The unsung backbone of Senegal
On July 31, Africa honors its women, yet the narrative often overlooks those whose labor sustains the continent’s economies. The African Union has designated 2026 as the year of water, emphasizing the need for sustainable access and sanitation to achieve Agenda 2063 goals. While global headlines focus on infrastructure, the daily reality of Senegal’s migrant women—both internal and from neighboring African nations—remains unaddressed. These women, invisible in policy debates, power the nation’s informal economy while grappling with systemic neglect of their most basic needs.
From rural wells to urban burdens
In rural Senegal, water collection is a daily ritual assigned to women and girls. This unpaid labor drains time from education, health, and income-generating work, pushing young women toward cities like Dakar. Many join the informal sector—domestic work, street vending, or small-scale trade—where 51.3% of Senegal’s informal workforce is female. Yet these roles remain precarious, with 41.5% of women in Dakar’s informal economy lacking contracts or social protections. Their work is indispensable, yet their recognition is absent from public discourse and policy agendas.
Migrant women: targets of rising xenophobia
Senegal’s long-standing role as a host nation is under threat. According to the 2023 general population census, 207,791 foreigners reside in Senegal, with 44.3% being women—primarily from Guinea (40.3%), Mali (14.9%), Guinea-Bissau (4.4%), Gambia (3.0%), and Mauritania (2.1%). However, political rhetoric has escalated into xenophobic attacks, particularly targeting Guinean Fulani communities, accused of straining public schools and altering demographic balances. Calls to restrict residency rights and challenge birthright citizenship echo South Africa’s cyclical violence, where Senegalese migrants have faced similar persecution.
Double vulnerability: gender and migration
Foreign migrant women in Senegal face layered challenges. Many work in domestic service or informal trade, lacking contracts, social protections, or secure access to water and sanitation. When xenophobic sentiment targets entire nationalities or ethnic groups, these women become primary victims of harassment, exploitation, or violence. Their precarious legal status—often tied to employers or informal networks—silences them further, as reporting abuse risks deportation or community retaliation. Gendered xenophobia compounds their invisibility, denying them both dignity and rights.
The CEDEAO-AES rupture: a fragile future for Malian, Burkinabe, and Nigerien women
Since January 2025, the free movement and residency rights of Malian, Burkinabe, and Nigerien women depend on bilateral political declarations rather than the 1979 CEDEAO Protocol’s institutional safeguards. These declarations offer no legal permanence, leaving women without foreign identity cards vulnerable. The Sahel’s security crises in early 2026 have further increased migration flows, particularly of Malian women. Civil society and unions must vigilantly monitor their access to essential services—water, sanitation, healthcare, and education—for their children—amid this fragile legal shift.
Colonial borders and intra-African xenophobia
To understand Senegal’s current climate, one must recognize the artificiality of colonial borders. As Achille Mbembe notes, these divisions ignored preexisting kinship and trade networks, creating a postcolonial state that relies on exclusionary ‘autochthony’ policies. These policies, which define who ‘belongs’ to the nation, mirror South Africa’s Afrophobia and reflect Frantz Fanon’s warnings about the risks of unaddressed colonial legacies. Gendered frameworks further complicate this: Oyèronké Oyèwùmí and Amina Mama have shown how colonialism reshaped gender categories, and postcolonial nationalists repurposed them to control national belonging. Foreign women and their children become targets of these exclusionary narratives, particularly in debates over birthright citizenship.
Water and sanitation: the invisible divide for migrant women
The AU’s 2026 focus on water and sanitation is not merely technical—it directly impacts migrant women. In Dakar’s peripheral neighborhoods, where many migrant women live, access to clean water and safe sanitation remains partial. In domestic work, women employed by households often lack guaranteed access to these basic services, dependent solely on employers’ goodwill. A water policy that ignores these women’s realities will fail those most in need, perpetuating cycles of inequality and vulnerability.
A hospitality that must go further
Téranga—Senegalese hospitality—must extend beyond symbolic gestures. The invisible labor of migrant women, both Senegalese and foreign, sustains the nation’s economy. Without their contributions, entire sectors would collapse. Yet without guaranteed access to water and sanitation in their homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods, Agenda 2063’s goals remain unattainable for those who need them most. True hospitality and equitable water policies must converge to honor these women’s dignity and rights.