Dakar – the capital of Senegal - is the important transport and trading - financial center of the Western Africa. It is the seaport which is taking place on a marginal Western point of Africa - on the Cape Verde, the biggest in the country industrial and university center. The port is equipped with modern loading cocks and under the whole right is considered the best in all the Western Africa. It is stipulated also by its important strategic position – the halfway between Europe and Austral Africa, Europe and the South America. Also the city is the largest automobile and railway junction of Senegal. The population of Dakar is about 2 million persons. The city has been based in 1857 as the French fort, and from 1904 till 1960 was an administrative centre of the French Western Africa. Dakar has turned to the major fish port and the center of processing fish (mainly tuna). Here textile, alimentary (bear production and bakeries, factories on processing sugar and groundnut oil), ship-building, soap-producing, incomplete vehicle manufacturers are placed too. There is an international airport. Near the seaport the oldest in the city business quarter is located to which from the West business streets with flock of workshops and aboriginal handicraftsmen shops adjoin. On the shore luxury quarter Funn with residences of embassies, country houses and comfortable hotels is stretched. Dakar is known also by the fact that the route of well-known international auto-rally "Paris - Dakar" here comes to an end. In modern buildings the art museum and the big medical center are located. On the basis of Dakar University the Institute on studying Black Africa works.