Dakar Region
Dakar's Cap-Vert peninsula port concentrates Senegal's government and commerce, with Regional Express Train and Ndayane port attempting decentralization.
Dakar exists because the Cap-Vert peninsula exists—Africa's westernmost point creating the natural harbor that French colonizers developed into a port connecting West Africa to Atlantic trade routes. The city's primacy concentrates government, finance, and formal employment in ways that the Plan Sénégal Émergent explicitly seeks to decentralize, though infrastructure investment continues favoring the capital.
The Regional Express Train connecting Dakar to suburban areas and the Dakar-Thiès-Tivaouane-Saint-Louis highway represent connectivity investments recognizing that congestion threatens the capital's functionality. Port congestion at Dakar drives the Ndayane deep-water port development (DP World, late 2024), the infrastructure that Vision 2050's decentralization requires if industry is to relocate.
Senegal's 6% GDP growth in 2024 and projected 9% in 2025 reflects hydrocarbon exports (Sangomar oil field producing 34.5 million barrels forecast for 2025), but the petroleum wealth enters an economy whose structure Dakar's concentration defines. Whether oil revenues finance the regional development that reduces Dakar dependence—or whether the capital captures new wealth as it captured previous development—shapes whether transformation occurs.