What do the colours of the Senegal flag mean?

Green: hope, and Islam; also the prophet's colour. Yellow: the country's wealth and the fruits of labour. Red: the struggle for independence and the sacrifice it cost.

How do you tell the Senegal flag from the Mali one?

Mali has the same three bands and no star.

When was the Senegal flag adopted?

The current design dates from 1960, and its official ratio is 2:3.

The flag of Senegal

Three equal vertical bands of green, yellow and red, with a green five-pointed star on the yellow.

Ratio 2:3 · current design adopted 1960

Senegal

Field and colours only. Not shown: a green five-pointed star centred on the yellow band.

Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Cameroon all fly vertical green-yellow-red tricolours, and the differences are small: Senegal adds a green star in the centre, Mali has nothing, Guinea reverses the order to red-yellow-green, and Cameroon puts a yellow star on the red band. Senegal briefly flew Mali's flag with a black human figure on the yellow band, during the two-month Mali Federation of 1960. The figure was removed when the federation dissolved, on the grounds that some Muslim communities objected to depicting the human form. The star sits in the exact centre of the flag.

Flags it gets confused with

Senegal

Field and colours only. Not shown: a green five-pointed star centred on the yellow band.

Mali

Drawn at each flag’s own official ratio, which is itself the difference in some of these pairs.

Flag	How to tell them apart
Mali	Mali has the same three bands and no star.
Cameroon	Cameroon's star is yellow and sits on the red band, not green on yellow.
Guinea	Guinea has the same colours in the reverse order, red at the hoist, and no star.

What the colours mean

Flag laws usually specify a Pantone chip, a CMYK mix or just a colour name. Converting any of those to sRGB is lossy, which is why published hex values disagree.

The symbols on it

What	What it stands for
Green star	Openness to the world, and the five continents

Ratio: 2:3
Current design adopted: 1960
Colours: green, yellow, red

Common questions

What does the flag of Senegal look like?: Three equal vertical bands of green, yellow and red, with a green five-pointed star on the yellow.
What do the colours of the Senegal flag mean?: Green: hope, and Islam; also the prophet's colour. Yellow: the country's wealth and the fruits of labour. Red: the struggle for independence and the sacrifice it cost.
How do you tell the Senegal flag from the Mali one?: Mali has the same three bands and no star.
When was the Senegal flag adopted?: The current design dates from 1960, and its official ratio is 2:3.

Senegal Capital, area, population and currency
The flag of Mali Routinely mistaken for this one
The flag of Cameroon Routinely mistaken for this one
Every flag with green in it
The flag of India Ratio 2:3
The flag of Brazil Ratio 7:10
The flag of Italy Ratio 2:3
The flag of Mexico Ratio 4:7
The flag of Ireland Ratio 1:2
The flag of South Africa Ratio 2:3
The flag of Jamaica Ratio 1:2
The flag of Pakistan Ratio 2:3

Sources

The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency (Public domain (US Government))

How these figures are compiled and checked