Senegal (French: le Sénégal), officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south. Its size is almost 197,000 km² with an estimated population of nearly 11,700,000. Dakar is the capital city of Senegal, located on the Cape Verde Peninsula.