Flag of Senegal

What the flag of Senegal looks like

The flag of Senegal has three vertical bands of equal width: green at the hoist, yellow in the middle and red at the fly. A single green five-pointed star sits in the center of the yellow band, with one point upward. The proportions are 2:3. The yellow is also sometimes described as gold.

The design is simple and there is no coat of arms or text. Green, yellow and red are the Pan-African colors, and many African countries use them. What marks the Senegalese flag apart is the green star, which is on the middle band instead of in a separate emblem.

You can see how the flag looks at small sizes in the Senegal flag emoji, where the star is still visible.

Senegal flag meaning and symbolism

Green, yellow and red come from the flag of Ethiopia, which was the only African state to resist colonization for most of the colonial era, and were adopted as a sign of African unity and independence by many new states in the 1950s and 60s.

In Senegal, the colors are usually explained as follows. Green stands for hope, nature and often for Islam, which is the religion of most Senegalese. Yellow stands for wealth and the natural resources of the land, and for the harvest. Red stands for life, and the sacrifice and determination of the people. The green star is read as a symbol of hope and unity, and it is also said to stand for the light of the nation. These meanings are traditional rather than set out in the constitution, and various sources give slightly different readings.

History of the Senegal flag

Senegal was part of French West Africa. In 1958 it became an autonomous republic inside the French Community, and in 1959 it joined with French Sudan (now Mali) to form the Mali Federation. The federation flew a flag with the same three vertical bands, but with a black human figure known as a kanaga in the center, a stylized figure with raised arms taken from Dogon art.

The federation became independent from France on 20 June 1960. It broke up two months later, in August 1960, when Senegal withdrew. The Senegalese leadership did not want a flag with the kanaga figure, since the Muslim majority objected to a human image, and replaced it with a green five-pointed star. The new flag was adopted on 20 August 1960, and Senegal became a separate republic under President Léopold Sédar Senghor.

The flag has been the same ever since. Mali, which continued on its own, dropped the kanaga figure from its flag in 1961, so its flag has the same three bands but no emblem at all.

Flags that look like Senegal's

Because the Pan-African colors are widely used, several flags look alike. Mali's flag has the same green, yellow and red bands but no star. Guinea uses red, yellow and green in the opposite order. Cameroon has green, red and yellow with a yellow star on the red band. The easiest way to tell Senegal's flag from these is to look for the green star on the yellow band.