To get to the presidential palace, take Avenue Georges-Pompidou, leave Rue de Reims on your right, pass Rue Carnot, Rue Félix-Faure and Rue Jules-Ferry, then turn left and you are there, a GPS application might suggest. The driver would then not be in Paris … but in Dakar.
In the Plateau district, if street names are anything to go by, history has stood still. Sixty-five years after the independence of Senegal, the capital’s political and administrative center remains criss-crossed with names from colonial times. Colonial administrators and governors, commanders, but also French writers and doctors cover 60% of this piece of the peninsula with their names, according to a study published in 2019.
But not for much longer. After demanding the departure of French soldiers still present on Senegalese soil, in mid-December, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye called for certain streets to be unnamed and renamed in honor of “national heroes.” He tasked his prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, with creating a National Council for Memory and Management of Historical Heritage.
Weaving a new national narrative
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