Oil and oversight are shaping an Atlantic star.

To see an Africa that’s confident, investment driven and growing fast alongside Rwanda and Ethiopia, spend time in Dakar, capital of Senegal in the far west. Residential towers and office buildings are rising across the sun-drenched city, imbibing the glorious blue of the frothy Atlantic Ocean, where you can watch surfers catch a perfect wave as you savor a sundowner.

Shiny Hyundai, Ford, Toyota and BMW SUVs fill the streets. A futuristic national football stadium designed by Turkish architects has landed like a mothership along a sleek toll freeway and will host the 2026 Summer Youth Olympic Games. The road, built by the local subsidiary of France’s Eiffage Group, rolls out to the new international airport 30 miles away. Also advancing toward the airfield is a $2 billion commuter rail. (Delta Air Lines flies in from New York; I endured the 10-hour, 3,500-mile journey on Kenya Airways from Nairobi via Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.)

Senegal is as far west as you can go in mainland Africa. Surfside on the terrace of Le Cabanon found me feasting on grilled calamari tossed with chorizo and sipping a red sangria while watching a tiny light blink at the tip of a curling finger of coastline less than a mile away: the end of the end. Sail west about 375 miles and you will land at the Portuguese-speaking island nation of Cabo Verde, which Joe Biden briefly visited on his way to Angola near the end of his presidency. Keep going for about 2,500 more miles and you will wash ashore in Martinique, still speaking French. A journey from Dakar to the Caribbean is shorter than a trip eastward to Kenya.

The International Monetary Fund expects Senegal’s economy, boosted by offshore oil and gas discoveries, to grow 8.4 percent in 2025 with low inflation, more than double the growth rate for sub-Saharan Africa – and to strain for more electricity. A Turkish company, Karadeniz Holding, is supplying as much as 20 percent of Senegal’s juice via a floating liquefied natural gas power plant, with an LNG tanker anchored about a mile off downtown Dakar.

Inside the presidential palace sits Africa’s youngest elected leader, 45-year-old former tax official Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who is negotiating the exit of French forces – an inflection point as this was France’s beachhead in West Africa centuries ago. The foreign ministers of France and Senegal have announced a joint commission to negotiate France’s withdrawal and said they intend to develop a new defense and security partnership addressing “the strategic priorities of all parties.”

“Faye’s brand of left-wing pan-Africanism not only aligns with his vision for Senegal’s national sovereignty and economic empowerment but also presents an opportunity for Western countries to engage in a more equitable partnership that fosters development and stability in Senegal and the broader Sahel,” said Mayecor Sar, an adviser on government transformation in Africa, writing last year for the Atlantic Council.

French connection

France’s exit is likely to be more graceful – and less final – than what Emmanuel Macron has faced in the authoritarian Sahelian countries to the east. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and most recently Chad have escorted the French military to exit ceremonies after disputes over fighting Islamist extremists and resentment that policymakers in Paris have dictated the terms of the relationship for too long. Then there’s the allure of other benefactors, including Russia and Turkey, whose transactional approach more closely aligns with the strongmen’s worldview.

Senegal’s young leadership favors open and responsive governance. The poetry-writing Faye, who enjoys growing papayas, was jailed in 2023 for a Facebook post accusing the government of malfeasance. An amnesty freed him just before last year’s election, electrifying youth supporters; heavy voter turnout swept him to victory. One of Africa’s most reliable democracies remained reliable.

Two lessons emerge here: Africa’s young people want more accountability, and investors like smart, responsive governments. An audit ordered by Faye found that Senegal’s debt was almost 100 percent of GDP, not the 74 percent claimed by the past government. Alarming news but needed transparency.

The audit found undisclosed liabilities including “hidden loans,” according to an IMF team that visited Senegal to take a closer look. How much money slipped away? Off-the-books spending amounted to around $5 billion in a $30 billion economy. “These findings point to serious lapses in budget controls and public financial reporting, underscoring the need for urgent reforms” to strengthen transparency and budget oversight, the IMF said. The fund plans a support program to back Faye’s reform plans; cutting tax exemptions and phasing out energy subsidies are on the agenda.

Oil and gas

Faye promoted Senegal during a White House meeting in July 2025 with four other West African leaders at the table. “I have been president for some 15, 16 months now and I want to reassure all American investors about our country’s political stability and our favorable regulatory environment, which we are continuously improving upon in order to attract more investment,” Faye told Donald Trump as reporters looked on. Teeing up some targeted ego stroking, Faye suggested that developing a golf course in Senegal might be appealing for Trump’s game.

In West Africa, oil producers like Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, are struggling to overcome the commodity “super cycle” bust a decade ago and are slowed by a shaky business environment, weak governance and poor management of revenue from extractives. Senegal is a different story: gold mining, agriculture, fishing and industry are growing with competent leadership, and offshore oil and gas is being developed by U.S., British and Australian firms.

A gas field sprawls across the Senegal-Mauritania maritime border in the north, while about 60 miles off Dakar is the Sangomar oil field, which started producing in mid-2024 with Australia’s Woodside Energy in the lead. Senegal aims to pump 100,000 barrels of crude each day, a modest yet steady source of national income. Another gas project will unfold in the late 2020s, for export of LNG. While sipping oil from the seafloor, Senegal is drafting a 10-year plan to shift from heavy fuel oil to cleaner natural gas for generating electricity.

Meanwhile, international investment is coming for solar and wind: Senegal may have 45 gigawatts of offshore wind potential, five times more than the installed onshore wind capacity in all of Africa in 2023.

Poverty and migration

Yet rural poverty and joblessness are high, and frustrated Senegalese pile into crowded, open-air fishing boats in an often-deadly gamble to reach Spain’s Canary Islands and an imagined better future in Europe. Senegal’s navy has stepped up maritime patrols and rescues at sea as migrant crossings from Senegal and Mauritania rose to more than 40,000 in 2024, the highest tally since the European Union’s border and coast guard agency began keeping data in 2009.

“Criminal networks, long exploiting this route, are now intensifying their operations, sending even more people on overcrowded Cayuco boats for the perilous and lengthy journey to the Canary Islands, a dangerous crossing that has tragically grown more frequent,” the EU agency said.

Amid this desperation and search for hope, this metric shines: Senegal is on its way to 100 percent electricity access (now 84 percent), which fosters economic equity and innovation. It’s probably no coincidence that Africa’s most durable democracies – including Botswana, Cabo Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa – are also among the African countries with the highest rates of electricity access. Power from the people and power to the people is turning Senegal into an Atlantic star.