Senegal

The struggle

Senegal held the oldest French institutions in West Africa — the Four Communes elected a deputy to Paris from 1848 — and produced a generation of politicians who argued for federation rather than fragmentation. It became independent within the Mali Federation on 4 April 1960, then separated from it in August. Léopold Senghor, poet of Négritude, became its first president.

Key people

• Léopold Sédar Senghor

  1906–2001

  Poet of Négritude; first president

• Lamine Guèye

  1891–1968

  Won French citizenship rights for colonial subjects in 1946

• Mamadou Dia

  1910–2009

  First prime minister and federalist

• Aline Sitoé Diatta

  1920–1944

  Led Diola resistance to wartime requisition; died in detention