Cost of Living in Dakar

This is the most realest country I've visited next to my homeland in Jamaica. Streets are made of dirt. Horses still pull carts. Very little English spoken. You cannot easily find things you need so bring all your necessities to start with. I have barely seen a street light, the traffic can be unbelievable. It's the perfect place for a real cultural experience and to learn wolof and French. You almost have no choice but to when here. Food made by the family I stayed with is great. So far I've only ate out once at a place in the city and I was not impressed. Get all necessary vaccines before coming here and depending on where you are staying. From what I see this country is very much undeserved and they really deserve better than this, so don't expect to get vaccines readily available like living in other parts of the world.

Financial services are shockingly backward and inefficient. Zero ease of doing business. This review is about Dakar specifically. Very difficult to find high quality consumer products in one centre of commerce, you have to go to random little shops all over the city. Most places don't have websites or have non-functional websites with bugs in online enquiry forms making it difficult to obtain information. E-commerce sites are poorly designed and barely function, and they don't accept credit card payments, you have to have an Orange Money account or cash on delivery. It's all very expensive and honestly not that great. Roads are not maintained, resulting in damage to car shocks and tyres. A lot of land pollution, litter everywhere including on beaches. Municipal services largely non-functional. Not safe for a single woman unless you have a car. Drivers have no issue with colliding with you and it's normal for most cars to be pretty banged up. Yellow cabs very old and in bad shape. These and the buses contribute hugely to air pollution because they're not roadworthy. Quality of petrol and diesel is so bad that it causes really bad air pollution and it's almost impossible to ever take a breath of clean, fresh air. The people of Dakar deserve better.