Dr Cheikh Ahmed Tidiane FAYE, Specialist in geomorphology applied to regional planning, Lecturer-researcher at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar: cheikhat.faye@ucad.edu.sn

Amadou Alioune SARR , Embedded systems engineer for autonomous vehicles and consultant specializing in mobility, transport and smart cities: amadoualiounesarr@gmail.com

Introduction

Dakar was not built for us; the city was designed for France, for Europe, for the outside world. Independent Senegal established a colonial market as its capital: Dakar. Since its establishment as the capital of French West Africa (AOF) in 1902, Dakar has been built at the crossroads of colonial, even global, logics: a port to export peanuts imposed on the colony by France, a railway to connect the hinterland to colonial ships, an airport to serve as a strategic base for the powers.

These infrastructures, put in place by the colonial power, responded primarily to the imperatives of export and domination, and not to development and national or regional integration (Suret-Canale, 1964; Diouf, 1998). "African colonial cities were designed to control, exploit and evacuate ," recalls historian Odile Goerg. Dakar is the most striking example: there is a showcase administrative Plateau, a relegated Medina, and infrastructures calibrated for the outside rather than for the country. The result: a hypertrophied , macrocephalic capital , which attracts and sucks in everything, to the detriment of its hinterland and even its own suburbs.

Today, Dakar accounts for nearly 25% of Senegal's population and more than 50% of its economic activity (ANSD, 2022), crystallizing both the opportunities of globalization and the fragilities of inherited urbanization. The challenge now is to transform the capital into an inclusive, ecological, and sovereign African metropolis, while breaking with the logic of colonial extroversion. This diagnosis must be extended by a strategic vision of transformation. To achieve this, Dakar must consider its transformation around three essential layers:

1. Physical infrastructure: transport, energy, water, telecommunications.
2. Data and IoT: smart sensors and digital platforms,
3. Governance and services: e-government, open data, participatory budgets and social inclusion.

Senegal has the opportunity to leapfrog by directly adopting inclusive digital solutions, such as ticketing integrated with mobile money and participatory governance supported by digital technologies. Dakar can thus become a pan-African Smart City laboratory, instead of remaining the heir to a colonial model.

With this in mind, we compare Dakar to several emblematic African (Kigali, Nairobi, Cape Town, Casablanca) and international (Singapore, Barcelona, Dubai) Smart Cities. The objective is to identify inspiring technological, urban and institutional levers for Dakar and to identify relevant models that could justify the creation of a new capital in Senegal.

A heavy colonial legacy: infrastructure designed for export, not integration or development

When we look at our major African cities, one thing becomes clear: many of their major infrastructures were not born out of a desire for development, but out of a logic of colonial exploitation. As Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (1993) and Paul Pélissier (1966) have shown, the colonial logic of development aimed above all to connect the continent's interior to ports, in order to transport raw materials and resources to Europe.

Senegal perfectly illustrates this reality (need it be remembered) with emblematic facilities: the port of Dakar and the Yoff airport, the Dakar-Niamey railway , the Dakar administrative plateau. These infrastructures were designed to export wealth to the colonial metropolis, not to develop the country endogenously:

1. The port of Dakar (1900) was designed as a terminal for the Dakar-Niger railway; it was completed in 1924 and was used to transport peanuts, cotton, and phosphates to France. The port of Dakar was then more of an export corridor than a tool for national integration. Today, it still accounts for nearly 90% of the country's maritime traffic, increasing Dakar's dependence.
2. Dakar Airport (Yoff, then Léopold Sédar Senghor) has gone from being a strategic military base to an air hub towards Europe, serving colonial projection more than regional mobility.
3. The Dakar-Niger railway is a colonial artery draining resources from the hinterland to the coast, without connecting the regions: a passenger can travel from Bamako to Dakar, but with difficulty from Tambacounda to Ziguinchor. The phosphate mines of Thiès were connected directly to Dakar by rail, in a logic of raw export.
4. Colonial roads functioned as export routes, with the main roads built during colonization connecting agricultural production sites to ports, facilitating the export of resources to Europe. These infrastructures were designed to serve colonial interests, without taking into account the needs of internal development or regional integration. The peanut infrastructure (oil mills, silos, warehouses) around Kaolack and Diourbel were connected to the export network, but without local industrial processing.
5. The Dakar Administrative Plateau is built on the Haussmannian model; it separated the "white quarter" from the "indigenous" Medina, illustrating a spatial segregation that is still visible. In other words, an administrative district that showcases colonial power, opposed to the relegated and marginalized "indigenous" Medina. This duality remains visible in the urban contrasts: institutional buildings and colonial villas on one side, overcrowded working-class neighborhoods on the other. The Dakar Plateau was developed to house colonial institutions, symbolizing France's administrative and military power in West Africa.

These infrastructures had one thing in common: they were radial (from the interior to the coast) and extroverted (facing Europe). They did not seek to integrate national territories , to streamline internal exchanges or to improve the daily lives of populations.

Although modernized and expanded after Senegal's independence in 1960, these infrastructures still bear the scars of their initial design. They concentrate flows around Dakar, reinforcing centralization and dependence on the global economy, without always responding to the challenges of territorial balance or national integration. All these infrastructures had an external logic: extraction, transit, export .

Unlike Dakar, some cities have been able to design infrastructures to serve their internal integration and their sovereignty:

1. Singapore has built a port and logistics system designed not only for export, but above all as a global hub interconnected with its own industrial and technological zones:
2. Barcelona has transformed outdated infrastructure into superblocks and digital hubs, reducing NO₂ pollution by 25% and returning public space to residents;
3. Casablanca has modernized its networks thanks to innovative PPPs (tram, water, energy with IBM, Cisco, Lydec), saving 24 million m³ of water per year and transporting more than 200,000 passengers/day via its tramway.

The contrast is stark: Dakar remains trapped in a legacy model of extraction and extroversion, while other metropolises have used their infrastructure as levers for integration, innovation, and sustainability. In the current context of the territorialization of public policies, we have no choice: Dakar must change.

Suburbs and hinterlands: inherited fractures

While the city of Dakar overflows, those of Saint-Louis, Kaolack, and Ziguinchor remain on the margins, prisoners of a system where everything converges toward the peninsula, but nothing circulates between the regions. The flows bypass the interior of the country: one can travel by train from Bamako to Dakar, but not from Tambacounda to Ziguinchor, nor from Matam to Saint-Louis, much less from Tambacounda to Bakel.

Dakar's suburbs (Pikine, Guédiawaye, Rufisque) are suffering from demographic pressure, uncontrolled urbanization, and economic marginalization, far from the prestige of the Plateau. In this context, Dakar attracts and concentrates, but does not redistribute.

The big question remains: how can we transform this colonial legacy into genuine levers for inclusive development, capable of serving the needs of local populations first and foremost, rather than those of an inherited system? Some African metropolises offer inspiring models for avoiding macrocephaly:

1. Kigali (Rwanda): Implementation of an electric bus network and the Tap&Go payment system, which reduces dependence on private cars. 2030 target: 80% of residents within 10 minutes of public transport. A policy that limits the exodus to the city center and supports territorial balance.
2. Nairobi (Kenya): Deployment of the electric BRT planned to transport 300,000 passengers/day, integrated with M-Pesa payments. Example of integration between smart mobility and local fintech, providing the outskirts with economical and connected access.
3. Cape Town (South Africa): Following the 2018 water crisis, the city reduced its consumption by 50% in three years thanks to smart meters and participatory governance. This demonstrates that data and shared management can strengthen resilience and citizen trust, including in peripheral areas.

Lessons for Dakar:

1. Develop an interregional mobility network (electrified rail, regional BRT, north-south vertical links);
2. Equip all territorial hubs with smart equipment (public Wi-Fi, administrative e-services, innovation centers);
3. Integrate climate resilience into planning (floods, rising waters).
4. What if we dared to break up?

The big question remains: how can we transform this colonial legacy into levers for inclusive development? Faced with these challenges, it is not a question of denying Dakar, but of reinventing it :

1. Relocate heavy-duty functions by converting the current port into a "Financial District," a marina, a maritime campus, or cultural spaces and green neighborhoods. Similarly, convert the former Yoff airport into a pan-African technology park or a world-class university campus;
2. Reinventing the Plateau by transforming its colonial buildings into digital museums, creative hubs, a pan-African library, on the one hand, and also integrating eco-responsible social housing to break the logic of exclusion, on the other hand;
3. Rethinking mobility through a national electrified rail network linking, for example, Saint-Louis, Kaolack, Tambacounda and Ziguinchor, and vertical roads linking Richard-Toll - Sédhiou, Aéré Lao - Vélingara, instead of lines centered on Dakar. Consider also developing electric buses, tramways, solar taxis, water taxis;
4. Make Dakar an ecological capital by focusing on solar eco-districts, the urban green belt, peri-urban agriculture, with a view to transforming Dakar into the first zero-carbon African capital in 2050;
5. Decolonized governance by targeting digital participatory budgets, connected neighborhood councils in addition to citizen involvement in the uses of liberated spaces;
6. Relocate certain infrastructures, transfer port activities to Ndakhonga, Bargny, Saint-Louis or Lompoul, Kaolack and strengthen Ziguinchor as a maritime hub, consolidate Blaise Diagne airport as an African air hub;

These futuristic projects are not utopian: Kigali has already launched its electric buses, Addis Ababa its electric urban train, and Johannesburg has transformed former colonial areas into trendy cultural districts. Dakar must choose: continue to be a legacy capital, or become a 21st-century African metropolis, inclusive and sovereign. This requires:

1. moving away from an extraction logic to build infrastructures that integrate regions;
2. adopt ecological urban planning (solar districts, water recovery, bioclimatic architecture);
3. invent participatory urban governance, where residents decide on their city via participatory budgets and citizen platforms.

As Achille Mbembe points out, "Africa must invent its own urban models," and Dakar can be the laboratory for this. To successfully achieve this breakthrough, Dakar must integrate a digital and intelligent layer into each of its transformations:

1. E-Dakar Platform: An urban operating system centralizing mobility, energy, water, local taxation, and citizen participation. Inspired by Dubai (Paperless, Happiness Meter) and Barcelona (Decidim), this platform would make government transparent and inclusive.
2. Smart logistics corridors: connecting the Port of Ndakhonga to secondary ports (Saint-Louis, Kaolack, Ziguinchor) via rail and digital roads, with real-time monitoring of flows thanks to IoT.
3. Integrated mobility: deploy interoperability with other types of transport allowing smooth and accessible travel throughout Senegal and beyond.
4. Data-driven urban planning: using data (traffic, climate, parking, direction and types of travel, energy consumption, etc.) to guide development. E.g., flood sensors for the construction of new homes, predictive analysis to anticipate the level of rising waters and coastal erosion.
5. Smart districts: create pilot areas combining smart housing, renewable energy, coworking and innovation hubs to attract talent and investors.
6. Smart, carbon-free and energy-autonomous (solar) public buildings

This rupture is not only urbanistic but political and technological: it places Dakar in the race of global metropolises while asserting its African sovereignty.

1. What if the future involved a new capital?

But the question remains: can hypercentralization really be corrected by keeping Dakar as its capital? History shows that other countries have made radical choices: Abuja in Nigeria, Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast, Dodoma in Tanzania. What if Senegal, too, dared to move its capital? The Joal-Thiadiaye-Mbour triangle offers a strategic location:

1. Central position: in the Center-West, better connected to Kaolack, Fatick, Tambacounda and Ziguinchor;
2. Accessibility: close to Blaise Diagne airport and major roads;
3. Available spaces: to plan a capital designed for the 21st century, not the 19th;
4. Atlantic opening: proximity to Joal and Mbour and Ndakhonga (additional modern port).

Here, Senegal could build an ecological, inclusive, and civic-minded capital. This new city, by freeing Dakar from its stifling centralization, would breathe new life into its suburbs and hinterland.

A new capital should not just be an administrative transfer, but a true urban and innovative demonstrator:

1. Zero-carbon city: designed from the ground up with smart buildings, solar microgrids, water harvesting, electric mobility and bioclimatic planning.
2. Mass transport: electrified railway lines, electric BRT, connected cycle paths, integrated into a single digital ticketing system.
3. Native digital administration: all procedures digitized from the start (unique digital identity like Singapore's SingPass).
4. Citizen participation: online participatory budgets, public consultation platforms, mobile app for co-constructing the city.
5. Economic innovation: technology clusters and green free zones, to attract African and international start-ups.

An inspiring example: Masdar City (Abu Dhabi), designed as an ecological and technological prototype. Even if its development remains partial, it proves the feasibility of an urban project conceived from scratch with a strong environmental focus. Senegal can therefore benefit from these experiences: create a capital designed for the 21st century, and not one inherited from the colonial logic of the 19th century.

1. A new territorial pact

For a new territorial pact, it is not a question of opposing Dakar to a future capital, but of rethinking their role:

1. Dakar would become an economic and cultural capital, a showcase of creativity and international openness;
2. The new capital Thiadiaye would be the political and administrative center, the driving force of a balanced territorial network;
3. The hinterland and suburbs would benefit from the redistribution of functions and investments.

In short, to invent an African capital of the future, which is no longer a colonial outgrowth but the symbol of a reinvented urban sovereignty. To succeed in this territorial pact, we must think in terms of a national urban system:

1. Interconnected regional hubs: develop regional hubs (Saint-Louis, Kaolack, Ziguinchor, Tambacounda) connected by an electrified rail network and by digital corridors (high-speed Internet, local e-governance platforms).
2. National interoperability: implement a unified ticketing system for all modes of transport, integrated with Mobile Money, in order to streamline the mobility of citizens throughout the country.
3. Redistribution of investments: directing PPPs and sovereign funds not only towards Dakar, but towards the construction of regional economic ecosystems (agro-industry in Kaolack, logistics in Ziguinchor, digital innovation in Saint-Louis).
4. Senegalese Smart Cities Network: instead of a model centered on Dakar, consider a network of connected smart cities, each specialized but interoperable.
5. Pan-African urban brand: position Dakar and the new capital as a pan-African laboratory for Smart Cities, exporting its innovations (ticketing, ecological urban planning, e-governance) to the continent.
6. Architectural originality: drawing inspiration from our historical cultural heritage by integrating sustainable materials to better support our social and family constraints

This pact aims not only to rebalance the territory, but to build urban and digital sovereignty: African cities designed for themselves and not for colonial extroversion.

Conclusion

Transforming Dakar into the African metropolis of the future involves a dual movement: deconstructing the colonial legacies that have frozen its urban planning in dependency, and inventing a citizen-based, inclusive, and ecological governance. It's not about breaking with history, but rather reinterpreting it to project a capital capable of exporting not just raw materials, but innovations, knowledge, and models of resilience.

In summary: Transforming the colonial legacy is not just about moving infrastructure; it's about reshaping the city's vision. Dakar can become the first sovereign, ecological, and inclusive African metropolis, a symbol of a future where Africa builds on itself and for itself.

This project is not just urban planning, it is eminently political . Moving and transforming these infrastructures means breaking with the colonial logic of extraction and affirming a new African vision of development . It means deciding that our ports, our airports, our stations and our cities are no longer gateways for the exit of wealth, but platforms for internal circulation, regional integration and the creation of local value .

Decolonization and true sovereignty also involve this: rebuilding our cities so that they are no longer extensions of the colony, but concrete expressions of our sovereignty and our cultural identity.

Dakar must invent a hybrid and sovereign model, combining:

1. Singapore's digital efficiency (digital identity, urban twin, integrated infrastructure),
2. citizen participation in Barcelona (superblocks, participatory budgets, inclusive urban planning),
3. Kigali's pragmatic sobriety (electric mobility, simple but effective governance).

This model would make Dakar the first pan-African laboratory for smart cities, capable of exporting local solutions to the continent: ticketing interoperable with Mobile Money, inclusive digital governance, and climate-resilient urban planning.

The goal is therefore not only to correct a legacy capital, but to build a sovereign, ecological, and inclusive African metropolis, symbolizing a future where Africa builds its own benchmarks. Dakar could thus become the first zero-carbon and 100% connected African capital, a hub of innovation and urban citizenship for the 21st century.