With a new €2m fishing quay due to open in Senegal’s capital in February, has modernity finally come for the Soumbedioune fishmongers?

Commercial overfishing to feed European and Asian appetites has emptied West Africa’s waters and destroyed the livelihoods of many artisanal fishing communities, including those in Senegal with its long Atlantic coastline.

Now the fishmongers of Soumbedioune are moving. A new €2m fishing quay, funded by Morocco and sitting across the bay from the existing market, has been finished. It contains an ice factory, a cold room, a fish-processing area and rows of gleaming counters in the retail market. There are fishermen’s lockers, workshops and an office. It should be open by the time Senegal holds presidential elections in February.

The changes are part of a wholesale reinvention of Dakar, which is changing at a rapid pace. Apartment blocks spring up in every vacant plot; the city’s few remaining trees are cut down to make space for them. The stalls of vegetable sellers in the city’s old commune of Ngor were recently bulldozed for a car park. Houses are going up in the old airport, which was closed to commercial flights last year after a new one was built 60km outside the capital.

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