"Senegal and Guinea are sending their first-ever ambassadors to Israel next week, as Israel continues to expand its outreach to Africa.
Talla Fall, of Senegal, and Amara Camara, of Guinea, are scheduled to present their respective letters of credence to President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday at a ceremony in Jerusalem, officially taking up their positions as non-resident ambassadors to Israel.
Fall, who also represents Dakar in Egypt, will be based in Cairo. Camara will work out of Paris.
Guinea and Senegal - both Muslim-majority nations in West Africa - have recently upgraded their relations with Israel. While both countries had existing diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, neither has ever appointed an ambassador to Israel.
Dakar and Jerusalem two months ago agreed to normalize ties after Israel had recalled its ambassador, following Senegal's co-sponsorship of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 in December 2016. Jerusalem had also canceled its foreign aid programs in Senegal as part of a rash of retaliatory steps against countries that supported the measure against Israeli settlements...
In February, Netanyahu had decided not to return Israel's ambassador to Senegal, deepening the downgrading of the Jewish state's diplomatic ties with the West African country over its support for the UN resolution...
Under the motto "Israel is coming back to Africa and Africa is coming back to Israel," Netanyahu has declared diplomatic outreach to Africa as one of his key foreign policy objectives. Offering African states development aid, economic cooperation, and anti-terrorism know-how, Netanyahu aims to break the traditional anti-Israel majority in international organizations such as the UN..."