1In 1962, an idea emerged in the basement of the Dakar Statistical office in Senegal: to implement systems, in collaboration with Orstom, to monitor the rural population, whom the authorities knew little about at the time. Two sites, Paos-Koto and Niakhar, were selected and subjected to systematic surveys, where researchers collected data relating to births, deaths, migration and health, but also indicators for nutrition, education, cropping practices and the environment. While the Paos-Koto observatory was shut down in the 1980s, that of Niakhar, south-east of Dakar, is still operational and provides one of Africa’s longest and most important sets of data in terms of demographic and epidemiological monitoring.

Study on infant food, Niakhar.

2In 1965, researchers realised that measles caused high mortality. They organised a vaccination campaign and assessed its effectiveness. This was a major success, which was followed by the establishment and testing of other treatment protocols against pertussis, meningitis and malaria. This led to the conversion of the Niakhar observatory into an open-air laboratory, used to assess data collection methods as well as the required health measures.

3This tool was also used to study social and family changes, while monitoring trends in a population that increased from 23,000 in 1983 to 45,000 in 2017. It has made it possible, for example, to conduct studies on social networks and their impact on health behaviours, or to assess the quality of nationwide surveys. The Niakhar site was the first of its kind and now belongs to a network of 50 observatories created in the late 1990s in Asia and Africa, three of which are managed in Senegal by IRD: Bandafassi, Mlomp and Niakhar.

••• The Senegalese government and Orstom created one of Africa’s first population observatories •••

Information meeting for a vaccine trial, Niakhar, 1992.

“The world-famous Niakhar site, through extensive research and multiple scientific productions beneficial to the African continent and beyond, attests to the health, demographic and human history of our country, the foundations of which it was instrumental in building.” 
Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck, Minister of State to the President of the Republic of Senegal