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Senegal lies on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, between the Sahara to the north and the green, rainy south. Its capital, Dakar, sits on the Cap-Vert peninsula, and nearby Pointe des Almadies is the westernmost point of mainland Africa. Most of the country is flat savanna, bordered by the Senegal River in the north and crossed by the Saloum, Gambia and Casamance rivers, and it almost completely surrounds its small neighbour, The Gambia.
For centuries Wolof, Serer, Fula and Mandinka kingdoms ruled here. From the 1400s European traders came to the coast, and small islands such as Gorée and Saint-Louis became part of the Atlantic trade, including the trade in enslaved people. France later ruled the whole territory, and Dakar became the capital of French West Africa. Senegal became independent in 1960, and since then power has always changed hands peacefully, never through a military coup.
Today about 18 million people live in Senegal, most of them Muslim. French is the official language, but Wolof is the everyday language of the streets and markets. The Senegalese are proud of teranga, their word for hospitality, and of their music, wrestling, football and food. Visitors come for Dakar's lively streets, the old island towns, the pink lake, the mangroves of the Saloum Delta, the bird parks of the north and the wildlife of the east.
People have lived in Senegal since prehistoric times, and the great stone circles and shell mounds of the Saloum region are more than a thousand years old. From the 1300s the Wolof Jolof Empire united much of the country. Portuguese sailors arrived in the 1400s, followed by the Dutch, the English and the French, who traded from islands along the coast. France conquered the interior in the 1800s, and Senegal became independent in 1960.
From the middle of the 1300s the Wolof state of Jolof grew into a loose union: first the kingdoms of Waalo, Cayor and Baol, and later the Serer kingdoms of Sine and Saloum, together covering much of today's Senegal. Tradition names its founder as Ndiadiane Ndiaye.
The Portuguese navigator Dinis Dias sailed past the mouth of the Senegal River and reached the westernmost point of Africa, which he named Cabo Verde, the Green Cape, for its lush vegetation. Portuguese traders soon set up posts along the coast.
Amari Ngoné Fall of Cayor defeated and killed the ruler of Jolof at Danki. After the battle Cayor and the other kingdoms became independent, and the Jolof Empire broke apart into separate states.
French traders moved their fort to an island near the mouth of the Senegal River, known locally as Ndar, and named the town Saint-Louis. It became the capital of the French colony of Senegal.
A French fleet captured the small island of Gorée, off today's Dakar, from the Dutch. Gorée became a French trading post, and one of several places on the Senegalese coast where enslaved Africans were held and shipped across the Atlantic.
After an earlier abolition in 1794 was reversed by Napoleon, France finally abolished slavery in all its colonies in 1848. The same year the people of the old coastal towns elected a deputy to the French parliament for the first time.
The French set up a military post at Ndakaaru, a Lebu village on the Cap-Vert peninsula facing Gorée, and called it Dakar. With its deep, sheltered harbour it soon grew into the main port of the region.
The first railway in French West Africa linked Dakar with Saint-Louis. It carried peanuts, the colony's main crop, to the port, and helped Dakar grow.
The Sufi teacher Amadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride brotherhood, founded the town of Touba in central Senegal. The French exiled him to Gabon in 1895, and today Touba is a holy city and his burial place.
Dakar replaced Saint-Louis as the capital of French West Africa, a vast federation of French colonies that stretched as far as today's Niger and Guinea.
Blaise Diagne, born on Gorée, was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies for Senegal's Four Communes. He was the first person of full West African descent to sit in the French parliament.
Senegal and French Sudan became independent together as the Mali Federation on 20 June 1960, but Senegal left the federation two months later and became a separate republic. The poet Léopold Sédar Senghor was its first president. Independence Day is celebrated on 4 April.
Senegal and The Gambia formed a loose confederation on 1 February 1982 to work more closely together. It was dissolved in 1989.
The opposition leader Abdoulaye Wade won the presidential election, and the party that had governed since independence handed over power peacefully. It was widely praised as a milestone for democracy in Africa.
In June 2024 oil began to flow from the Sangomar field in the Atlantic, about 100 km south of Dakar, making Senegal an oil producer for the first time.
Senegalese cooking is built on rice, millet, fish from the Atlantic, peanuts, onions, lime and chilli. The main meal is lunch, usually one big dish of rice with fish or meat and vegetables, served on a large shared platter in the middle of the family, who eat from it with a spoon or with the right hand. Street food fills the day, from bean sandwiches at breakfast to grilled meat in the evening, and afterwards comes a sweet millet dessert and several small glasses of strong mint tea, called attaya.
The national dish: fish stuffed with a paste of parsley, garlic and chilli, cooked in a tomato sauce with vegetables such as cabbage, carrot, cassava, aubergine and sweet potato, and then broken rice cooked in the same rich sauce. The fish and vegetables are piled on top of the red rice.
In 2021 UNESCO added 'Ceebu jën, a culinary art of Senegal' to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Its name simply means 'rice and fish' in Wolof.
Chicken marinated in lemon or lime juice, mustard and a great heap of sliced onions, grilled or fried, and then simmered with the onions until they turn soft and sweet. It is served with plain white rice. It is also made with fish (yassa jën) or lamb.
'Yassa' is the name of the cooking method, marinating and then stewing, and 'ginaar' is the Wolof word for chicken.
A rich stew of beef, lamb or chicken in a sauce of peanut paste and tomato, with vegetables such as sweet potato, cabbage and carrot. It is served over white rice.
Peanuts are Senegal's main cash crop, and the city of Kaolack is the centre of the peanut trade.
'Rice and meat': beef or lamb fried with onions, garlic and pepper, then simmered with mustard and water until tender, and rice cooked in the same sauce. It is often garnished with green olives or black-eyed peas, and it is a favourite for celebrations.
Along with ceebu jën and ceebu ginaar (rice and chicken), it belongs to a family of one-pot rice dishes; in Wolof 'ceeb' means rice.
A thick, slippery sauce of okra cooked with red palm oil, fish, dried fish and shellfish, and chilli, served over white rice.
A light, tangy broth of fresh fish simmered with onions, tomato, chilli and lime juice, served with white rice. It is gentler and more delicate than yassa.
Lamb seasoned and grilled over a fire, then cut into pieces and served on paper with raw or grilled onions, mustard and bread. It is a favourite evening meal.
The word 'dibi' comes from the Soninke language and means barbecue.
Black-eyed beans slowly cooked in a spicy tomato and onion sauce, spooned into a piece of baguette. It is a filling, cheap breakfast sandwich sold at street stalls.
Half-moon turnovers of dough filled with spiced fish or minced meat and deep-fried until golden. They are sold as a snack, often with a sharp onion and chilli sauce.
Senegal has a long-established Lebanese community, and the name matches the Lebanese stuffed pastries called fatayer.
A cool, creamy dessert of small grains of millet couscous stirred into sweetened yogurt or curdled milk, often with a little nutmeg, vanilla and raisins.
A thick millet porridge topped with a sweet sauce of curdled milk or yogurt, sometimes flavoured with baobab fruit or peanut.
The most popular drink in Senegal: a deep red, sweet and slightly sour juice made from the dried flowers of the roselle hibiscus, often flavoured with mint or orange blossom and served ice cold.
Other favourite homemade juices are bouye, from the fruit of the baobab tree, and a fiery ginger drink called gingembre.
Chinese green tea boiled with lots of sugar, and often mint, in a small pot over a charcoal stove, then poured from high up between glasses until it has a thick foam. It is served in three rounds, each sweeter than the last.
Making attaya takes a long time, and that is the point: the three rounds are a time to sit, talk and keep friendships going.
Coffee roasted and ground together with djar, the peppery seeds of Guinea pepper, and sometimes cloves, then brewed through a filter and served very sweet. It is sold by street vendors all over the country.
Most Senegalese live in the west of the country, between Dakar and the old peanut-growing towns of the centre. Dakar and its suburbs are home to more than a fifth of the population. The north follows the Senegal River, the south beyond The Gambia is the green Casamance region, and the east is thinly populated savanna rising to low hills near Mali and Guinea.
The capital and largest city, with about 4 million people in the metropolitan area in 2023. It spreads over the Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost part of mainland Africa, and is a busy port, a centre of music, art and fashion, and a gateway to the whole of West Africa.
A railway and industrial city about 70 km east of Dakar, at the junction of the old lines to Dakar, Saint-Louis and Mali. It had about 390,000 people in 2023.
The holy city of the Mouride Sufi brotherhood, founded by Amadou Bamba in 1887. It has grown very fast and counted about 1.1 million people in the 2023 census, second only to Dakar. Every year millions of pilgrims come for the Grand Magal.
The old colonial capital, built around a narrow island in the Senegal River near the sea, known in Wolof as Ndar. It was the capital of French West Africa until 1902 and of the colony of Senegal until 1957, and had about 250,000 people in 2023.
A market town on the Saloum River and Senegal's main centre of the peanut trade. It is also an important centre of Islamic learning for the Tijaniyya brotherhood.
The main town of Casamance, on the Casamance River, founded by the Portuguese in 1645. The region is green and rainy, with rice fields, palm groves and mangroves, and it is cut off from the north of the country by The Gambia.
A big fishing town about 80 km south of Dakar on the Petite Côte, the 'little coast' of sandy beaches. Fishing, tourism and peanut processing are its main businesses, and painted wooden canoes line the beach.
A fishing town in two parts: Joal on the mainland, and Fadiouth, a village on an island made of shells, joined to it by a long wooden footbridge. Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president, was born in Joal.
The largest city of eastern Senegal, about 420 km southeast of Dakar in a straight line, on the road and railway towards Mali. The interior is much hotter than the coast.
A small town on the Gambia River among green hills near the borders with Mali and Guinea. Its name means 'land of man' in Malinké, and it is the base for visiting Bassari country and the waterfalls of Dindéfélo.
A small car-free island about 2 km off Dakar, reached by a short ferry ride, with pastel houses, narrow lanes and old forts. From the 1500s to the 1800s it was a European trading post, and enslaved Africans were among the people bought, held and shipped from the island. Historians debate how many people passed through the island and the exact role of the House of Slaves, built around 1780, with its 'Door of No Return', but the house has become one of the world's best-known memorials to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade. The island was among the first 12 World Heritage Sites, in 1978.
UNESCO World Heritage
A bronze statue about 50 m high of a man, a woman and a child, standing on one of the two Mamelles hills above the Atlantic. It was inaugurated in April 2010, for the 50th anniversary of independence, and as of 2026 it is the tallest statue in Africa.
A shallow lake about 35 km northeast of Dakar whose water can turn pink, thanks to tiny salt-loving algae. The water is extremely salty, and workers wade in to scrape salt from the bottom and carry it to shore in boats. The colour is usually strongest in the dry season; it faded after floods in 2022 and has partly returned since.
The old colonial town on a narrow island in the Senegal River, with a grid of streets, balconied houses and quays. It is reached by the Faidherbe Bridge, a metal bridge about 507 m long that opened in 1897. The island has been a World Heritage Site since 2000.
UNESCO World Heritage
Lakes, creeks and reed beds on the Senegal River delta northeast of Saint-Louis, where huge flocks of birds spend the winter after crossing the Sahara. Almost 400 bird species have been recorded, the most visible being great white pelicans and flamingos. It is a World Heritage Site.
UNESCO World Heritage
The huge mosque at the heart of Touba, holy city of the Mouride brotherhood, with its tall minarets and domes. It was completed in 1963, and Amadou Bamba, the brotherhood's founder, is buried inside. Visitors should dress modestly, and women cover their hair.
A village built on an island of piled-up clam and oyster shells, joined to Joal by a long wooden footbridge. Shells cover the lanes and are mixed into the walls. A second shell island holds a cemetery where Christians and Muslims are buried side by side, and granaries stand on stilts in the water.
A maze of salty channels, more than 200 islands and mangrove forests where the Saloum River meets the Atlantic, south of Joal-Fadiouth. People have fished and gathered shellfish here for more than two thousand years, leaving over 200 shell mounds, some with burial sites. It became a World Heritage Site in 2011 and is best explored by wooden canoe.
UNESCO World Heritage
A vast national park of about 9,130 km² of savanna, forest and river banks along the Gambia River in the southeast. It is home to hippos, buffalo, antelopes such as the giant eland, chimpanzees and a small number of lions. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1981.
UNESCO World Heritage
Green hills near the border with Guinea where the Bassari, Fula and Bedik peoples live in small villages of round thatched huts and keep their own farming traditions, masks and ceremonies. The cultural landscape became a World Heritage Site in 2012.
UNESCO World HeritagePointe des Almadies, on the edge of Dakar, is the westernmost point of mainland Africa, about 8 degrees of longitude further west than the westernmost point of mainland Europe in Portugal.
Senegal wraps almost completely around The Gambia, a long, narrow country that follows the Gambia River. The Gambia touches only Senegal and the sea.
Senegal's first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, was also a celebrated poet, and in 1983 he became the first African elected to the Académie française.
The national football team is nicknamed the Lions of Teranga, after the Wolof word for hospitality. In 2022 it won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time, beating Egypt on penalties in the final.
At the 2002 World Cup, playing its first World Cup ever, Senegal beat the defending champions France in the opening match and went on to reach the quarter-finals.
From 1979 until 2007 the famous Paris-Dakar Rally usually ended in Dakar, near the Pink Lake. The last Dakar finish was in 2007, and the rally has since moved to other continents.
Senegalese wrestling, called laamb in Wolof, is the most popular sport in the country. Unlike most other West African wrestling, it allows blows with the hands, and top wrestlers are national stars.
Senegal was chosen to host the 2026 Youth Olympic Games, set for 31 October to 13 November 2026 in Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly, the first Olympic event ever held in Africa.
The baobab tree appears on Senegal's coat of arms next to a lion. Baobabs can live for well over a thousand years, and their fruit is used for bouye, a popular creamy drink.
Since independence in 1960, power in Senegal has always changed hands peacefully, never through a military coup.
The singer Youssou N'Dour helped make mbalax, a dance music built on Senegalese sabar drums, famous around the world.
The pink colour of Lake Retba comes from Dunaliella salina, a tiny alga that thrives in very salty water.
As of 2026, Senegal has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the islands of Gorée and Saint-Louis, the Saloum Delta and the stone circles it shares with The Gambia.
Wolof is the first language of about 40 percent of Senegalese, and about as many again speak it as a second language, so it works as a common language for the whole country.
Senegal's official language is French, but Wolof is the everyday language of most people. In Wolof spelling 'c' sounds like the ch in 'church', 'x' like the ch in Scottish 'loch', 'ñ' like the ny in 'canyon' and 'ë' like the u in 'but'. Double letters are held a little longer, and the stress usually falls on the first syllable. Pronunciation is written the way it sounds; the capital letters show where the stress goes. Audio is coming soon.
Greetings matter a great deal in Senegal: people ask after each other and their families before any other business. Capital letters in the pronunciation show the stressed syllable.
Greetings are very important in Senegal. Before asking for directions, a price or help, say 'salaam aleekum' or 'bonjour' and ask how the person is. Skipping the greeting is seen as rude, and a few words of Wolof bring big smiles.
Shake hands, pass things, give money and eat with your right hand. Using the left hand for these is considered disrespectful.
Clothes that cover the shoulders and knees are best in towns, villages and religious places such as Touba. Take extra care during Ramadan and at the time of Friday prayers, in the early afternoon.
Agree on the taxi fare before you get in. In markets prices are usually open to friendly bargaining. Carry small notes and coins in West African CFA francs, because sellers often cannot change large notes.
Malaria is present throughout Senegal. Health services such as the CDC advise travellers to take anti-malaria tablets and to be vaccinated against yellow fever, and you may be asked for a yellow fever certificate if you arrive from a country with yellow fever. See a travel clinic at least 8 weeks before you go.
The southern region of Casamance has seen a low-level separatist conflict for decades, and it has been much calmer in recent years. Remote areas near the borders with Mali and Mauritania also need extra care. Before going, check your government's latest travel advice, travel by day and stay on the main roads.
If you are offered attaya, accept and stay a while: the three rounds of tea can take an hour or more and are a friendly time for conversation, not a quick drink.
As of 2026, the number for the police is 17 and for an ambulance 15. Medical care outside Dakar is limited, so travel insurance that covers medical evacuation is wise.
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