Ziguinchor Region
Ziguinchor's Lower Casamance recovers from 40-year conflict as Cap Skirring tourism returns and 2M+ sqm demining enables agricultural restoration.
Ziguinchor represents Lower Casamance where the conflict that began in 1982 has largely concluded, the 2022 peace agreement stronger than previous failed ceasefires. Peace has returned to the region comprising Ziguinchor, Sédhiou, and Kolda—tourists now visiting Cap Skirring beaches that once drew 50,000 visitors annually before insecurity destroyed the tourism industry.
Demining operations have cleared over 2 million square meters in the three Casamance regions, but minefields laid by both government and rebels still claim lives and limbs. The CNAMS operations must continue, particularly along the Guinea-Bissau border where landmines concentrate in areas abandoned during the conflict's worst years.
The region's fertile farmlands—Senegal's most productive—could grow fruit, vegetables, and rice once ordnance clearance permits. The destroyed tourism and agricultural production that conflict caused represent development potential that peace enables but does not automatically deliver. Whether Ziguinchor can recover its pre-conflict prosperity—or whether the region remains marked by forty years of fighting—depends on sustained investment in what peace makes possible.