The low literacy rates in developing countries have been repeatedly problematized as a major constraint to socioeconomic development by education planners and policy makers. In the 1950s and 1960s, the dominant rationale for literacy development was one of promoting economic growth. In more recent years, by contrast, literacy has increasingly come to be recognized as a human right, contributing to political participation, gender equality, and so forth. Another issue concerning literacy, frequently overlooked, is that people in low-income countries are often deprived of reading and writing materials--even dictionaries in their own languages. Resources are generally very scarce. This article presents a research which explores the literacy environment in an urban Senegalese context by presenting a comparative perspective on the distribution, the types, and the quality of literacy materials such as books and posters. (Contains 4 tables and 11 footnotes.)