- Senegal 2026
- Chapter 1
Senegal’s risk runs through its rivers, its coast and its fuel
Part I describes systems and their couplings. It assesses no authority and ranks no region.
Contents
- ·Edition home
- ·Executive summary
- 1Senegal’s risk runs through its rivers, its coast and its fuel
- 2Key findings
- 3Systems and sectors at baseline
- 4Risks and capability
- 5Urban flood with a water, power and clinic interruption
- 6Readings from the other desks
- 7The 2027 agenda
- 8Systems in depth
- AMethodology
- BData appendix
- CReferences and record
- ·Complete edition, for print
1.1The questions this part answers
Key questions
- Where is Senegal’s risk concentrated, and in which systems?
- Which couplings carry shocks from one system to the next?
- Which capabilities hold under compound stress, and which are only documented?
- What must the 2027 programme measure first?
In this part
- Narrative
- Headline finding
- Lead figure
- Five system chapters
- Twelve-domain reading
- Sector screens
- Dependency matrix
- Risk objects
- Capability ladder
- Scenario
- Three lenses
- Portfolio
1.2The argument
Senegal is a young and urbanising country: 18.1 million residents at the 2023 census, 54.7% of them urban, 39.1% under 15, and a median age of 19.0 years1. The national projection puts the population at 21.7 million in 2030, with a fertility rate of 4.2 children per woman in 20232. This baseline reads its exposure as three forces acting together: a coast and river system that floods and erodes, an energy system that is changing fast as oil and gas come on stream, and public services that reach most people at a basic level but few at a safe one.
The energy picture has moved quickly. Access to electricity rose from 67.9% in 2022 to 82.9% in 2024, but rural access is 67.1%6. Installed capacity was 1,901 MW in 2024, with 481 MW renewable, and 85% of generation in 2023 was non-renewable14. On the Ember series oil supplied about 79% of electricity in 202415. Sangomar produced 36.1 million barrels in 2025 and Grand Tortue Ahmeyim began LNG production in February 20252627. The 2020 contribution sets a 2030 cut of 7% to 29.5% below business as usual, and a third contribution was validated nationally in April 20261617.
Water services show the widest gap between basic and safe. In 2024, 88.0% of people used at least basic drinking water but 27.2% used safely managed water, and only 13.2% in rural areas5. Basic sanitation reached 62.5% and safely managed sanitation 30.1%5. Water is not scarce on the national average, with 1,462 m³ of renewable internal water per person, but the World Bank projects withdrawals to grow 30% to 60% by 2035519. A current figure for the Dakar supply deficit is not bound in this edition.
The climate layer adds loss of life and loss of land. The 2025 rainy season killed 20 people, affected 8,336 and destroyed 946 ha of farmland24. The World Bank estimates that coastal erosion costs 3.3% of GDP, that 75% of the coastline is at risk at term, and that half of the population and two-thirds of GDP sit in exposed coastal zones19. A Rift Valley fever outbreak in the Senegal River valley showed that animal and human health share the same landscape: WHO counted 358 confirmed human cases and 28 deaths by 30 October 202522.
Food supply held up in 2024, with cereals forecast 8% above the five-year average, but the March 2026 Cadre Harmonisé projected 836,786 people in Crisis or worse in June to August 2026, 4.3% of those analysed2021. About 27.7% of people faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 202410. A national rice target of self-sufficiency by 2030 sits beside average imports of 1.3 million tonnes of white rice a year, as stated by the minister28. Final 2025–26 harvest and import totals are not bound.
This edition therefore reads Senegal’s risk as a property of the couplings between water, power, health and weather. The matrix, risk objects, capability ladder and scenario that follow ask the same two questions: where does a shock travel next, and who holds the capability to stop it?
The three gases sum to about 30.3 Mt of the 31.7 Mt published total; the remaining 1.4 Mt is not itemised in the series read. Agriculture supplied 9.4 Mt of the methane. Land use was a net carbon-dioxide sink of 13 Mt in 20237.
| Item | Bar, scaled to the largest value | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Carbon dioxide | 14.2 | |
| Methane | 12.3 | |
| Nitrous oxide | 3.7 |
Source: as cited in the note to this figure. Year 2024.
Figure ID FIG-COUNTRY-SEN-2026-BASELINE-01-003
1.3Twenty couplings between five systems
The Senegal matrix types the twenty couplings between the five core systems. Strengths are Nexus estimates from the cited evidence and analogue events; they set the starting graph that the Q1 2027 Foundry cut will test.
Each line is one coupling from one system to another, drawn by the strength the edition assigns. Strengths are Nexus estimates from the cited evidence and analogue events.
- Strong
- Moderate
- Weak
Source: this edition’s coupling matrix (Table 1.1); status Estimated.
| From, to | WAT | ENE | FOO | HLT | BIO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WAT Water | · | STRONG nuclear cooling · hydro | STRONG irrigation · rain-fed yield | MODERATE drinking water | STRONG flows · wetlands |
| ENE Energy | MODERATE pumping · treatment | · | STRONG fuel · fertiliser · cold chain | STRONG facility power · cooling | MODERATE reservoirs · land use |
| FOO Food | MODERATE withdrawals · nutrients | WEAK biofuel feedstock | · | STRONG nutrition · food safety | STRONG land conversion |
| HLT Health | WEAK workforce | WEAK workforce | MODERATE labour · disease | · | WEAK residues |
| BIO Biodiversity | STRONG regulation · filtration | MODERATE fire on lines · biomass | STRONG pollination · soils | MODERATE zoonoses · smoke | · |
| Strength: strong, moderate or weak; a Nexus estimate (status Estimated) from cited evidence and analogue events. The scale is defined in Annex A. | |||||
Transmission paths
- 01
CLI → INF → WAT
Heavy rain overwhelms drainage and floods homes, roads and water points.
- 02
CLI → HLT
River and rain conditions favour outbreaks of vector-borne disease in the valley.
Inferred Rift Valley fever 202522
- 03
ENE → FIN
Oil and gas output lifts growth, while fuel imports and subsidies weigh on the budget.
- 04
CLI → FOO
Rain deficits and floods cut crops in parts of the north and east.
Reported GIEWS brief 202420
- 05
ENE → WAT → HLT
A power cut stops pumping and treatment, and clinics lose supply.
1.4Reinforcing loops
A shock entering either system of a loop can return amplified through the other.
| Loop | First direction | Second direction |
|---|---|---|
| WAT and BIO | Water to biodiversity: flows · wetlands | Biodiversity to water: regulation · filtration |
| FOO and BIO | Food to biodiversity: land conversion | Biodiversity to food: pollination · soils |
| A causal-loop reading of the matrix (Sterman, Business Dynamics, 2000): structural, from estimated strengths, not a measured feedback. | ||
Notes
Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references
- 1Agence nationale de la statistique et de la démographie (ed.), “État et structure, urbanisation et caractéristiques socioculturelles de la population,” Rapport définitif, RGPH-5 2023 (observation year 2023, published 1 July 2025). ANSD, Dakar. Read on the Vie-Publique.sn record page, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 2Agence nationale de la statistique et de la démographie (ed.), Projections démographiques 2023–2073 du Sénégal (observation year 2023, published October 2024). ANSD, Dakar. Read on the Vie-Publique.sn record page, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 6World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators: access to electricity, electric power consumption and transmission losses, Senegal (observation years 2022–2024). World Bank, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 14International Renewable Energy Agency (ed.), Energy Profile: Senegal (capacity 2024, generation 2023, energy supply 2022; PDF created September 2025). IRENA, Abu Dhabi. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 15Ember (ed.), Yearly electricity data, share of electricity by source, Senegal (observation years 2022–2024), read through the Our World in Data grapher files. Ember, London. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 26Africanews (ed.), “Senegal’s 2025 oil output exceeds predictions to reach 36.1 million barrels,” 8 January 2026, reporting the Ministry of Energy, Oil and Mines (observation year 2025). Press report, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 27Seneweb (ed.), “Oil and gas production figures for October 2025,” 6 November 2025, reporting the Minister of Energy, Petroleum and Mines (observation period to 31 October 2025). Press report, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 16Government of Senegal (ed.), Contribution déterminée au niveau national du Sénégal, document dated December 2020. Submission document hosted by the UNFCCC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 17allAfrica (ed.), “Sénégal: Lutte contre le changement climatique – Le Sénégal valide sa troisième Contribution déterminée,” 6 April 2026 (observation year 2026). allAfrica, Dakar desk. Press report, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 5World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators: drinking-water, sanitation and freshwater series, Senegal (observation years 2022–2024), drawn from the WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme and FAO. World Bank, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 19World Bank (ed.), Senegal Country Climate and Development Report, Executive Summary (observation year 2024, published October 2024). World Bank Group, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 24Ministry of Hydraulics and Sanitation (ed.), national evaluation workshop on the 2025 rainy season, 16 December 2025, as reported by allAfrica, “Inondations: plus de 10 millions de m³ d’eau pompés en 2025” (observation year 2025). Press report, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 22World Health Organization (ed.), “Rift Valley fever: Mauritania and Senegal,” Disease Outbreak News 2025-DON584, 5 November 2025 (observation period 20 September to 30 October 2025). WHO, Geneva. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 20Food and Agriculture Organization (ed.), GIEWS Country Brief: The Republic of Senegal, reference date 3 December 2024 (observation year 2024). FAO, Rome. Latest version served at access, 2026-11-03.back
- 21CILSS, AGRHYMET and partners (eds.), Cadre Harmonisé: results of the updated projected situation of acute food and nutritional insecurity, Sahel, West Africa and Cameroon, June to August 2026, published 2 July 2026. AGRHYMET, Niamey. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 10World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators: cereal production, food production index, undernourishment, food insecurity, stunting, agriculture share, Senegal (observation years 2023–2025). World Bank, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 28Seneweb (ed.), “Rice self-sufficiency: Senegal continues to import 1.3 million tons of white rice per year, minister,” 22 September 2025, reporting the Minister of Agriculture (observation year 2023–2025). Press report, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 7World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators: greenhouse-gas emissions by gas and sector and land-use fluxes, Senegal (observation years 2023–2024). World Bank, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 25Sud Quotidien (ed.), report on the 2025 rainy-season evaluation, 17 December 2025, distributed by allAfrica (observation year 2025). Press report, accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 12International Monetary Fund (ed.), “IMF Staff Concludes Visit to Senegal,” Press Release No. 26/216, 22 June 2026 (observation year 2025). IMF, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 13International Monetary Fund (ed.), “IMF Reaches Staff-Level Agreement on an Extended Credit Facility Arrangement with Senegal,” Press Release No. 26/282, 1 September 2026 (observation year 2025). IMF, Washington DC. Accessed 2026-11-03.back