Dakar

Dakar, city, capital of Senegal, and one of the chief seaports on the western African coast. It is located midway between the mouths of the Gambia and Sénégal rivers on the southeastern side of the Cape Verde Peninsula, close to Africa’s most westerly point. Dakar’s harbour is one of the best in western Africa, protected by the limestone cliffs of the cape and by a system of breakwaters. The city’s name comes from dakhar, a Wolof name for the tamarind tree and the name of a coastal Lebu village that was located south of what is now the first pier.

Dakar was founded in 1857 when the French built a fort on the site of the modern Place de l’Indépendance to safeguard the interests of merchants who had been settling there for 20 years and of the residents of Gorée, a waterless island in the lee of the peninsula that once was an outpost for slave and other trading. By 1862 a short breakwater had been built on Dakar Point and a town laid out on the low limestone platform behind the sandy beach. Another generation elapsed, however, before Dakar gained its supremacy over Gorée and Rufisque, the latter being a settlement located 13 miles (21 km) east along the peninsula which had become an important export centre for the peanut (groundnut) trade. The opening in 1886 of Western Africa’s first railway, from Saint-Louis to Dakar, was a great impetus to Dakar’s development, and the railroad also stimulated the cultivation of peanuts in the vicinity of its track. In 1902 Dakar replaced Saint-Louis as the federal capital of French West Africa.