Senegal (Sunugal) is a country south of the Sénégal River in Western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south. Its size is almost 197,000 km² with an estimated population of nearly 11,700,000. The Gambia lies almost entirely within Senegal, surrounded by it on the north, east and south. Dakar is the capital city of Senegal, located on the Cape Verde Peninsula on the country's Atlantic coast.

The Gambia (officially the Republic of The Gambia), commonly known as Gambia, is a country in Western Africa. The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, bordered to the north, east, and south by Senegal, and has a small coast on the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Its borders roughly correspond to the path of the Gambia River, the nation's namesake, which flows through the country's center and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. On 18 February 1965, Gambia gained independence from the United Kingdom and joined The Commonwealth. Banjul is Gambia's capital, but the largest conurbation is Serrekunda.
The Gambia shares historical roots with many other West African nations in the slave trade, which was key to the establishment of a colony on the Gambia river; first by the Portuguese and later by the British. Since gaining independence in 1965, the Gambia has enjoyed relative stability, with the exception of a brief period of military rule in 1994. An agriculturally rich country, its economy is dominated by farming, fishing, and tourism.