Known for its proximity to the capital and its many street vendors, Dakar's Léopold-Sedar-Senghor airport reached saturation point with almost two million passengers and 340,000 tonnes of freight in 2016. It will now gradually be mothballed to make way for the new Blaise-Diagne International Airport (AIBD) to be inaugurated in early December. It is one of the key components of the Emerging Senegal Plan (ESP), which aims to make Senegal a regional hub.
It took a decade of ups and downs and more than €610 million of investment to bring Blaise-Diagne airport to fruition. on the maiden flight on 7 December. One of Air Sénégal's two ATR-600s should be the first aircraft to take off from the new facilities at Diass, 15 km from the new town of Diamniadio and 50 km from Dakar, or 30 km from Mbour and the seaside resort of Saly Portudal.
Already linked to the capital by the toll motorway, this new hub will soon also be connected by the regional express train (TER). Everything has been calculated to ensure that the airport contributes to economic rebalancing between the Cape Verde peninsula and the Thiès region, to the west of Dakar. The end of Léopold-Sedar-Senghor airport, located in the north of the capital, will help to relieve congestion in Dakar and increase the swing towards the new Diamniadio-Thiès-Mbour urban triangle to the west of the capital: the new airport will be its nerve centre.
Largest airport project in West Africa
Five times larger than Léopold-Sédar-Senghor airport, the AIBD covers an area of 45 km.2. It is equipped witha capacity of 10 million passengers per year for the passenger terminal and 50,000 tonnes for the freight terminal. To dominate the battle of West African airport hubs, the AIBD operating company is building a state-of-the-art aircraft maintenance centre in Diass, a rare centre of expertise on the African continent.
An emblematic project for Senegal, construction of the AIBD began in December 2007 under the leadership of Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), the Saudi construction giant. However, in 2015, SBG demanded a substantial new financial rider from the Senegalese government, the works had been halted. It was taken over at the beginning of 2016 by the Turkish consortium Summa and Limak Holding, which now owns 66 % of the capital of LAS SA, the airport management company, via a twenty-five year concession contract. DP World, the region's third largest port operator, is building and developing a free logistics zone close to the new airport and not far from the container terminal at the port of Dakar, which it also manages.
The new airport includes a large number of shops. A 1000 m duty free zone2 and a 100 m2 Relay outlet will be managed by Travel Retail, Lagardère's specialist subsidiary, which is making its debut in West Africa. According to Abdoulaye Mbodji, Director of the new airport, the site will rapidly become a core of ancillary economic activities and could help create at least 10,000 jobs.
Blaise-Diagne at the heart of business
What will become of the former airport site? The answer, which has long been a mystery in Dakar, has finally been revealed through an agreement signed in October between Senegal's Caisse de dépôts et de consignation CDC and Morocco's Caisse de dépôts et de gestion CDG.
Moroccan interests will be in charge of transforming the site of the former airport at the end of the transitional transfer phase to create an ambitious project: the business city of West Africa. The project involves developing 597 hectares, the equivalent of a city 3km long and 2km wide. Its construction has been entrusted to Senegal's Agence de promotion des investissements et des grands travaux (APIX) and will comprise a complex of commercial buildings, office complexes, residential buildings and green spaces.
According to the Managing Director of CDG Morocco, " The project will help to achieve three key objectives, namely the creation of direct and indirect jobs, the creation of an urban space and the improvement of the real estate offer in the Senegalese capital. ".
