouf}{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-fr}{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-ar} No article text attests his religion personally, and what the Arabic text praises — his encouragement of Arabic and Islamic education, his Islamic conferences, his 1998 King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam — is the public record of a head of state, which never counts as personal attestation.{cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-ar} One structured family only, so his faith is entered as unknown, with the Sunni reading preserved in the record.

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• {cite:source/wikipedia-abdou-diouf-fr}
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