ARRIVING at the airport in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, you have a fair
chance that the newish-looking taxi taking you into town will not be the
usual French or Japanese model, but Iranian. And it will not have been
imported, as most cars in Africa are, but assembled in nearby Thiès.
From here, the first few hundred taxis have just come off the production
line at an Iranian-built Khodro plant. They are tangible symbols of a
new power in sub-Saharan Africa that has, for some, begun to cause
ripples of concern.
