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Senegal has 14 regions, each named after the town that runs it, wrapped around a country that is not Senegal at all: the Gambia runs 300km into it along its river and cuts the south off from the rest. That makes the map easier to learn than most, because the Gambia is a landmark nobody can miss, and harder to trust, because a great deal of what is printed still shows the eleven regions from before 2008. This page is all fourteen, the older regions they were cut out of, and what tells you which one you are in.
The region is the top tier of Senegal's administration. Each has a governor appointed by the state and an elected council, and is divided into departments, of which the country has 46. Every region is named after its capital, so here, unlike Ghana, knowing the towns is most of knowing the map: Kaolack is the capital of Kaolack and Ziguinchor of Ziguinchor.
The number that matters is 14. Senegal had eleven regions from 2002 and ten before that. In 2008 three more were cut out of existing ones:
Matam had been cut out of the eastern end of Saint-Louis in 2002. A map with no Kaffrine on it, or with Tambacounda running all the way to the Guinean border, is a map from before 2008.
A Senegalese plate names a region. Plates issued from 1989 to 2019 open with a two-letter code for the region that registered the vehicle, DK for Dakar and TH for Thiès, and the current format carries the region code in a panel at the side. Older plates are still everywhere, so the code at the front of a white on blue plate is one of the most direct clues the country offers.
The traps are two of the pairs split in 2008 and the strip of small regions in the west.
Kaolack is the small one and Kaffrine the big one. They are two halves of the strip along the northern border of the Gambia, with Kaolack at the western end around its city and Kaffrine taking the rest, east as far as Tambacounda.
Tambacounda is not in the corner. It is the largest region and holds most of the east, but the south east corner, the hilliest part of the country, is Kédougou.
Diourbel and Fatick are not interchangeable. Diourbel is the small inland region between Thiès and Louga, around Diourbel and Touba, the holy city of the Mouride brotherhood and the second largest city in the country. Fatick, below it, is the one that wraps around the Saloum delta and reaches the sea.
Those groups are Senegal's own, and older than any of its regions. They are the seven regions the country had at independence, with the two smallest, Cap-Vert and Thiès, put together. Every one of today's fourteen was cut out of exactly one of the seven, so a player who knows the old map finds each new name where its parent was. Cap-Vert was renamed Dakar in 1984; the same year the Fleuve became Saint-Louis, Sénégal Oriental became Tambacounda, and Sine-Saloum and Casamance were each split in two. Louga had already been cut out of Diourbel, in 1976.
Three of those old names are still in everyday use for the places they named. Casamance is what everybody calls the south below the Gambia. The Fleuve, the river, is the Senegal River valley along the northern border. Sine-Saloum is the groundnut basin, named for its two rivers, and Fatick, Kaolack and Kaffrine between them still grow a large share of the country's groundnuts. Sénégal Oriental, eastern Senegal, is the dry, sparsely populated east around Niokolo-Koba National Park and the hills along the Guinean border.
Tambacounda: most of the east of the country, from the eastern end of the Gambia to the Malian border along the Falémé, with its capital a railway town on the old Dakar to Niger line. It is the largest of the 14 by a long way and one of the least populated. Dry savannah, long straight roads and very few towns: if you are in the east and not among hills, this is the likeliest answer.
Dakar: the Cap-Vert peninsula, the westernmost point of mainland Africa, and much the smallest region on the map. It holds close to a quarter of the country's people on a small fraction of one percent of its land, so it is the easy answer for anything dense, urban and by the sea.
Ziguinchor: the lower Casamance, from the Atlantic at Cap Skirring up the estuary to its capital and beyond, with Guinea-Bissau along its southern border. It is the wettest and greenest part of the country, all mangroves, rice fields and palm forest, and it is the only region south of the Gambia that reaches the sea.
14, since 2008. Senegal had seven regions at independence; Louga was created out of Diourbel in 1976, and in 1984 Sine-Saloum was split into Kaolack and Fatick and Casamance into Ziguinchor and Kolda, making ten. Matam was created out of Saint-Louis in 2002, and in 2008 Kaffrine was created out of Kaolack, Kédougou out of Tambacounda and Sédhiou out of Kolda.
Every region is named after its capital, so the capital of Dakar is Dakar, the capital of Thiès is Thiès, and so on for all fourteen. Dakar is also the national capital. Saint-Louis, on the northern coast at the mouth of the Senegal River, was the capital of the colony of Senegal and of French West Africa until Dakar replaced it.
Yes. Plates issued between 1989 and 2019 open with a two-letter code for the region the vehicle was registered in, such as DK for Dakar and TH for Thiès, followed by a number and a letter. The current format, from 2019, keeps the region code in a panel at the side of the plate. Both formats are on the road.
Tambacounda, in the east, is the largest by area, and Dakar is much the smallest. Dakar is also by far the most populous, holding close to a quarter of the country's population.
The Gambia is a separate country, a strip along both banks of the Gambia River that was a British colony while Senegal around it was French. It reaches the Atlantic, so it is not an enclave, but it separates Casamance, the three southern regions of Ziguinchor, Sédhiou and Kolda, from the rest of Senegal by land.
The pairs split in 2008: Kaolack and Kaffrine, Tambacounda and Kédougou, and Kolda and Sédhiou, where the newer region sits right beside the one it came from. Among the small western regions, Diourbel and Fatick are the other common mix-up: Diourbel is the small inland region around Touba, Fatick the one that wraps around the Saloum delta and reaches the sea.
French, which is Senegal's official language. Wolof is the most widely spoken language in the country and is common on shopfronts and painted signs, but official road signs and place name signs are in French.
The other African trainers here are Ghana Regions, Nigeria States, Kenya Counties, Egypt Governorates, Morocco Regions, Tunisia Governorates, South Africa Provinces and South Africa Dialing Codes. For administrative maps of a similar size, try Germany States, Canada Provinces and UK Nations and Regions.
