SENEGAL, FLAG OF

vertically striped green-yellow-red national flag with a central green star. It has a width-to-length ratio of approximately 2 to 3. Senegal was one of the oldest French colonies in Africa, and it was a place where leading intellectuals such as Lopold Senghor hoped to combine both European and African values. They consequently looked to the simple design of the French Tricolor as an inspiration for the flag of Senegal when the nation achieved autonomous status in 1958. This influence was clear when Senegal linked with the Sudanese Republic (now Mali) in the Mali Federation on April 4, 1959, and adopted a vertical tricolour of green-yellow-red with a central representation in black of a human figure known as the kanaga. Independence followed on August 20, 1960, but the federation ended and Senegal became a separate country with its own flag in September. (See also Mali, flag of.) Senegal retained the green-yellow-red flag but substituted a green star for the kanaga. Green is seen as a symbol of hope and of the country's major religions, while yellow is for natural riches and the wealth derived from labour. Red recalls the independence struggle, life, and socialism. Those three pan-African colours had been used by individual political parties in Senegal in the 1950s and were also adopted by many nearby countries for their national flags, including Benin, Guinea, Ghana, Cameroon, and others. Whitney Smith