Dakar—A Meeting Place for All of Africa

A young engineer from Chad and a young economist from Ghana meet at an international conference in New York. They greet each other warmly, for they are friends since student days in Dakar. Their work together will go smoothly, for they understand one another’s languages and cultures. Africa’s future truly depends upon informed cooperation and sympathy between its French-speaking and English-speaking peoples. It is vital to develop leadership cadres in both groups who can easily communicate with one another.

Suffolk Dakar offers a unique opportunity to meet, form friendships and alliances, and gain mutual appreciation. Here anglophone students may study in English at an American school in the cultural capital of Francophone Africa. At the same time, Francophone students learn English, and study with American professors.

Dakar is a natural crossroads for these important cultural interactions. Under the influence of Senegal’s founding president and cultural father Leopold Sedar Senghor, Dakar became the cultural magnet for students and aspiring leaders from all over the former French West and Equatorial Africa. In Dakar, many of the past and present leaders of Francophone Africa met and established early personal connections.

Cultural Learning at Suffolk Dakar

Suffolk Dakar is located in one of the most climatically pleasant, democratically stable, culturally diverse, and physically safe environments in Africa. It offers to Francophone and anglophone alike an opportunity to study together and prepare for their encounter with the larger world.

Here you will find intensive contact with fellow Africans of all nations, and with American students and faculty, in an intensive program of intercultural student activities and cross-cultural education. Here African students will learn about, acquire survival skills for, and establish friendships and contacts in the American social and cultural environment they will enter after two years at Suffolk Dakar.

When you arrive in America, you will be well-prepared, with a sense of safety and comfort that will enhance your potential for academic achievement in the United States. We invite you to begin your international education adventure at Suffolk Dakar.