Great African kingdoms

During the first millennium AD, trade routes developed through the Sahara which linked West Africa to the northern coast.

The first empire to grow rich from this trade was the Empire of Ghana, which spanned large parts of eastern Senegal between the 8th -11th centuries.

This empire fell in the 11th century under combined attack from the northern Senegalese kingdom of Takrur/Tekrur and its powerful Muslim ally of the Almoravid dynasty – see Morocco History & Politics. Around this time, the Jolof kingdom was founded to the south. It became a vassal region of the great Mali Empire of the 14th/15th century.

In 1324, the Mali King went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and caused the first global market crisis. Mansa Kankan Musa took so much gold with him that records in Cairo speak of his trip causing massive inflation in the Middle East.

The arrival of the Europeans

Though the Jolof and Takrur regions were released from serving larger empires, they soon faced another threat. In the 15th century, Portuguese merchants set up trading stations along the coast for dealing in gold and slaves.

By the 17th century, their position was taken by the Dutch and then the French (while the British concentrated on the Gambia river). The French colony of Saint-Louis was founded in 1659, where a unique Franco-African culture formed, with French traders marrying mixed-race Senegalese.

When the slave trade was abolished by the Europeans in the 1800s, the French began exporting acacia gum and then peanuts from Senegal.

French expansion into the interior was opposed by Muslim peoples of the region, led by famous spiritual leaders such as El Jajj Omar Tall and Cheikh Amadou Bamba. However, these were defeated and the French staked their claim to French West Africa at the Berlin conference of 1884-5.

Modern-day Senegal

In 1914, Senegal’s famous politician Blaise Diagne fought for African rights under the French values of ‘equality and freedom’.

After World War II, independence movements gained in popularity. Senegal became fully independent in 1964, with Léopold Sédar Senghor as its first president.

Senghor stepped down in 1980 and was succeeded by Abdou Diouf. In 2000, Mr Diouf’s party lost power under the country’s stable democratic system and was replaced by Abdoulaye Wade. In 2012, Macky Sall won elections to become the current President of Senegal.

With its stable democracy, Senegal remains the only country in West Africa never to have experienced a military coup, where the army seizes power from an elected government.