The 31st of July marks Africa Women’s Day, a date tied to a historic 1962 conference in Dar es Salaam that shaped the continent’s feminist and panafricanist movements. In 2026, the African Union has dedicated the year to water access: “ensuring sustainable availability of water and safe sanitation systems to meet the goals of Agenda 2063.” Yet, behind these noble ambitions lies a stark reality in Senegal, where the economy thrives on the uncounted labor of migrant women whose work remains largely invisible.
Invisible engines: women migrants keeping Senegal moving
Every day, thousands of women migrate within Senegal or cross borders from neighboring countries like Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Gambia—often without legal recognition or social protection. They fill essential roles as domestic workers, street vendors, market traders, and caregivers, ensuring households, businesses, and communities function. Yet, their contributions are rarely acknowledged in policy discourse or public debates. Access to clean water and decent sanitation—critical for their dignity and daily survival—remains a distant privilege rather than a guaranteed right.
Many of these women arrive in Dakar or regional cities after leaving rural areas, where water collection falls disproportionately on women and girls. This burden disrupts education, health, and economic opportunities, pushing them toward urban migration. Once in cities, they dominate the informal sector, which employs nearly half of Senegal’s workforce. Official data shows women make up 51.3% of the informal labor force nationally—but only 41.5% in Dakar, where they occupy the most precarious positions: no contracts, no social security, and minimal labor rights. Their work is indispensable, yet their rights remain unprotected.
When Senegal becomes a refuge—and a target
Senegal’s role as a host country is often overshadowed by its own citizens’ migration. According to the 2023 national census (RGPH-5), over 207,000 foreigners live in Senegal—1.1% of the population—with 44.3% being women. The majority come from neighboring countries: Guinea (40.3%), Mali (14.9%), Guinea-Bissau (4.4%), Gambia (3.0%), and Mauritania (2.1%). In border regions like Kédougou, foreign residents—especially from Mali and Guinea—outnumber returning Senegalese citizens.
But this long-standing hospitality is under threat. In recent months, inflammatory rhetoric targeting African migrants—particularly Guinean Fulani women—has escalated. Accusations of straining public schools or altering the country’s demographic balance have fueled demands for stricter residency rules and even the revocation of birthright citizenship for children of foreign parents. This discourse echoes xenophobic violence seen elsewhere in Africa, such as South Africa, where Senegalese migrants have faced similar stigmatization.
Double vulnerability: foreign women in Senegal’s crosshairs
Foreign migrant women in Senegal face compounded risks. Like their Senegalese counterparts, many work in domestic service or informal trade—without contracts, legal protections, or access to basic services. When xenophobic sentiment targets entire nationalities or ethnic groups, these women become primary targets for harassment, exploitation, and violence. Fear of retaliation—whether administrative penalties or community backlash—silences them, leaving them with little recourse.
Xenophobia is never gender-neutral. For foreign women, it intensifies existing vulnerabilities tied to informal labor, lack of legal status, and dependence on employers or networks for access to water, sanitation, and healthcare. A domestic worker’s access to a toilet or clean water, for example, often depends on her employer’s goodwill—no labor laws mandate facilities. This dependency mirrors the challenges faced by Senegalese domestic workers abroad, highlighting a systemic failure to protect the most marginalized.
CEDEAO-AES rupture: new threats to migrant workers from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger
The political rupture between the Economic Community of West African States (CEDEAO) and the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) since January 2026 has weakened protections for women from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. While free movement and residency rights were once guaranteed under the 1979 CEDEAO Protocol and its institutional mechanisms (including the ECOWAS Court of Justice), these safeguards now rely on bilateral political declarations—subject to sudden revocation without legal recourse.
For domestic workers from these countries—many undocumented—this shift is catastrophic. Without a stable legal identity, their right to remain in Senegal depends on fragile political agreements rather than enforceable individual rights. The Sahel’s escalating security crisis in early 2026 has already driven more Malian women to migrate south, increasing their exposure to administrative abuses and service denials.
Civil society and unions must urgently monitor how these women access essential services like the Foreigner Identity Card, healthcare, and education for their children. Without vigilance, the gains of Agenda 2063 will bypass those who need them most.
Colonial borders and the politics of belonging
To understand today’s xenophobia, we must confront the artificiality of Africa’s colonial borders. As scholar Achille Mbembe argues, these borders were drawn without regard for pre-existing trade, kinship, or cultural networks. Postcolonial states, grappling with fragile legitimacy, have often relied on “autochthony” politics—defining who “truly belongs” to the nation at the expense of those labeled as outsiders, sometimes after generations of presence.
This logic mirrors South Africa’s Afrophobia and has resurfaced in Dakar. A decolonial feminist lens reveals how gender categories were reshaped by colonization and later weaponized by nationalist projects to determine national belonging. Foreign women, their fertility, and their children born in Senegal become targets in debates over citizenship rights. Domestic workers—often foreign women—occupy the frontlines of these contested borders, their labor both essential and exploited.
Reconciling the struggles of Senegalese women migrating internally with those of African women migrating to Senegal demands rejecting two flawed approaches: ignoring Senegal’s responsibility toward those it hosts, and applying foreign frameworks to African realities without adaptation. The intersection of gender and migration must be analyzed within the continent’s unique history of borders and state formation.
Water and sanitation: the invisible frontier for migrant women
Water access is not just a technical issue—it’s a gendered and migratory one. In peripheral neighborhoods of Dakar where migrant women settle, piped water and sanitation remain patchy. Lack of decent toilets exposes women and girls to nighttime insecurity. At work, domestic workers living with employers have no legal guarantee to water or sanitation; their access depends entirely on their employer’s willingness—a power dynamic that mirrors the precarity faced by Senegalese domestic workers abroad.
Making water and sanitation a priority for Agenda 2063 is meaningless if policies ignore the neighborhoods where migrant women live or tie service access to administrative status. True progress requires recognizing these women’s labor, protecting their rights, and ensuring their access to basic services—not as charity, but as justice.
Hospitality and water: a shared responsibility
African Women’s Day should not be a ritualistic homage. Nor should the AU’s 2026 water agenda remain empty rhetoric. Both must compel action: without migrant women—whether Senegalese moving internally or Africans migrating to Senegal—large segments of the subregion’s economies would collapse. Conversely, without guaranteed access to clean water and sanitation for these women—at home, at work, and in their neighborhoods—the goals of Agenda 2063 will remain unattainable for those who need them most.
A hospitality that stops at national borders, or a water policy that overlooks these women, fails the same test. The future of Senegal—and Africa—depends on recognizing their contributions, protecting their rights, and ensuring their dignity. It’s time to count them, not just in ledgers, but in policies that transform their lives.
