Wolof is the word used to describe both the plurality ethnicity in Senegal (constituting about 37.1% of the country's total population), as well as the plurality language spoken in the country. Wolof people also constitute a minority ethnicity in the Gambia and Mauritania. In the present day, the vast majority of Wolof people are Muslim.
The origins of the Wolof language are debated: while the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop has argued that Wolof is related to Ancient Egyptian, the Encyclopedia of Africa suggests that linguistic and oral traditions instead point to the Senegal River Valley as the birthplace of the Wolof language. The Wolof people's ancestors, on the other hand, have a clear political history that dates back to the fourteenth century. Before this time period, the Wolof people were dominated by the larger West African kingdoms of Ghana and Mali, but with the advent of the Djolof (also spelled Jolof) Empire in the mid-fourteenth century, the Wolof people developed both their traditional political and social structures, including occupation-based castes.
When the French arrived in West Africa, their contact with coastal Wolof peoples allowed such people to set up trade with European powers for slaves and weapons. Centers of such trade were at Gorée Island (a location which appears in Sembène's Xala) and Saint-Louis. This trade in weapons allowed coastal Wolof peoples to fight back against the larger Djolof Empire, and it was also during this time that Islam became the majority religion of the Wolof people. The Wolof people tried to resist French expansion into West Africa in the nineteenth century, but over time, the Wolof elite found themselves increasingly discredited by an almost inevitable colonial force and culture. Still, however, the geographical proximity of Wolof peoples to the centers of French colonial power led to a boom in the Wolof language, with it becoming the lingua franca of migrants moving to cities like Dakar and Saint-Louis.
Though Wolof language and culture had a minor degree of integration into the French colonial system, the Wolof people have not seen a commensurate degree of political influence in power in postcolonial Senegal. Though the Wolof language and culture are dominant in the country, the first two presidents of Senegal were not Wolof. Moreover, the country's official language is still French, a language that many of the country's people are unable to read or write. Even so, recent developments in Senegal have seen Wolof people produce their own significant literature, news media, and films.
