Senegal: 1.2 billion USD in trade with the Emirates in 2025
On September 4, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye received an Emirati delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Trade, Thani Al Zeyoudi. The exchanges focused on new investments in energy, mining and port infrastructure, in a context where trade between the two countries reached around 1.2 billion dollars in 2025.
President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye received on September 4, 2026 at the Palace of the Republic an Emirati delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Trade, Dr Thani Al Zeyoudi. A meeting dedicated to strengthening investments in strategic sectors: energy, mines and port infrastructure. This new sequence comes as trade between the two countries reached around $1.2 billion in 2025.
For the United Arab Emirates, Senegal represents a strategic anchor point in West Africa. The Emirati presence is already particularly visible in the port sector with DP World. Since 2008, the group claims to have invested around $340 million in the Dakar container terminal, whose traffic increased from 265 thousand TEUs to around 850 thousand in 2025. In March 2026, the terminal crossed the symbolic milestone of ten million containers handled.
However, cooperation is no longer limited to ports. The agreements concluded in December 2025 also cover the gas network, renewable energies, iron mines, gold, phosphate and fertilizer production. An orientation that matches Senegal's ambitions to better exploit its resources and develop local processing chains, rather than remaining confined to the export of raw materials.
