Senegalite, an aqueous aluminum phosphate, is named after the country where it was first found. It happened in 1976. Senegal, independent from France since 1960, had then constitutionally enshrined a multi-party system. The most westernized country on the African continent took another step toward developing its own political culture, which naturally did not cancel out the influence of soft power from the former metropolis. One of its manifestations: the authorship of all the basic scientific materials on Senegalite belongs to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris.
It was from this school that the Mining Museum in St. Petersburg received a sample of senegalite on August 11, 1982, as part of a scientific exchange. The French were sure that the rare mineral, still not found anywhere except in Senegal and Brazil, was not yet in its collection. However, they underestimated the international connections of the domestic mining school. Three months earlier, Diop Cheikh Tidian, a native of Senegal and a graduate student at the Leningrad Mining Institute, had brought a small but high-quality specimen of pale yellow (colorless also occurs) senegalite to his alma mater.
He found the stone while studying the core of exploration wells in the area of gold deposits in eastern Senegal, in the areas bordering the Republic of Mali. The gold-bearing area is a ridge of hills stretching for 300 kilometers in the Falem River basin. It was there, on the magnetite-rich Kourou Diakouma hill, that the mineral was first discovered.
Rock samples collected by the young scientist during field work were examined in the Gornyi geochemistry laboratory. In 1984, the graduate student successfully defended his PhD thesis in Leningrad on the potential of gold mining in Eastern Senegal. This was the first generalizing work on the analysis of gold deposits of the mentioned territory with practical recommendations on the selection of the most efficient geological prospecting methods for it.
Until the 1960s, that is, during the period of colonial dependence on France, exploration and extraction of mineral resources was limited to a radius of about 100 kilometers around the capital, Dakar. Only there was a well-developed network of railroads, roads, and electricity. Work began on a large scale in 1983, when the Senegalese state company Miferso put forward a comprehensive project to develop the infrastructure and mining industry in the east of the country. Most of Senegal's mining engineers at the time had diplomas from Soviet specialized universities.
Today gold ranks first in Senegal's export structure with a share of almost 19%. The shipments are estimated at 973 million U.S. dollars. A quarter of the volume is provided by local companies, which for West Africa testifies to a very considerable level of economic sovereignty. Courtesy of domestic universities.
Today there are 100 Senegalese students at Russian universities studying Bachelor's, 5 at specialist and 55 at Master's degree programs. It's not much, but if there were no significant community of older people with Soviet diplomas, the situation would be worse.
Today's Senegalese applicants were 5 years old when the legendary Paris-Dakar rally was moved to South America. For them, Russia is no longer associated with quality engineering, as it was for their parents. Until 2009, the competitions were doing a lot of additional advertising for our country. French crews from 1979 to 1994 were actively using domestic off-road Niva. In 1982, when Diop Cheikh Tidian brought his gem to Leningrad, Niva finished second in the capital of Senegal, overtaking the Mercedes and losing only to the Renault 20 Turbo. Since the late 1980s, our sportsmen have been successfully competing in rallies on KAMAZ trucks. Soft power.
