No more paper: Senegal moves tax stamps online 📲🇸🇳

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Senegal is taking another step in its digital transformation. Under the government’s New Deal Technologique, public administration is meant to shift progressively online, echoing a broader continental push toward digitalization as a way to cut through red tape. As of July 20, that ambition has a concrete form: the paper tax stamp is gone.

A platform built to end the paperwork 💻

Run by the Direction générale des impôts et des domaines (DGID), the SenTimbre platform is now the only official channel for Senegalese citizens to buy tax stamps. Available online around the clock, it’s designed to cut the delays long associated with in-person counters. The move fits a wider continental trend: African tax authorities increasingly turning to digital tools to close the gap between citizens and public services.

A transition window stays open until August 15, 2026: anyone still holding an unused paper stamp bought before July 20 can exchange it for a digital one at their local tax office.

A fully digital purchase, from click to QR code 📱

Here’s how it works: users create a SenTimbre account, pick the stamp they need, and pay online. An instant message then delivers the digital stamp, its authenticity backed by a scannable QR code. There’s also a mobile route — the Max IT app, through its « Fay Sama Impôt » menu, lets users pay taxes directly from their phone.

SENTAX, the next building block 🖥️

Unveiled in 2026 by the DGID, SENTAX is set to become the country’s future tax information system, handling mobile payment for the e-stamp along with related financial management. The project is reportedly slated to replace SIGTAS, as part of a broader modernization push that also touches PROMOGEF, the land-management system now considered outdated against current digital standards.

Cameroon has already been here 🇨🇲

This isn’t a first for the continent. Cameroon went through a near-identical shift back in November 2024: on the instruction of Finance Minister Louis Paul Motazé, Cameroon’s own tax authority (DGI) scrapped the physical tax stamp in favor of a digital receipt, verifiable on its platform. The stated goal was the same one Senegal is chasing now — securing public revenue and cutting down on fraud tied to stamping machines. For a reader in Yaoundé or Douala, Senegal’s reform isn’t some distant story — it’s a rerun of something the country lived through itself, and a fair prompt to ask how Cameroon’s own reform is actually holding up, two years in.

Through these successive tech reforms, Senegal’s government is signaling a clear ambition: building one of the continent’s most efficient, least bureaucratic administrations.

Do you think digitizing tax services can genuinely close the gap in access to public administration, or could it end up shutting out those without digital access? Let us know in the comments.