The Senegal River (, , ) is a long river in West Africa; much of its length marks part of the border between Senegal and Mauritania. It has a drainage basin of , a mean flow of , and an annual discharge of . Important tributaries are the Falémé River, Karakoro River, and the Gorgol River. The river divides into two branches once it passes Kaédi The left branch, called the Doué, runs parallel to the main river to the north. After the two branches rejoin a few kilometers downstream of Podor. In 1972 Mali, Mauritania and Senegal founded the Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Sénégal (OMVS) to manage the river basin. Guinea joined in 2005. , only very limited use was made of the river for the transportation of goods and passengers. The OMVS have looked at the feasibility of creating a navigable channel in width between the small town of Ambidédi in Mali and Saint-Louis, a distance of . It would give landlocked Mali a direct route to the Atlantic Ocean. The aquatic fauna in the Senegal River basin is closely associated with that of the Gambia River basin, and the two are usually combined under a single ecoregion known as the Senegal-Gambia Catchments. Only three species of frogs and one fish are endemic to this ecoregion. The river has two large dams along its course, the Manantali Dam in Mali and the Maka-Diama Dam downstream on the Mauritania-Senegal border. In between is the Félou Hydroelectric Plant, built in 1927, but replaced in 2014. The construction of the Gouina Hydroelectric Plant upstream of Felou at Gouina Falls began in 2013. Geography The Senegal's headwaters are the Semefé (Bakoye) and Bafing rivers which both originate in Guinea; they form a small part of the Guinea–Mali border before coming together at Bafoulabé in Mali. From there, the Senegal river flows west and then north through Talari Gorges near Galougo and over the Gouina Falls, then flows more gently past Kayes, where it receives the Kolimbiné. After flowing together with the Karakoro, it prolongs the former's course along the Mali–Mauritania border for some tens of kilometers till Bakel where it flows together with the Falémé River, which also has its source in Guinea, subsequently runs along a small part of the Guinea-Mali frontier to then trace most of the Senegal-Mali border up to Bakel. The Senegal further flows