Determined to usher in a brighter future for its roughly 18 million citizens, Senegal has recently unveiled a development plan designed to set it on a path toward realizing its full social and economic potential by 2050. As Senegal strives to realize those ambitions, the government recognizes that increasing the country’s resilience to natural hazards and climate change will be critical to that effort. In the last four decades, droughts, floods, and sea-level rise, among other natural hazards, have affected the lives and livelihoods of at least 5 million people across Senegal.

Standing with Senegal in realizing its development ambitions, GFDRR has been supporting long-term resilience building in the country, including in two of its largest cities, Saint-Louis and the capital of Dakar.

After severe storm surges in 2017 and 2018 displaced hundreds of people from northwest Senegal, including in the World Heritage site of Saint-Louis, GFDRR assistance under the auspices of the Saint-Louis Emergency Recovery and Resilience Project (SERRP) facilitated the urgent relocation of 1,800 people. SERRP has received $80 million in financing from the International Development Association (IDA).

 

The densely packed coastal city of Dakar, Senegal, is highly vulnerable to flooding. Photo: © derejeb.

GFDRR assistance in northwest Senegal through SERRP extended beyond the immediate relocation to encompass medium- to long-term resilient reconstruction and recovery. With the facility’s support, residents, half of whom were women, were trained to assemble temporary shelters that offered immediate protection to displaced families. GFDRR subsequently contributed to the construction of more than 433 permanent dwellings that are now providing safe and resilient homes for as many as 15,000 people who previously lived in areas vulnerable to coastal erosion or marine flooding. Based on information gathered from affected families, homes were designed according to universal access standards to ensure that the needs of people living with disabilities are met. The new dwellings are in a new neighborhood in Saint-Louis away from high-risk zones and newly equipped with essential infrastructure, including roads, water and sanitation, schools, and health care facilities.

A key emphasis of GFDRR’s support, under the auspices of SERRP, has been to build skills among local community members to enable them to take ownership of the new dwellings while making these new homes sustainable and improving their long-term income prospects. For example, the facility has supported a training program covering various building trades, such as bricklaying, electricity, and carpentry, that will enable more than 200 young people to contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the dwellings.

In addition to its engagement in northwest Senegal through SERRP, GFDRR has supported several comprehensive flood risk assessments in greater Dakar. Overcoming data scarcity challenges, the team conducting the assessments turned to digital terrain modeling based on light detection and ranging technology to develop flood risk mapping and analysis spanning four peri-urban areas of Dakar. Identifying areas affected by floods of different probabilities and providing valuable information about predicted flood depth and flow velocity, the flood risk mapping and analysis were subsequently validated in a series of field visits and workshops involving roughly 130 local stakeholders. One sobering finding from the flood-risk mapping and analysis was that 20 percent of critical infrastructure in the four peri-urban areas of greater Dakar covered by the analytical work are exposed to flooding.

As part of the assessment, the team analyzed multiple scenarios to simulate investments in flood risk infrastructure and estimated the total investment needed to protect Dakar from flooding. When viewed on an annualized basis, the required investment in flood risk infrastructure is considerably less than repairing the overall damage incurred from flooding. This has helped solidify the case for continued investment in flood resilience in Dakar by the Senegalese government.

Collectively, the assessments have directly informed implementation of the Second Stormwater Management and Climate Change Adaptation Project for Senegal. Supported by $290 million in financing from the IDA, the project is designed to reduce flood risk in periurban areas of Dakar as one of its key development objectives.

The assessments are also informing the development of a range of strategic planning documents that will help greater Dakar chart a more resilient development path, including urban development plans, flood risk management plans, and a sustainable development plan. These plans cover four rapidly expanding urban areas of the Dakar region. For instance, the flood risk maps, and digital resources used to produce them, have been provided to technical teams tasked with developing the above plans to enable quicker, more efficient analysis. The maps and resources will also inform the teams’ consultations with municipalities in developing the plans.

GFDRR has a long history of engagement in Senegal, a deep-seated partnership dating back to 2008, when the facility helped the country conduct its first postdisaster needs assessment. More recently, GFDRR has helped Senegal identify potential investment locations for naturebased solutions (NBS) for resilience, particularly in Dakar and the country’s third-largest city, Thiès.