Mainland Afro-Eurasia’s western tip takes a river’s name
Senegal is mainland West Africa’s westernmost state, nearly wrapping The Gambia along the Gambia River while bordering Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau. It borrows its name from the Senegal River, itself possibly from Zenaga/Sanhaja or a divine compound.
Around 18 million people live on almost 197,000 square kilometres, and The Gambia’s narrow river strip cuts the southern Casamance off from the rest of the country. Other theories trace the river name to the Serer deity Rog Sene plus a word for water, or to the Wolof for “our canoe.” Kingdoms such as Takrur rose between the sixth and fourteenth centuries on older prehistoric occupation. Islam arrived through Toucouleur and Soninke contacts with the Almoravids, and the Serer in particular resisted it.
In the fourteenth century the Jolof Empire, founded by Ndiadiane Ndiaye, drew kingdoms such as Cayor, Baol, Waalo and Saloum into a voluntary confederacy that lasted until about 1549. Between 1300 and 1900 close to a third of Senegambia’s people were enslaved, and France seized Gorée near Dakar in 1677 as a slave-trading base. Under Governor Louis Faidherbe the French took the mainland kingdoms from the 1850s, all except the Serer realms of Sine and Saloum.
An Allied attempt to take Dakar from Vichy France failed in September 1940. Senegal joined French Sudan in the Mali Federation, independent on 20 June 1960, but left it that August, and Léopold Sédar Senghor became first president. French West African independence left French as the official tongue understood by only a minority among thirty-plus languages. Wolof, spoken by 80 percent as a first or second language, is the everyday common tongue.
Seasonal Sahel rains mark the climate, and most people live near the coast working in farming or food industries. HDI rank 169 of 193 marks a heavily indebted poor-country classification.
Source: Senegal
