Senegal opens UN regional headquarters near Dakar

Senegalese President Macky Sall on Thursday inaugurated a United Nations regional headquarters near the capital Dakar to house all UN operations in the country, AFP journalists reported.

The United Nations House sits on a 13-hectare (32-acre) site in the new town of Diamniadio, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Dakar, and will also be dedicated to the wider region of West and Central Africa.

The complex will house the 34 UN entities currently based in Senegal and their 2,400 employees, the organisers of the inauguration ceremony said.

Work began on the project — built by a private Senegalese company — in 2019 with a cost of 175 billion CFA francs ($291 million).

“We wanted to offer the 34 United Nations agencies based” in Senegal, especially in Dakar, “an ideal and appropriate setting to facilitate their work”, Sall said at the ceremony.

“It is the mark of our country’s renewed attention to the United Nations, to contribute to the ideal of peace and the aspiration of peoples to work together for a better world,” he added.

The new town of Diamniadio was launched eight years ago by Sall to relieve traffic congestion in Dakar.