Tourism Development and its Impacts in the Senegalese Petite Côte: A Geographical Case Study in Centre–Periphery Relations

Since the 1970s, tourism development in the Senegalese Petite Côte has rapidly expanded, with multiple diverse impacts in a number of spheres. The human and physical geography of the Petite Côte and its ecosystems are being powerfully shaped by this new entrepreneurial activity. The present paper reveals that tourism has modified the traditional structure of the Petite Côte society by disrupting local tradition and flouting Islamic moral codes, and has spawned previously unknown social ills, such as prostitution and mugging. It has transformed many villages in the Petite Côte into satellites for cheap labour, where locals, who have abandoned agriculture, are employed as menial labourers. The environment of traditional villages, formerly unpolluted, is now subject to an array of pollutant factors as tourist accommodation proliferates. In summary, tourism development in the Petite Côte is pressing forward at a swift pace, oriented to maximizing profit and with the evident exclusion of most of the local population. Such development, and its concomitant‘misdevelopmental’impacts, can be usefully viewed as a concrete example of centre–periphery relations embodied in a concrete central touristic‘enclave’expanding on the local periphery; indeed, a laboratory for, and microcosm of, such asymmetrical relations. It is argued that locals must be better integrated into the tourism process in order to reverse the spiral of its adverse effects and promote integrated and sustainable development in harmony with the local economy.