West Africa

The first French colonial capital of Côte d’Ivoire, on a sandspit 40 km east of Abidjan.

A capital on a rock at the western edge of the continent, with the best live music in francophone West…

The political capital, built up around one president’s birthplace, and site of one of the largest churches in the world.

A small island off Dakar holding Senegal’s principal memorial to the transatlantic slave trade.

One of the last large tracts of primary Upper Guinean rainforest, and the site of long-running research into tool-using chimpanzees.

The former capital of French West Africa, on an island in the mouth of the Senegal River.

A sandspit between the lagoon and the Atlantic, 80 km east of Abidjan, and the city’s weekend coast.

A delta of mangrove channels, sandbanks and shell islands where the Saloum River meets the Atlantic.

Ten Atlantic islands 570 km off Senegal: beach resorts on two of them, volcanic hiking on two more, and the…

A salt lake behind the dunes northeast of Dakar, worked by hand for salt, and pink in some conditions and…