The Dakar – Saint-Louis highway project that entails the construction of a road to link Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, to the northern city of Saint-Louis, has made significant progress the most recent being the signing of an investment agreement between the government of the West African country, and Bechtel Corporation, an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company.
Also known as the coastal highway, the Dakar – Saint-Louis highway, which will extend over a total of 200 km, and will be constructed in two phases. The first phase extends over a distance of 114 km, starting from Tivaouane Peulh in Lompoul and it will be constructed at an overall cost of 365 million euros according to a 2019 projection by Businessfrance.
The second phase entails a linear 81 km connecting Lompoul to Saint-Louis.
In a statement made to the press at the end of October 2021, after a meeting with the stakeholders of the project, Mor Gueye Gaye, the general manager of Ageroute, announced that the construction works would start in mid-2022 and end in June 2025.
Benefits of the Dakar – Saint-Louis highway project
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Noteworthy, the Dakar – Saint-Louis highway is a section of another highway that will link Dakar to Rosso, a town on the border with Mauritania. The Dakar-Rosso highway constitutes the Rosso bridge, a strategic structure that allows road interconnection between Senegal and Mauritania, and which is also an essential link of the trans-African corridor N ° 1 (Cairo – Dakar) that will connect West Africa to the Arab Maghreb part of the continent.
Developed as part of the Emerging Senegal Plan that prioritizes road infrastructure, the Dakar – Saint-Louis highway is therefore expected to provide better, safer, and faster access to St. Louis, a region set to become a crossroads of agricultural activities and Senegal’s oil and gas industry, and to facilitate trade between Senegal and the North Africa region.
