The Changing Role of the Port of Dakar

Abstract

The port of Dakar stands today as one of the most important seaports of tropical Africa. Some 5,455 ships, registering over 35 million tons, entered the port in 1967, and cargo movements exceeded 5 million tons. The hinterland of the port, although currently undergoing some contraction, remains larger than that of any other West African port. Dakar owes its importance to a variety of factors: to its situation at the most westerly point of the African continent, in relation to Atlantic trade routes; to the excellence of its sheltered, deep-water site, selected and developed by the French for strategic as well as economic motives; to its extensive and efficient rail and road links with its hinterland, which includes parts of Mauritania and Mali as well as Senegal itself; and finally to the wide range and high level of equipment within the port itself.

This chapter is based in part upon the author’s thesis for the Diplôme d’ Études Supérieures, in course of publication under the title Dakar: métropole ouest-africaine. The reader is referred also to a recent study by R.J. Peterec, Dakar and West African Economic Development (New York, 1967).