Senegal
The westernmost tip of Africa and a Sahelian democracy
Senegal occupies the westernmost point of the African mainland, the windswept Cap-Vert peninsula where the capital Dakar juts into the Atlantic, long a gateway between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Stable and democratic in a turbulent region, it has never suffered a military coup and is famed for the teranga, or hospitality, of its people, as well as for mbalax music, wrestling, and a vibrant intellectual life. Its roughly 19 million people, predominantly Wolof, Fula, and Serer and overwhelmingly Muslim, inhabit a flat, dry land threaded by the Senegal and Gambia rivers.
The terrain is largely low and flat, a transition zone from the Sahel toward the more humid south, with the Senegal River forming the northern border and the Casamance region in the far south, separated from the rest of the country by The Gambia, holding lusher forests and rice paddies. Sandy plains and savanna cover most of the interior, and the highest point near the southeastern Fouta Djallon foothills rises only a few hundred meters. Peanuts long anchored the economy, now joined by fishing, phosphates, tourism, remittances, and newly developing offshore oil and gas.
The coast and the slave-trading island of Gorée off Dakar were central to the Atlantic trade, and Senegal became the administrative heart of French West Africa. Independence in 1960 brought to power the poet-president Léopold Sédar Senghor, a leading voice of the négritude cultural movement, who voluntarily stepped down in 1980, setting a democratic precedent rare on the continent. Senegal has since alternated power peacefully between parties, weathered tensions over the Casamance and, in 2024, a contested election, while sustaining its reputation as one of West Africa's most open societies.