To get to the presidential palace, take Avenue Georges-Pompidou, leave Rue de Reims on your right, pass Rue Carnot, Rue Félix-Faure and Rue Jules-Ferry, then turn left and you are there, a GPS application might suggest. The driver would then not be in Paris ... but in Dakar.

In the Plateau district, if street names are anything to go by, history has stood still. Sixty-five years after the independence of Senegal, the capital's political and administrative center remains criss-crossed with names from colonial times. Colonial administrators and governors, commanders, but also French writers and doctors cover 60% of this piece of the peninsula with their names, according to a study published in 2019.

But not for much longer. After demanding the departure of French soldiers still present on Senegalese soil, in mid-December, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye called for certain streets to be unnamed and renamed in honor of "national heroes." He tasked his prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, with creating a National Council for Memory and Management of Historical Heritage.

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