Senegal is a country on the west coast of Africa, along the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa. It lies just south of the Sahara region and is the westernmost country on the African mainland, with its capital city in Dakar on a peninsula that juts into the Atlantic. It borders Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, Guinea and Guinea‑Bissau to the south, and it almost completely surrounds The Gambia except for The Gambia’s own short Atlantic coastline.