Senegal's Saint-Louis town beating the odds to emerge best tourist destination

Ambient beaches, palm trees, and a sunny climate are just a few elements that place Saint-Louis, which is the third city in Senegal, a major tourist attraction. With its many ancient buildings, this city is in addition classified as the world heritage site by the UNESCO.

Saint-Louis is a city deeply rooted in history by both Africans and Europeans. Unfortunately as many secondary cities in Africa, it has not been accorded special attention just like capital cities, and little has been done to improve its infrastructure.

Tourism enables people to improve the image of such secondary cities in Senegal often ignored by governments. Tourism has lead to thousands of employment thus enhancing the per capita of such cities.

“Today at the Forum in Saint Louis, we have been able to speak about this issue, the fact that we do not have event in Dakar but in Saint-Louis. It allows the media to see for themselves the city and gauge its potential. It is always difficult to place an event in a small and unknown town to attract people. It is the precise role of the member to say that they will stop handing over events in the capitals that we know and try to go look for cities with strong potential,” said Diane Audrey Ngako, Founder, ‘visitér L’ Afrique’ group.

The secondary cities face several challenges. Some countries try to promote them. This is the case for example in Morocco with Marrakech, the fourth city in the country, but which is well known internationally and became one of the best tourist destination in Morocco. And within other countries on the continent, secondary cities are slowly developing.