Nouakchott is one of the most unusual capitals in the world: a young city of sand, always under construction, which barely existed in 1958 and today has more than a million people on the edge of the Atlantic, right where the great Sahara Desert meets the ocean. Don't come here looking for ancient monuments or an old town. Nouakchott was built from scratch to be the capital of a Mauritania newly heading towards independence, and its charm lies elsewhere: it is a living crossroads between the Arab-Berber world of the Maghreb and the Black Africa of the south.
The city has a rhythm all its own, somewhere between the bustle of its markets, the desert dust that gets in everywhere and the cool sea breeze. Its biggest attraction is the Port de Pêche, the small-scale fishing port and one of the most photogenic sights in the country: hundreds of hand-painted pirogues pulled up on the beach and a crowd of fishermen unloading the day's catch amid shouting, nets and gulls. Add to that the camel market, the huge Saudi Grand Mosque, the silversmiths' workshops and the National Museum.
This guide takes a practical look at Nouakchott: what to see in the capital, how to get around safely, where to try good fresh fish or a mint tea and, above all, how to use the city as a base for the big Mauritanian journey: to the Adrar desert, the caravan towns of the Sahara, the Banc d'Arguin bird sanctuary and the legendary iron ore train. With one or two well-planned days, Nouakchott stops being just a stopover and becomes a memorable introduction to a fascinating, little-visited country.
Nouakchott is a capital born almost from nothing. Where the city now spreads out there was just a small fishermen's ksar next to the dunes when, in March 1958, on the eve of independence, the foundation stone of the new capital was laid. Mauritania, which until then had been run from Saint-Louis in present-day Senegal, needed a capital within its own territory. This spot on the coast was chosen for its climate, its central position and its symbolic value as a hinge between the Arab north and the African south. Planned for around 15,000 people, the city grew to a million, swollen by the Sahel droughts that pushed nomads to settle. Its history, from sandy hamlet to Saharan metropolis, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The capital built from scratch in 1960 on a stretch of dunes: today a sand-swept metropolis where the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa mix, between the Atlantic and the desert.
Read the history of Nouakchott and the Atlantic coast →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Unlike almost every other major capital in the world, Nouakchott is a very young city, with no ancient walls and no historic centre: until the middle of the 20th century it was no more than a tiny dot on the Saharan coast. Where a metropolis of more than a million people now spreads out, barely seventy years ago there was a small ksar (fortified village) of fishermen and a few wells beside the dunes, battered by the Atlantic wind. The name, in the Zenaga Berber language, has been interpreted in several ways, among them 'the place of the winds' or 'the place of the shells', both very fitting for this stretch of sand and sea.
For centuries, this strip of the Mauritanian coast was the land of Moorish nomads (camel herders and traders on the trans-Saharan routes) and of fishing communities. The interior was dotted with the great caravan cities of the Adrar and the Tagant, such as Chinguetti and Ouadane, centres of trade and Islamic learning. But the coast where Nouakchott would be born was marginal: a place people passed through, with none of the importance of those inland oases or of the ports to the south.
When France colonised Mauritania at the start of the 20th century and folded the territory into French West Africa, it did not even give it a capital of its own within its borders. The territory was run from Saint-Louis, in present-day Senegal, on the other side of the river. Mauritania was a huge, sparsely populated, peripheral colony, governed from outside. That anomaly, a country with no capital on its own soil, is what would give rise to Nouakchott decades later.
In the late 1950s, with decolonisation under way, it became clear that Mauritania needed a capital within its own territory. It could not go on being governed from Saint-Louis, in what would become independent Senegal. Several options were studied, and in the end this spot on the Atlantic coast was chosen, roughly halfway between the country's Arab-Berber north and its African south, with a sea climate somewhat milder than the interior and unlimited room to grow. It was also a place where no region already had a large population, which made it 'neutral' and symbolically right for a nation trying to unite Moors and Black Africans.
On 5 March 1958, while Mauritania was still an autonomous republic within the French Community, the first stone of the new capital was laid next to the old ksar. The city was designed from scratch, on paper, to house around 15,000 people: wide avenues, administrative buildings, homes for the new state's civil servants. It was, quite literally, a capital built on purpose, like Brasília or Canberra, but in the middle of the desert.
When Mauritania declared independence on 28 November 1960, with Moktar Ould Daddah as its first president, Nouakchott officially became the capital of the new country. The young city of sand, still half-built, became the political centre of a vast, sparsely populated republic, three times the size of France but with barely a million people spread across the Sahara and the Sahel.
The plan called for a modest capital, but reality overwhelmed every forecast. From the late 1960s, and above all in the 1970s and 1980s, Mauritania suffered a series of devastating droughts that ravaged the Sahel. Wells dried up, livestock died by the million, and the nomadic way of life, which had supported most of the population for centuries, collapsed and never recovered. Whole families of ruined herders left the desert and poured into the country's only big city in search of food, water and work: Nouakchott.
The capital, planned for 15,000 people, began to swell out of control. Around the planned core sprang up huge self-built neighbourhoods and camps of khaimas (nomad tents, now pitched on the edge of the city), many with no running water, sewers or electricity. The 'kebbe', shanty neighbourhoods, grew at a dizzying pace. Within a few decades, Nouakchott went from a few thousand inhabitants to hundreds of thousands, and then to today's well over a million, home to almost a third of Mauritania's entire population.
That explosive, unplanned growth left a city of huge contrasts and challenges: sand that keeps blowing into the streets and has to be cleared, floods when rain falls on ground that does not drain, and services under pressure that never catch up. Nouakchott is a portrait of a brutal social transformation: the shift, in just two generations, from a country of desert nomads to a mostly urban society, with all the trauma and opportunity that comes with it.
More than anywhere else, Nouakchott is where Mauritania's two great souls meet. On one side is the Arab-Berber world of the 'bidan' (the 'white' Moors), desert herders and traders who speak Hassaniya and whose culture is tied to the Maghreb and the trans-Saharan routes. On the other is the Black Africa of the Senegal River valley: the Peul (Fulani), Soninke and Wolof peoples of the south, farmers and fishermen. Then there are the 'Haratin', Arabised descendants of slaves of African origin. That mix, not always an easy one and shot through with social and ethnic tensions, is the human fabric of the capital, and you can see and hear it in its markets, its languages and its food.
The city's economy has largely revolved around the sea. Mauritania's fishing grounds, fed by an upwelling of cold Atlantic water, are among the richest in the world, and fishing, both small-scale and industrial, is a pillar of the country. The Port de Pêche in Nouakchott, with its hundreds of pirogues, is the visible face of that wealth, while the Port de l'Amitié ('Friendship Port', built with Chinese help in the 1980s) handles larger-scale trade. On top of that come mining (iron from the north, gold and copper) and, more recently, the hopes pinned on the natural gas discovered off the coast.
Little by little, the capital has acquired infrastructure: universities, hospitals, the big stadium, the new Oumtounsy international airport (2016) and a growing urban middle class. But it still lives alongside the poverty of its outer neighbourhoods and with enormous environmental challenges, starting with the advancing dunes and the threat the sea poses to a city built almost at water level.
Today Nouakchott is a young metropolis full of energy, still working out what it is. It is the political heart of a country that has had a turbulent history since independence: several coups, the difficult question of slavery (officially abolished in 1981 and made a crime in 2007, though its after-effects linger), ethnic tensions and the security challenge of a Sahel threatened by jihadism. Even so, Mauritania has managed to stay relatively stable and free of the attacks that hit its neighbours, partly thanks to a strong security effort.
The city is growing and modernising: new residential neighbourhoods such as Tevragh Zeina are home to embassies, hotels, Lebanese and international restaurants and shops; avenues are being paved and buildings are going up. At the same time, it keeps its deeply Saharan and Muslim character, with a rhythm set by the five daily calls to prayer, the ever-present ritual of mint tea and the traditional hospitality of the desert. It is a capital where the 4x4 shares the road with the camel, and the half-built tower block stands next to the khaima of the newest arrivals.
For travellers, Nouakchott is above all a gateway and an introduction: the place to feel the pulse of contemporary Mauritania before heading off to the wonders of the interior. A city of sand born out of nothing, shaped by drought and by the will of a young state, a crossroads of two Africas, Nouakchott sums up in its short but intense history the very birth of a country. It has no centuries of monuments to show off, but every dusty street and every brightly painted pirogue tells the living story of a nation still in the making.
