• Dentons confirms its targeting strategy on Africa’s future by anchoring itself in Dakar and Douala, two rising hubs along emerging energy and infrastructure corridors.

• The firm’s expansion aligns with growing energy flows from West to Central Africa, creating a strategic legal axis across OHADA markets.

• By leveraging local partnerships and significant deal momentum, Dentons positions itself to shape high-value energy and infrastructure projects.

When Dentons announced the launch of its Dakar office on 2 December 2025—through a combination with Senegalese firm Legalix—it did more than add a new pin to its map. The move is part of an ambitious redesign of the firm’s African footprint around what appears to be the next great economic axis on the continent: the emerging energy and infrastructure corridors stretching from West to Central Africa. Dakar and Douala, two cities at the heart of this transformation, are quietly becoming strategic anchor points in Dentons’ long-term bet on Africa’s high-growth, high-capex future.

With the Dakar opening, Dentons now counts 25 offices across 17 African countries, representing roughly 33% growth in geographic coverage within a single strategic cycle. But the significance of this expansion runs deeper than scale. Senegal offers more than a stable jurisdiction within the OHADA zone; it is rapidly evolving into a regional energy hub thanks to the Sangomar offshore project and a maturing gas industry. Rather than treating Africa as a collection of isolated national markets, Dentons is mapping its presence onto the geography of energy itself. The firm’s recent entries into Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo reveal a similar pattern: identifying nodes where power generation, hydrocarbons, mining and logistics converge with accelerating investment flows.

The forthcoming entry into Cameroon—expected through a combination with Kouengoua Minou Nkongho (KMN)—fits seamlessly into this logic. If finalised, Dentons will hold simultaneous positions in Dakar and Douala, the economic gateways of UEMOA and CEMAC. The two markets form a natural corridor for cross-border investment, bound by shared OHADA rules but differentiated by resources and industrial activity. Dakar provides access to West Africa’s new hydrocarbons frontier, while Douala anchors the heart of Central Africa’s logistics and mining economy. One is emerging as a deepwater energy exporter, the other as a conduit for inland resources from the DRC, Gabon or Chad. In this configuration, Dentons is not merely expanding; it is building a legal architecture around Africa’s emerging energy corridors, anticipating where the next decade’s transactions, disputes, financings and restructurings will be concentrated.

The speed of Dentons’ African expansion—four countries in a single quarter—reflects the flexibility of its Swiss Verein structure. By integrating local firms without merging financials, Dentons can partner with established players like Legalix or KMN while respecting domestic market realities. In Dakar, leadership has been entrusted to Magna Brice Sylva, a respected litigator and M&A specialist trained at UCAD and UGB. His task is to embed local capabilities into Dentons’ global machinery and position Senegal as a platform for primary cross-border mandates, from the Plan Sénégal Émergent to complex PPP financings.

The timing of this expansion is no accident. The year 2025 has been an intense one for high-value transactions across Africa. Dentons has been at the center of several of them: advising Gulf Energy on the acquisition of Tullow Kenya’s assets through Auron Energy, supporting Karpowership in securing a USD 400 million facility led by Mauritius Commercial Bank to sustain its floating power plants, counseling mezzanine noteholders in the continent’s largest solar securitization, and guiding lenders on a USD 1.5 billion refinancing facility for QNB, a significant financial artery connecting the Middle East and Africa. These mandates reflect precisely the type of energy, infrastructure and capital-intensive activity for which Dentons is building its Dakar–Douala axis.

With more than 280 lawyers now working on the continent, Dentons is positioning itself not just as an observer of Africa’s economic transformation, but as an embedded player shaping the transactions that will define it. Anchored in Dakar and Douala, the firm is effectively wagering that the next phase of African growth will be organised not around traditional political groupings, but around corridors of energy, logistics and industrial investment—and that legal expertise rooted locally yet operating globally will be decisive in capturing this opportunity. Dentons’ bet on the energy corridors of the future reflects both a shift in Africa’s economic geography and the firm’s own ambition: to compete head-to-head with global firms in London or Paris, but from African soil, alongside African partners.