Senegal
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
They earn from what cannot be sent down a wire: visitors who come, and workers abroad who send money home.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Several parts of the economy could transmit AI’s effects. The pace depends on adoption by firms, connectivity and movement of workers between sectors.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Senegal starts
Senegal is a reform climber: a lower-income economy growing steadily from a low base, with institutions that keep improving. The scores show why. Its catch-up headroom is 4.9 out of 5, among the highest on the map — the distance between where it stands and the frontier is its biggest asset. Physical build speed is 3.8, backed by the Diamniadio new city, the Dakar regional express train, and the Sangomar oil field and BP-led GTA gas project now coming online. What holds it back is stark. Compute and energy access scores 1, the lowest band, and climate resilience 1.1. At roughly $1,955 per person, the capital to build data centers is scarce. Ten-year trend growth of 5.3% a year is real momentum. Every scenario turns on whether power, chips and capital arrive to match the ambition of Plan Sénégal Émergent.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Senegal would gain a small lift: 5.5% growth a year, 18th of 157 — a strong rank, because its momentum and headroom count for most when AI stays ordinary. An economy at 5.5% doubles in about 13 years. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would climb for two decades and reach 9.6% a year once AGI matures around 2045, placing Senegal 60th. The long runway rewards its momentum, giving builders time to convert reform into capacity. At 9.6% the economy doubles in under eight years. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 9.4% a year from the early 2030s, again a doubling in under eight years. But Senegal's rank would slip to 78th, because a fast world puts more weight on the compute and capital it does not hold. Politics could slow or redirect any path. How Senegalese citizens and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost the same until about 2030. So watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world. A point or two above trend by the mid-2030s would signal a gradual one. A fade back to trend would signal a modest one. Senegal's own signals would arrive earlier than the growth data: financial close and first exports from the GTA gas project, hyperscaler or subsea cable commitments landing at Dakar, and how fast government services and schools actually adopt digital tools.
If growth goes explosive
Explosive is relative. At 9.6% growth a year, Senegal would run well ahead of its region, whose median reaches only 5.7% under gradual takeoff. But it would trail the frontier by a wide margin, with the United States compounding near 19.5%. The economy would double in under eight years, so a child starting school now would finish secondary school in a country twice as rich. Oil and gas revenue could fund the power and connectivity the country lacks, and rising wages at home would ease the pressure on young Senegalese to emigrate for work. There is a way this leaves Senegal worse off, and it is worth naming. If the computing power behind an AI economy is rented from abroad rather than owned, its price and supply are set by others, and can be throttled or repriced by decisions made elsewhere. The hedge is to own capacity where it can and to anchor foreign investment on terms it controls. Even then, the pace-setter would shift to the state, testing how fast ministries, the energy regulator, land registries and courts can permit, adjudicate and count.
What Senegal can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and one pays off whatever happens. The no-regret lever is AI diffusion capacity, at 2.7. Digital skills, permissive deployment rules and digital government carry real weight even in the skeptic's world, so building them today loses nothing if AGI never arrives. Rwanda offers a model to adapt: it passed one of Africa's first national AI policies and is training a digital workforce through Kigali Innovation City. The second lever is geopolitical positioning, at 2. Staying aligned with chip-supplying partners and keeping access to capital markets protects Senegal's options under every scenario. The third lever is the bet. Compute and energy access, at 1, barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary, but under a fast takeoff it becomes Senegal's single largest lever. Closing it means packaging power, land and fast permits to attract data center investment. A $1,955-per-person economy cannot raise that capital alone, so the build needs co-investment from partners and development finance. A cautious government can act on the first two levers today at no loss. To see how moving these scores changes Senegal's path under each scenario, open the atlas's policy editor.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Senegal’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Senegal: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.