Nouadhibou (Port Étienne) and the Economic Development of Mauritania

Abstract

The traditional economy of Mauritania is based essentially upon nomadic pastoralism, oasis cultivation and caravan trading, and most Mauritanians feel a strong disregard for the sea as a source of economic gain. Nouadhibou1 has thus appeared for long as an insignificant point of reference, a drop of water lost in a continual haze of sand, isolated on the boundary between the immensity of the desert and that of the ocean. The Mauritanian writer Ahmed Lamine ech-Chenguiti (1911)2 makes no mention of Port Etienne in his account of the geography of the country; and along the low inhospitable stretch of coast between Levrier Bay and Nouakchott the only inhabitants are a few hundred fishermen of the Imraguen tribe,3 half-caste descendants of the Berbers and their Negro slaves. Nouadhibou is in fact separated from the core area of Mauritania by considerable distances and by natural barriers to communication which include the active dune areas of the Akchar and the Azeffal.4 The Sahel zone, south of the 100-mm. (3.9-in.) isohyet (see Fig. 3.1), contains 90 per cent of the population of the country and is essentially a stock-rearing area orientated towards Senegal and its great port of Dakar.5 Three principal factors largely explain the development in this unpromising situation of a new port and town scheduled to take its place amongst the more important trade centres of tropical Africa: site conditions, the fishing industry, and the exploitation of iron-ore resources.