Dakar

Sister cities

• Rosario
• Sfax
• Isfahan
• Washington, D.C.
• Marseille
• Baku
• Dijon
• Brazzaville
• Kinshasa
• Bissau
• Bamako
• Niamey

History

The Cap-Vert peninsula was settled no later than the 15th century by the Lebu people, an aquacultural subgroup of the Wolof ethnic group. The original villages—Ouakam, Ngor, Yoff and Hann—still constitute distinctively Lebou neighborhoods of the city today. In 1444, the Portuguese reached the Bay of Dakar. Peaceful contact was finally opened in 1456 by Diogo Gomes, and the bay was subsequently referred to as the "Angra de Bezeguiche" (after the name of the local ruler). The bay of "Bezeguiche" would go on to serve as a critical stop for the Portuguese India Armadas of the early 16th century, where large fleets would routinely stop, both on their outward and return journeys from India, to repair, collect fresh water from the rivulets and wells along the Cap-Vert shore and trade for provisions with the local people for their remaining voyage.) A town grew on the bay that was one of the major ports of Cayor, a constituent kingdom of the Jolof Empire that broke away in 1549. The Portuguese founded a settlement on the island of Gorée (then known as the island of Bezeguiche or Palma), which by 1536 they began to use as a base for slave exportation. A new Lebou village, called Ndakaaru, was established directly across from Gorée in the 17th century to service the European trading factory with food and drinking water. Gorée was captured by the United Netherlands in 1588, which gave it its present name (spelled Goeree, after Goeree-Overflakkee in the Netherlands). The island switched hands between the Portuguese and Dutch several more times before falling to the English under Admiral Robert Holmes on January 23, 1664, and finally to the French in 1677. Though under continuous French administration since, multiracial people, descended from Dutch and French traders and…

Geography

Dakar is located on the Cap-Vert peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland. Dakar has an ocean-influenced tropical hot semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification: BSh), with a short rainy season and a lengthy dry season. Dakar's rainy season lasts from July to October, while the dry season covers the remaining eight months. The city sees approximately of rainfall per year. Dakar between December and May is usually very warm with daily temperatures around . Nights during this time of the year are warm, some . However, between May and November, the city becomes decidedly hotter with daily highs reaching and night lows a little bit above . Notwithstanding this hotter season, Dakar's weather is far from being so hot as experienced in inland Sahelian cities like Niamey and N'Djamena, where temperatures hover above for much of the year. Dakar is cooled year-round by sea breezes. {|class="wikitable" |+Dakar mean sea temperature |- !Jan !Feb !Mar !Apr !May !Jun !Jul !Aug !Sep !Oct !Nov !Dec !Year |- | | | | | | | | | | | | | |} A 2019 paper published in PLOS One estimated that under Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, a "moderate" scenario of climate change where global warming reaches ~ by 2100, the climate of Dakar in the year 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Praia in Cape Verde. The annual temperature would increase by , and the temperature of the warmest and the coldest month by and , respectively. According to Climate Action Tracker, the current warming trajectory appears consistent with , which closely matches RCP 4.5. Moreover, according to the 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Dakar is one of 12 major African cities (Abidjan, Alexandria, Algiers, Cape Town, Casablanca, Dakar, Dar es…

Most-observed species

• Black Kite

  Milvus migrans (Boddaert, 1783) · Aves
  533
• Pied Crow

  Corvus albus Statius Muller, 1776 · Aves
  456
• Laughing Dove

  Spilopelia senegalensis (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  426
• Great Cormorant/European Shag

  Phalacrocorax carbo (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  364
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  355
• African Silverbill

  Euodice cantans (Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  263
• Common Bulbul

  Pycnonotus barbatus (Desfontaines, 1789) · Aves
  262
• Red-billed Quelea

  Quelea quelea (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  233