Dakar shops in three registers: the roaring wholesale markets of Sandaga and HLM where wax cloth is sold by the six-yard pagne, the tailor ateliers of Medina, and the polished Almadies boutiques where Senegalese designers price in the tens of thousands of CFA.
Dakar's fabric capital: hundreds of stalls stacked with Dutch wax, Vlisco, bazin riche and getzner. Sold by the pagne (about 6 yards). Open roughly 08:00–19:00 daily except Sunday afternoons. Tailors inside stitch a boubou in 48 hours.
The Sudano-Sahelian-style market hall on Avenue Pompidou and its surrounding blocks: leather sandals, brass, cowrie jewellery, djembes and gris-gris charms. The building itself is under long-running restoration but the trade never stopped in the streets around it.
The dense workshop streets behind the Medina grid where sewing machines run on the pavement. Embroidered necklines, Senegalese-cut kaftans and men's grand boubous cut to measure, with fittings usually the following day.
The seaside crafts village on the Corniche Ouest: about 200 workshop-shops for wood carving, silver filigree, sand paintings and reverse-glass souwères. Craftsmen work in the open so you can watch a piece finished before you buy it.
The label of Dakar's best-known avant-garde designer — surreal appliqué, hand-worked denim and cut-out tailoring shown at Dakar Fashion Week and worn by Beyoncé. Small studio-boutique; call ahead as opening depends on the collection cycle.
Concept space mixing Senegalese homeware, raffia baskets, leather goods and a café. Good for design objects that pack flat: woven placemats, calabash bowls and locally blended bissap and kinkeliba teas.
Long-established contemporary art gallery on Boulevard du Sud showing Senegalese painters and Dak'Art biennale alumni. Canvases, works on paper and limited prints, with rolling and export paperwork handled in-house.
Dakar's glass-fronted Atlantic-side mall with international labels, a Casino supermarket, cinema and cafés overlooking the water. The counterpoint to the markets: fixed prices, card payment, air conditioning, open until about 22:00.
A 20-minute chaloupe from the Dakar terminal lands you among the pastel houses where women sell sand paintings, glass-bead necklaces and batiks along Rue des Dongeons. Quieter and less pressured than the mainland markets.
The circular 1860s colonial market hall rebuilt after the 1993 fire: flowers, spices and fish inside, with a ring of basket, mask and jewellery sellers outside. The best place in central Dakar for dried hibiscus, baobab powder and yet nafé.
A neighbourhood market with almost no tourists: enamelware, indigo-dyed cloth, incense (thiouraye), amber beads and cooking calabashes. Prices are what Dakarois actually pay, so haggling room is narrower but the starting number is far lower.
The workshop huts behind Ngor beach where sabar and djembe makers stretch goatskin over carved dimb wood, alongside surf-shack shops selling recycled-tyre sandals and painted skate decks.