The railway station at Thiès is historically one of the most important in West Africa. Thiès was the junction point of the Dakar–Niger railway, which at its height connected Dakar to Bamako in Mali — the principal railway of French West Africa. The station building, a colonial-era structure, still stands and the railway remains active in a reduced form.
The railway workers of Thiès were among the most organised labour force in colonial French West Africa, and the 1947 general strike of railway workers — which lasted five months and spread across the whole line from Dakar to Bamako — became one of the foundational events of Senegalese national consciousness. Ousmane Sembène fictionalised it in his novel God's Bits of Wood, one of the great works of African literature. The station today is quieter, but the sense of history is palpable.
story: "The 1947 railway workers' strike of Thiès lasted five and a half months and involved more than 20,000 workers and their families across the entire Dakar-Niger line. Workers received no pay for the duration. The French colonial administration eventually capitulated. Ousmane Sembène immortalised the strike in his 1960 novel Les Bouts de bois de Dieu (God's Bits of Wood), now considered one of the greatest works of African literature."