Senegal Emoji

🇸🇳 the Senegal flag emoji shows three vertical bands, green, yellow and red, with a five-pointed green star in the middle of the yellow. This country flag emoji is represented in text by two regional indicator letters, 🇸 and 🇳, for Senegal's country code SN, which supported platforms display together as a flag. Windows has no flag pictures in its emoji font, so there you'll see the letters SN, while the person you send it to still sees the flag on their phone. Where flags don't show, people write 💚💛❤️ or 🟩🟨🟥, and ⭐ stands in for the star.

The flag was adopted on 20 August 1960, the day Senegal left the short-lived Mali Federation it had formed with today's Mali. The federation's flag had the same three bands with a black kanaga, a human figure, in the centre; Senegal replaced it with the green star, and Mali soon dropped the figure altogether. That is why the "Senegal flag without star" people search for is in fact the flag of Mali 🇲🇱. Green is usually explained as hope and the faith of the people, yellow as wealth and the fruits of work, red as life and the struggle for independence, and the star as unity and hope.

The same pan-African colours make several look-alikes. Mali 🇲🇱 has the same vertical stripes with no star, Cameroon 🇨🇲 has green, red and yellow with a yellow star on the red, and Ghana 🇬🇭 lays red, yellow and green out horizontally with a black star. 🇸🇳🤝🇬🇲 greets The Gambia, the narrow country along the River Gambia that Senegal almost surrounds; the two formed the Senegambia Confederation from 1982 to 1989.

Senegal national symbols: the lion, the baobab and teranga

Senegal's coat of arms has a gold lion 🦁 on red beside a baobab 🌳 on gold over a wavy green band for the Senegal River, a green star above and palm branches 🌴 around it, with the motto Un Peuple, Un But, Une Foi, one people, one goal, one faith. The lion is the national animal and the emoji everyone reaches for: the national anthem is Le Lion rouge, the red lion, written by the poet and first president Léopold Sédar Senghor, and it opens by asking everyone to pluck their koras and strike the balafons. Unicode has no baobab emoji, so 🌳 stands in for the baobab on Senegal's coat of arms.

Teranga is the Wolof word for hospitality, and Senegal calls itself the land of teranga: the guest is fed first, the bowl is shared and nobody is left at the door. 🤝🍚 says it. The word is also in the name of the national football team, the Lions of Teranga, Lions de la Teranga in French, hence 🦁⚽🇸🇳. They reached the World Cup quarter-finals in 2002 after beating France, the reigning champions, 1–0 in the opening match, and won the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time in February 2022, beating Egypt on penalties in the final in Cameroon 🏆.

The other national sport is laamb 🤼, Senegalese wrestling, in which punches are allowed. Big fights fill the national arena in Pikine and stop the country in front of the television; before them wrestlers dance and boast in the ring to the sabar drums 🥁, wearing protective amulets, and the champion is called the Roi des arènes, king of the arenas.

Dakar, Gorée, Lac Rose and Casamance in emoji

🏙️ is Dakar, the capital on the Cap-Vert peninsula, whose Pointe des Almadies is the westernmost point of mainland Africa. Its streets belong to the car rapide 🚐, the blue and yellow minibuses painted with names, eyes and prayers, fewer every year as new buses 🚌 replace them, and 🏟️ is the new national stadium at Diamniadio. On a hill above the city stands the African Renaissance Monument, a 49-metre bronze unveiled in 2010.

A short ferry ride away is Gorée 🏝️, a small island of colonial houses that became a memorial of the Atlantic slave trade; its House of Slaves has a doorway onto the sea, the Door of No Return 🚪, and the island was among the first World Heritage Sites listed in 1978. Visitors post it quietly, with 🕊️ or ⛓️‍💥. North-east of Dakar, Lac Rose, Lake Retba, turns pink 🩷 in the dry season from algae in its very salty water; men rake salt into pirogues, while women unload it ashore 🧂, and for years the Paris–Dakar rally ended on its shore.

Fishing is life on the coast 🌊🏖️: at Kayar, Soumbédioune and Mbour long wooden pirogues 🛶, painted in bright patterns, come in through the surf with the catch 🎣. Saint-Louis, the old colonial capital on an island in the Senegal River, is a World Heritage Site, and nearby the Djoudj bird sanctuary fills with pelicans 🐦 and flamingos 🦩 every winter. Further south are the mangroves of the Sine-Saloum delta and Joal-Fadiouth, an island built on shells 🐚 whose cemetery is shared by Muslims and Christians; then green Casamance with its rice paddies 🌾, beaches at Cap Skirring and oysters 🦪, and in the east Niokolo-Koba National Park 🏞️ with lions, hippos 🦛, crocodiles 🐊 and chimpanzees 🐒.

Senegalese food emoji: thiéboudienne, yassa, mafé and attaya

The national dish is thiéboudienne, in Wolof ceebu jën, rice and fish: fish 🐟 stuffed with a parsley, garlic and chili paste and cooked with tomato 🍅, then rice 🍚 cooked in the broth and served with carrot 🥕, aubergine 🍆, cassava and cabbage on one big platter 🥘 that the family eats from together. UNESCO added it to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2021. 🍚🐟🍅 is how people write it.

Yassa is chicken 🍗 or fish marinated in lemon 🍋 and slowly cooked with a mountain of onions 🧅, with a hot pepper 🌶️ on the side; mafé is a stew in peanut sauce 🥜🍲, from the country that grows peanuts across its whole centre, the Peanut Basin. On the street there is dibi, grilled lamb 🍖 from the dibiteries, accara, fritters of black-eyed peas 🫘, fataya, fried pastries filled with fish or meat 🥟, and sandwiches in a baguette 🥖. Millet 🌾 becomes thiéré couscous and the sweet thiakry and lakh with curdled milk 🥣; mango season 🥭 is in the summer.

To drink: bissap, a deep red drink of hibiscus flowers 🌺, bouye from the fruit of the baobab, café Touba ☕, coffee roasted with Guinea pepper and tied to the holy city of Touba, and attaya 🍵🫖, green tea with mint 🌿 and plenty of sugar, poured from high up to make foam and served in three rounds that can take the whole afternoon.

Tabaski, Magal, Independence Day and mbalax: holidays and music

More than nine in ten Senegalese are Muslim, most of them in Sufi brotherhoods, so 🕌☪️📿🤲 fill the feeds. The biggest day is Tabaski 🐏, as Eid al-Adha is called in West Africa: families buy a ram weeks ahead, the price of rams is national news and the prized Ladoum breed even has beauty contests. People visit each other in new clothes and say Dewenati, may we see the next one, and Baal ma àq, forgive me my wrongs. Korité 🌙 is Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan. The Mouride brotherhood's Grand Magal draws millions of pilgrims to the great mosque of Touba 🕌 to remember the exile of its founder, Cheikh Amadou Bamba, and the Gamou of Tivaouane celebrates the Prophet's birthday.

Christians, Senghor among them, keep Christmas ⛪🎄, and at Easter they bring their Muslim neighbours ngalakh, a sweet millet dish with peanut and baobab. Independence Day on 4 April is 🇸🇳🎉🎆, with a parade in Dakar and "Bonne fête de l'indépendance".

Music: 🥁🪘 for the sabar drums and the fast sabar dancing 💃🕺 at weddings and street parties, 🪉 for the kora, the 21-string harp-lute of the griots, 🪕 for the xalam lute and the Jola akonting, often named as ancestors of the banjo, and 🎤🎶 for mbalax, the pop music Youssou N'Dour built on the sabar rhythms. 🎷 is the Saint-Louis Jazz Festival, 🎨 Dak'Art, the Dakar biennale of contemporary African art, and 🎭 the Kankurang, the Mandinka masked figure of Casamance. 👗🧵 is the grand boubou, the wide embroidered robe made by the tailors of every neighbourhood for Tabaski and weddings.

Wolof letters, French accents and the CFA franc

Senegal has about 19 million people by CLDR estimates. French is the official language, spoken by roughly 5 million, but the language of the street is Wolof, with about 13 million speakers as a first or second language; then Pulaar, the local Fula, about 4 million, Serer about 2 million, Jola-Fonyi about half a million in Casamance and Saafi-Saafi about 300,000 near Thiès. Wolof has long been written in Arabic script too, called Wolofal, but its official Latin alphabet, fixed by government decrees from 1971, includes these special letters and accents: Ñ ñ for the ny sound, as in ñaar, two; Ŋ ŋ for the ng of "sing"; é and ó for the closed e and o, while plain e and o are open, as in "bet" and "law"; ë for the short neutral vowel of "about", as in jërëjëf, thank you; and à, as in jàmm, peace. Pulaar and Serer add the hooked letters Ɓ ɓ Ɗ ɗ Ƴ ƴ for b and d said with an inward gulp of air (implosives) and for a glottalized y, a y with a catch in the throat, and Jola marks vowels with an acute: á é í ó ú.

To type them on Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad 0209 for Ñ, 0241 ñ, 0235 ë, 0233 é, 0243 ó, 0224 à; Ŋ and ŋ have no Alt code, so in Word type 014A or 014B and press Alt+X (0181, 0253, 018A, 0257, 01B3, 01B4 for Ɓ ɓ Ɗ ɗ Ƴ ƴ). On a Mac, Option+N then N gives ñ, Option+U then E gives ë, Option+E then a vowel the acute, Option+` then A gives à; for the rest add the Unicode Hex Input keyboard and hold Option while typing the codes. On phones, long-press n, e, a or o. In HTML, ñ, ë and ŋ give ñ, ë and ŋ. Watch the look-alikes: ŋ is not the Greek η, and Ɗ is not the Croatian Đ nor the African Ɖ of Benin. Keyboards sold in Senegal are French AZERTY, with é è à ç ù on their own keys, ê â î ô û from the ^ dead key and ë ï from ¨; French writes Sénégal, Thiès, Kédougou and « guillemets » with a space inside. See the Wolof, Fula, Serer, Jola-Fonyi and French collections for the full alphabets.

Money is the West African CFA franc, ISO code XOF, issued by the BCEAO, whose headquarters are in Dakar, and shared with Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger and Togo. It has no Unicode sign and none on its notes: prices are written 5 000 F CFA or FCFA, or just 5 000 F on a market sign, with a space between thousands, and in Wolof people often count in dërëm, units of five francs. The franc is pegged to the euro at 655.957 to €1; 💰 and 🪙 are the money emoji people send.