Senegal is a former French colony that is located on Africa’s Western coast between Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania. Senegal's primary natural resources are Phosphates, Iron Ore and Fish.  Resource harvesting is one of the primary sources of employment in Senegal.

Senegal also has various problems in their ecosystem because of the harvesting of resources, some of these problems are deforestation and overfishing. These problems have occurred because of weak environmental protection laws.

Phosphate Mining
Senegal is one of the world’s main producers of phosphates accounting for about 6% of exports of phosphates in the world. Phosphate is also processed further to produce chemicals and in particular fertilizer. 

Baobab Phosphate Project
This project planned to build a phosphate mine 140 kilometers from Dakar. This project was funded and carried out by the Baobab Mining and Chemicals Corporation (BMCC) which 80% ia owned by Avenira. Avenira is an Australian based company in the Metals and Mining industry.

Construction began in 2016 and the production and processing of Phosphate started in September later that year. The project expanded the Gadde Bissick ore beneficiation plant capacity to one million tonnes per annum (Mtpa). The expected production is to be 13.2 Mt of phosphate concentrate graded at 36.4% P2o5. The life is expected to have a life of 13.4 years with 39.3 million tonnes of phosphate rock available to mine.

Oil Explorations Projects
In November of 2014 Senegal began phase one of its oil exploration projects (SNE-1) to find oil reserves on its ocean coast. The oil field is located 100 kilometers off the coast of Dakar. The fields are estimated to cover an area of 7,940 sq. meters and have over 2.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Drilling is expected to begin in 2021 producing about 100,000 barrels per day.

Port of Dakar, Senegal: