A West African river is managed jointly by four nations
The Senegal River’s Serer folk etymology joins Seen—linked to the supreme deity Roog Seen—with O Gal, “body of water.” Headwaters Bakoye and Bafing rise in Guinea, meet at Bafoulabé in Mali, then swing west and north toward the Atlantic along the Mauritania–Senegal frontier.
The river drains about 270,000 square kilometres, with a mean flow of 680 cubic metres per second and an annual discharge near 21.5 cubic kilometres; its main tributaries are the Falémé, Karakoro and Gorgol. Gorges near Galougo and the Gouina Falls mark the steeper middle course. Below Kaédi the channel splits, and a northern arm called the Doué runs alongside for about 200 kilometres before rejoining just past Pondor, enclosing the long island known as Île à Morfil.
Mali, Mauritania and Senegal set up the OMVS basin authority in 1972, and Guinea joined in 2005. Manantali Dam in Mali and Maka-Diama on the border regulate flow and hold back salt water, the 1927 Félou power plant was replaced in 2014, and work on a Gouina plant began in 2013. Boats carry very little freight or passenger traffic, although the OMVS has studied a 55-metre-wide channel over the 905 kilometres from Ambidédi in Mali to Saint-Louis, which would give landlocked Mali direct access to the Atlantic.
Its fish and other aquatic animals are so close to those of the Gambia that both basins form a single Senegal-Gambia Catchments ecoregion. Species richness is moderately high, yet only three frogs and one fish occur nowhere else.
Mediterranean peoples knew of the river early. Pliny called it, or perhaps another stream, Bambotus, possibly from a Phoenician word for hippopotamus, and Ptolemy named it Nias. Hanno the Carthaginian reached it around 450 BCE on his voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and trade linked it to the Mediterranean until Carthage fell in 146 BCE. The Serer who once lived along it moved south after persecution in the eleventh century.
Source: Senegal River
