The project to create a French-speaking university serving African development was presented and adopted at the Summit of Heads of State and Government of countries with French in common, in Dakar, in May 1989. Senghor University, establishment private graduate recognized international utility, was officially opened on November 4, 1990, by Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt; Abdou Diouf, President of the Republic of Senegal; François Mitterrand, President of the French Republic; Mobutu Sese Seko, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and former President Léopold Sédar Senghor, with the presence of the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Belgium.

Senghor University, a direct operator of La Francophonie, has been offering multidisciplinary and multi-thematic training courses dedicated to sustainable development in the context of globalization for more than 25 years. Its mission is to train and develop high-level executives from the public and private sectors and to orient their skills towards the exercise of responsibilities in certain priority areas for development.

Senghor University, an international French-speaking university for professional purposes, working in the service of African development, is nonetheless open to all French speakers that it prepares for development jobs in line with the Summits of La Francophonie which were held in Ouagadougou in 2004, in Bucharest in 2006, in Quebec in 2008, in Montreux in 2010, in Kinshasa in 2014. She steers development projects through the work of her students, notably weaving a network of skills and expertise through the professionalization of its auditors, continuous training and distance learning.