“Car rapides,” the overcrowded and flamboyantly decorated minibuses that serve as the public transportation system in Dakar, Senegal, speed down city streets while young men cling to their back steps. Child beggars known as talibés swarm taxis and crowd sidewalks. The barefoot young boys hold out tin buckets and ask locals and tourists alike for coins to take back to their religious teachers.
These everyday scenes are part and parcel of Dakar culture and way of life. But they also point to another crisis unfolding in West Africa — not the Ebola outbreak that has devastated Senegal’s neighbors, but one similarly capable of undermining economic progress and fueling poverty — the crisis of a surging population.
Today, the effects of rapid population growth in Senegal are highly visible in the coastal hub of Dakar — a city whose metropolitan population has risen by nearly 2 million in 25 years.
About the author
Jeff Tyson@jtyson21
Jeff is a former global development reporter for Devex. Based in Washington, D.C., he covers multilateral affairs, U.S. aid, and international development trends. He has worked with human rights organizations in both Senegal and the U.S., and prior to joining Devex worked as a production assistant at National Public Radio. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French from the University of Rochester.