Senegal plans new airport as business hub

Print Article E-Mail Article

**EXCLUSIVE** The Senegalese government is planning to build a major new international airport to replace the existing Leopold Sedar Senghor airport at Dakar Yoff

The initiative is part of president Me Abdoulaye Wade's radical new policies to transform Senegal into a worldwide business player by encouraging foreign investment, while increasing tourism from non-francophone countries, particularly the UK.

Government officials from Senegal attended a conference on business in Senegal and Cameroon earlier this week in London, where they revealed plans for the airport, as well as for improved transportation within the country itself.

The new airport site is 50km from the Senegalese capital Dakar, in Diass. National Investment Promotion and Major Projects Agency (APIX) director general Aminata Niane told TRW that there are also plans for a new toll motorway which will link Dakar and major town Thiès, with a connection to the new airport.

The estimated cost of the new airport is $400m, and it is expected to reach an initial three million passenger traffic capacity, rising to a possible five million. Niane said there are plans to organise direct flights between the UK and the new airport, possibly with BA, and added that duty-free shopping will be a major part of the development of a "modern airport on an international scale".

"In French we say "le Sénégal qui gagne"," said Niane. "Sénégal is winning not just in sport, but in business. We want Senegal to be an emerging country by 2010, and the new airport is a major priority. We want to make it a world class international airport, making Dakar into a hub for traffic from Europe and the US."

Baroness Lynda Chalker (life peer of the House of Lords, and chairman of consultancy firm Africa Matters, which helps businesses remove barriers to doing business in Africa), attended the conference on expanding business in Sénégal and Cameroon and commented: "It is the right time to invest in Sénégal. The IT and information technology are growing rapidly. The country is raring to go."