Senegal: Fayderbe French settler avenue renamed in Dakar

A strong symbolic act. The mayor of the commune in Dakar has decided to rename Fayderbe Avenue, the figurehead of the French colonial enterprise in West Africa, and give it the name of President Maki Salla.

Fayderbe Avenue, located in the heart of the Senegalese capital, is now called Maki Sall following a discussion in the municipal council on July 10, Aliune Ndoye, mayor of the Dakar Plateau district municipality, also minister of Wednesday, said in a press release.

With this act, the council wants to pay tribute to the president, “an outstanding statesman, leader and outstanding builder”, who has several achievements to his credit, including a new city near Dakar, a highway and an express train.

A place already renamed Saint-Louis

Elected in 2012 for a seven-year term and re-elected in 2019 for a five-year term, Maki Sall announced on July 3 that he would not seek a new mandate in the 2024 presidential election. difficult political climate in Senegal.

The Senegalese city of Saint-Louis, which was the first settlement founded south of the Sahara by France in the 17th century, had already renamed the site of Fayderbes in September 2020 to give it its local name. Louis Leon César Fayderbe (1818–1889) is revered in France as a military figure who saved the north of the country from the Prussian invasion during the war of 1870–1871. In Senegal, he is known as the one who led the French colonial enterprise as governor in the 1850s and 1860s.

He is accused of brutal colonial campaigns, murders and destruction of villages. Historians and civil society leaders regularly criticize Senegal’s post-colonial authorities for retaining street names named after French settlers.