The verdict in three sentences
For an Amsterdam scale-up, a French and English speaking team in Dakar costs, as an order of magnitude, about half the price of Dutch freelancers and around 30 % less than a Polish team, with only one to two hours of time difference. Price is not everything: success depends on governance (a client-side product owner, agile rituals, code review) and an unambiguous code ownership clause. Decide on total cost including coordination, and on a 4 to 6 week pilot.
The context: a CTO with three options
The CTO of a 60-person Amsterdam scale-up must ship a new module of its SaaS product within 6 months: customer portal, billing, dashboard and partner API. The in-house team of 5 developers is at capacity. He compares three options: freelancers in the Netherlands, a team in Poland through a services firm, and a nearshore team in Dakar. Several of his customers are in France and Belgium, so French-speaking developers are a plus for support and documentation.
| Criterion | Dutch freelancers | Polish team | Dakar team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior developer day rate (2026 order of magnitude) | 650 to 900 EUR | 400 to 600 EUR | 250 to 400 EUR |
| Time zone | Amsterdam | Same as Amsterdam | GMT, 1 h behind in winter, 2 h in summer |
| Working language | Dutch or English | English | French and English |
| Senior talent availability | High but expensive | High | Good, smaller pool |
| Team turnover | High (short gigs) | Medium | Medium |
| Contract law | Dutch | Polish or Dutch | Senegalese or Dutch depending on contract |
| Flight from Amsterdam | Not applicable | 2 h | About 6 h |
Total cost of a 120 person-day project
Day rate alone is misleading. Add client-side coordination time (product owner, reviews, acceptance testing), kick-off travel and a contingency buffer.
| Item | Dutch freelancers | Polish team | Dakar team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development (120 d × median rate) | 93 000 EUR | 60 000 EUR | 39 000 EUR |
| Internal coordination (10 to 15 %) | 9 300 EUR | 7 800 EUR | 5 850 EUR |
| Kick-off travel | 0 EUR | 1 500 EUR | 2 800 EUR |
| Contingency (10 %) | 10 200 EUR | 6 900 EUR | 4 800 EUR |
| Estimated total | 112 500 EUR | 76 200 EUR | 52 450 EUR |
| Gap vs Dutch freelancers | Baseline | Minus 32 % | Minus 53 % |
These figures apply to time-and-materials. For a fixed-price project, Kolonell prices against its custom application grid: simple 2 500 000 to 4 000 000 FCFA (3 810 to 6 100 EUR), mid-size 4 000 000 to 7 000 000 FCFA (6 100 to 10 670 EUR), complex 7 000 000 to 15 000 000+ FCFA (10 670 to 22 870+ EUR). A SaaS module of this size falls in the complex band, with the exact amount set on quote. Application maintenance follows at 35 000, 75 000 or 120 000 FCFA per month.
The governance that makes outsourcing work, or fail
- A client-side product owner, available at least 1 hour a day, who sets priorities.
- 2-week sprints with demo, retrospective and a shared backlog.
- Code in your repository from day one, reviewed by an in-house developer.
- A written definition of done: automated tests, documentation, staging deployment.
- An IP assignment clause: all code, documentation and deliverables are yours on payment, with no residual licence.
- Reversibility: documentation and handover planned in case you bring work in-house later.
On data, Senegal has no EU adequacy decision, so if the team touches customers' personal data you need standard contractual clauses or, better, development environments with anonymised data.
Mini case study
Daan, CTO of the Amsterdam scale-up, runs a 5-week pilot with 2 developers in Dakar on an isolated feature: accounting export. Pilot cost: 2 × 25 days × 325 EUR = 16 250 EUR. He measures velocity at 34 points per sprint, against 38 for his in-house team, so 89 %.
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For the full project he compares cost per delivered point. Dutch freelancers: 775 EUR a day at in-house velocity, 100 %. Dakar: 325 EUR a day at 89 %, an effective 365 EUR per equivalent day. The real saving is still 53 % after adjusting for productivity, and the one-hour time difference did not cost a single ritual.
FAQ
Does the time difference with Dakar disrupt agile rituals?
Hardly: Dakar is on GMT, 1 hour behind Amsterdam in winter and 2 hours in summer. A 10:00 stand-up in Amsterdam is 8:00 or 9:00 in Dakar, and the shared window exceeds 6 hours a day.
Who owns the code written in Dakar?
You do, if the contract assigns all economic rights on payment. Also require that code is pushed daily to your own repository.
What seniority is available in Dakar in 2026?
The pool includes experienced full-stack developers in TypeScript, React, Node.js and Python with 4 to 10 years of experience. Very niche profiles (Rust, advanced Kubernetes) take 2 to 4 extra weeks to staff.
Time-and-materials or fixed price?
Time-and-materials suits a product that changes every sprint, fixed price a stable scope. Many CTOs start fixed-price on a first 2 to 3 month lot, then switch to time-and-materials.
Are there VAT issues with invoices from Senegal?
Services invoiced by a Senegalese provider to a Dutch business generally fall under the reverse charge mechanism for VAT in the Netherlands. Have your accountant confirm the setup, usually a 1-hour check.
Let's scope your project. Share your roadmap and current team, and we will propose a 4 to 6 week pilot followed by a sprint-based delivery plan. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
