Iran’s relations with Sub-Saharan Africa are a neglected subject within the field of late Pahlavi foreign policy. Aside from an article by Houchang Chehabi, titled “South Africa and Iran in the Apartheid Era,” there have been no article-length studies in English on either Iran’s relations with Sub-Saharan Africa in general or individual case studies. The situation is comparable in Persian-language scholarly literature, which could lead us to conclude that Mohammad Reza Shah’s regime paid little attention to this part of the world. This conclusion would, however, be false, as in the final decade of Pahlavi rule, Iran established political relations with several Sub-Saharan African states, including South Africa in 1969, Kenya and Senegal in 1971, Zaire and Sudan in 1972, Nigeria in 1973, Ghana in 1974, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Madagascar in 1975, and Mauritania in 1976. By the late 1970s, Iran was seeking ever closer relations with these countries, signing trade treaties and pledging substantial funds as investment in development programs. During this period, too, African leaders paid frequent visits to Iran –President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, for example, visited Iran four times between 1971 and 1978 in trips that were enthusiastically reported on in the local press. Empress Farah also traveled to Senegal in 1976 to lay the foundation stone of a new city named, in her honor, Keur Farah Pahlavi. Using a wide range of primary source materials, including Iranian and African newspapers, and documents from archives in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands, this paper examines the types of relationships Iran developed with Sub-Saharan African states under the Shah. The paper will investigate these relations in some detail to discover what they can tell us about the Shah’s broader foreign policy objectives, particularly with regards to developing countries beyond his immediate sphere of influence.