Senegal: Dip Doundou Guiss films his music video "Yamay Gunguei" in the mangroves of the Sine Saloum

Senegalese rapper Dip Doundou Guiss released the music video for "Yamay Gunguei" on October 2, 2026, a love song filmed in the Sine Saloum Delta in southwestern Senegal, reports the Dakar-based daily Le Soleil. The title means "it is you who accompanies me" in Wolof.

A setting that becomes a character

The filming took place in Palmarin, Fimela, and Ndangane, along the road to Samba Dia, at the Niassam hills, at the Souimanga Lodge, at the Aventuriers du Saloum site, and in the Palmarin community nature reserve, details Le Soleil. Mangroves, lagoons, pirogues, and sunsets play almost as much of a role as the sentimental narrative. The video was conceived by Mahtarus and directed by Boubacar Woyo Traoré of Stick Production. It is available on YouTube and digital platforms, and is aimed, according to the newspaper, as much at Senegalese youth as it is at the diaspora living in France, Italy, and The Gambia.

When a rapper becomes a regional ambassador

The unique aspect of the operation lies in its partners: the operator Africa Tourism Solutions and the Samsung group, cited as a technology partner. The Saloum Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is one of the largest mangrove ecosystems in West Africa. Filming it in a rap video broadcast across the continent means creating an image that Africans produce themselves, rather than a backdrop sold by foreign travel catalogs.

What this says about the music economy

Dip Doundou Guiss is among the most listened-to voices in Senegalese rap, a genre long confined to the margins of the local market. Lacking sufficient income from streaming, artists on the continent build their budgets with partners outside of music: telephone brands, operators, and tourism stakeholders. The process has its limits—it exposes the artist to the editorial line of their financiers—but it currently allows for productions that would be impossible to fund otherwise. Here, the result benefits a Senegalese territory rather than an imported image.