The President of Senegal visits the Port of Gdansk

31.10.2016

Last Thursday, 27 October 2016, the President of the Republic of Senegal, Mr. Macky Sall, paid an official visit to Poland. The first day of the President's visit to Warsaw included meetings with the authorities of Poland and participation in the Polish-Senegalese Economic Forum, which is to give rise to increasing mutual trade and investments between both countries.

The President's visit also provided the opportunity to enter into talks on cooperation in the fields of science, the shipbuilding industry, fisheries and the investments that President Sall intends to make in his country. Listed among them were the construction of railway lines, road infrastructure and extraction of raw materials, not only phosphorites, but also natural gas.

On the second day of his visit, the President of Senegal went to Gdansk, where after meeting with the Marshal of the Pomeranian Region, he also visited the Port of Gdansk. During his visit to the port, the President was accompanied by representatives of the Port of Dakar, including its Director General, Cheikh Kante, who signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the Autonomous Port of Dakar and the Port of Gdansk Authority SA together with Lukasz Greinke, President of the Port of Gdansk.

In the documents, the parties expressed their desire to cooperate and exchange information in the area of training, port management and operation, pollution control and environmental protection, safety, exchange of expert knowledge about the port sector, as well as technical and technological solutions.

The meeting provided an opportunity to present the potential of the Port of Gdansk, its current position in the region, and its development prospects for the coming years to the President and the large delegation which accompanied him. The issues raised included recent infrastructure investments made in Poland and at the Port of Gdansk, which were of special interest to the President. Senegal is the most industrialised of the countries of former French West Africa. The country relies on the extraction of phosphorites and rock salt, as well as the production of electrical energy and the processing of agricultural raw materials (oil, meat, sugar, milling, leather, and textile industries).

The industries of phosphorite processing, petroleum refining, cement production, heavy goods vehicle assembly plants, metalworks and agricultural machinery factories in Senegal are concentrated around Dakar in particular. Dakar is also the third largest port of West Africa and the ninth largest in the entire African continent. Hence the visit to the largest Polish seaport, the opportunity to become familiar with the solutions used in Gdansk and the spectrum of investments made here enjoyed the particular interest of the Senegalese delegation.

The Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Port of Gdansk is intended to provide impetus to continue the exchange of ideas, good practices and solutions not only in the area of infrastructure investments, but also the operation and management of the port.

"We talked about railway lines, motorways, pipelines. About cooperation in the area of agricultural industry and agri-food industry. About agricultural machinery and cooperation in the area of fertilisers, which has already begun, as the Azoty Group is present in Senegal, it began investments which, I am sure, will be developed and expanded," the Polish President emphasised.