Sacré-Cœur

Sacré-Cœur is counted in numbers: Sacré-Cœur 1, 2 and 3, then the extensions, then the Keur Gorgui estate next door, whose ten-storey towers went up in a few years on what was still waste ground. This is Dakar rising, literally: the 1980s villas are being replaced by buildings with lifts and parking, and the cranes are visible from the VDN.

The district has become the preferred office address for firms that do not want the Plateau: agencies, consultancies, start-ups, clinics and private schools, installed in converted villas with a plaque at the gate. At midday the restaurants deliver across the whole neighbourhood; in the evening the VDN fills with fast-food counters, patisseries and tea rooms where you can order a coffee at eleven at night.

What makes the address practical is geography: Sacré-Cœur sits roughly at the centre of the modern peninsula. The VDN puts you fifteen minutes from the Almadies, ten from Mermoz, twenty from the Plateau outside peak hours; the CICES exhibition ground is next door; supermarkets, banks and duty pharmacies are all walkable.

It is not picturesque: few trees, a lot of new concrete, streets under repair, and a building site making noise somewhere within two hundred metres at all times. In exchange you get recent flats, quiet on an upper floor, and one of the best position-to-price ratios in Dakar for a working stay.

One detail that matters more than the view: the recent buildings in Sacré-Cœur nearly all have a generator and, in the better ones, a borehole. That means a power cut or a drop in water pressure — both common in the hot season elsewhere in the city — is barely noticed here. Ask your host before booking in April or May; it is the most useful question you can put. From the fourth floor up you also get the sea breeze and real quiet after ten at night.