Mauritania

Mauritania is a country in Africa.

Most of it is the Sahara, a huge sandy desert. Its west side is next to the Atlantic Ocean. The capital city is Nouakchott.

Mauritania is a large country on the Atlantic coast of northwest Africa. Much of it is part of the Sahara, and sand dunes cover about half of the land. In the far south, near the Senegal River, there is more rain and grassland.

Mauritania is like a bridge between the Arab and Amazigh (Berber) lands of North Africa and the lands of West Africa. It became independent from France on November 28, 1960. Its capital, Nouakchott, was a small village before then. About 5.3 million people lived there in 2025.

Mauritania forms a geographic and cultural bridge between the North African Maghrib and the westernmost part of sub-Saharan Africa, a transitional zone between Arab-Amazigh populations and the peoples of the Sudanic belt. Much of it lies in the Sahara; until the droughts of the 1970s a large share of the population was nomadic. Its mineral wealth includes large reserves of iron ore, copper and gypsum, all exploited, and some oil.

A French colony for the first half of the 20th century, it became independent on November 28, 1960. Under the constitution Islam is the state religion, with freedom of conscience guaranteed, and Arabic is the official language. The World Bank put the population at 5,315,065 in 2025; about half live in and around towns, and Nouakchott, once a small village, held about one-fourth of the people by the early 21st century.

Nouakchott is the biggest city.

Old desert towns have stone houses and narrow streets. In the desert is a huge circle of rock rings. From space, it looks like an eye!

Nouakchott, the capital, is home to about one in four people in Mauritania. In the desert stand four old towns, Chinguetti, Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata, founded in the 1000s and 1100s to serve camel caravans crossing the Sahara. Their stone houses with courtyards crowd along narrow streets. They became a World Heritage Site in 1996.

Near Ouadane is the Richat Structure, a set of rock rings about 50 kilometers across. From above it looks like a giant eye. Scientists once thought a meteorite made it, but it is really a dome of rock pushed up long ago and worn down by wind and water.

Nouakchott, a small village before independence, held about one-fourth of the population by the early 21st century. Nouadhibou is the center of the fishing industry and an iron-ore export port, and the mining towns of Zouérate and Fdérik serve the iron deposits; towns along the Senegal River such as Kaédi and Rosso have also grown.

UNESCO inscribed the Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata in 1996: founded in the 11th and 12th centuries to serve trans-Saharan caravans, they became trading and religious centers, and their urban fabric of patio houses in narrow lanes around a mosque with a square minaret evolved between the 12th and 16th centuries. Britannica notes Oualata's elaborately painted house walls. The Richat Structure near Ouadane, about 50 km across, was once thought to be an impact crater but lacks a central peak and impact melt; it is an uplifted dome formed by molten rock in the Cretaceous and eroded into rings of hard igneous and softer sedimentary rock. Acheulean hand axes there show early humans lived in the area.

Most of Mauritania is very dry.

Long lines of sand dunes stretch far away. Hot winds blow from the desert. In the far south, a little rain falls in summer.

Mauritania is mostly flat. Dunes cover about half the country, in long ridges that can be 90 meters high, and plains of pebbles called regs stretch for miles. The highest point is Mount Ijill, a huge block of iron-rich rock 915 meters tall.

Rain comes only in summer, and less falls the farther north you go: about 635 millimeters a year in the far south at Sélibabi, but only 25 to 50 at Nouadhibou on the northern coast. Summer afternoons reach the high 30s °C, and the hot, dry harmattan wind blows from the desert.

The coastal plains lie below 45 m and the interior plateaus at 180–230 m, broken by cuestas, scarps up to 275 m and inselbergs; the highest, Mount Ijill (915 m), is an enormous block of hematite. Dunes cover about half the country in long ridges (alab) up to 90 m high, and regs of packed pebbles form vast plains. Normal drainage exists only in the southwest, where tributaries of the Senegal River flood briefly in summer; elsewhere rare floods in wadis end in permanent pools called gueltas.

The northeast trade winds and the harmattan make the climate arid. Summer rain from southwesterly winds decreases northward: about 635 mm at Sélibabi (June–October), 355 mm at Kiffa, 180 mm at Tidjikdja and Atar, and 25–50 mm at Nouadhibou. Interior highs in the 40s °C are not uncommon. Vegetation shifts from Sudanic savanna with baobabs in the far south through the Sahel, with acacias and euphorbias, to desert where plants grow only in wadis and oases.

Many birds rest on Mauritania's coast in winter.

Dolphins and sea turtles swim in the sea. Warthogs and hyenas live in the dry grasslands. Long ago, camels carried families across the desert.

On the Atlantic coast, Banc d'Arguin National Park mixes sand dunes, swamps, small islands and shallow sea. It is one of the most important places in the world for nesting birds and for wading birds that fly south from Europe and Asia for the winter. Sea turtles and dolphins live in its waters, and local fishers use the dolphins to help bring shoals of fish closer.

In the southern grasslands, gazelles, ostriches, warthogs and hyenas still roam, but hunting has made many large animals rare.

UNESCO describes the Banc d'Arguin (inscribed 1989) as one of the world's most important zones for nesting birds and Palearctic migratory waders: sand dunes, coastal swamps, small islands and shallow waters where the austere desert meets a rich marine zone. Several species of sea turtle and dolphin occur, and the dolphins are used by fishers to drive shoals of fish.

On land, Britannica notes that little remains of the large animals that lived in the savanna into the colonial period; the steppe is still frequented by gazelles, ostriches, warthogs and hyenas, but hunting has greatly reduced animal populations, prompting conservation measures. Camels remain central to life in the desert: nomads rode camels and used pack camels, and in the south pack oxen and donkeys.

About 5.3 million people live in Mauritania.

Many people speak Arabic. Long ago, many families moved with their camels and lived in tents. Today, most live in towns.

More than two-thirds of the people are Moors, who speak an Arabic dialect called Hassaniyya. The Tukulor, Fulani, Soninke and Wolof live mostly in the south, near the Senegal River. Arabic is the official language, and Fula, Soninke and Wolof are national languages.

Until the 1980s, many families were nomads who moved with their animals to find water and grass. Women made tents from bands of woven sheep's wool and water bags from goatskins. Long droughts in the 1970s led many people to move to towns, and today the nomadic way of life has almost disappeared.

The Moors make up more than two-thirds of the population and speak Hassaniyya Arabic; Britannica describes about three-fifths of them as Haratin, of Sudanic African origin, and about two-fifths as Bidan, of Arab and Amazigh descent. Roughly one-third belong to the Tukulor of the Senegal valley, the Fulani of the south, the Soninke of the far south and the Wolof near Rosso. Arabic is official; Fula, Soninke and Wolof are national languages, and Arabic has been the main language of schooling since the late 1980s. Almost all Mauritanians are Sunni Muslims. Slavery, abolished in colonial times, was made a criminal offense by a 2007 law.

Nomadism dominated until the 1980s: livestock supplied milk and meat, encampments in the southwest reached 300 tents, and herds moved with the seasonal rains. Drought in the 1970s drove rapid urbanization, and dams in wadis and expanded palm groves changed rural life. Along the Senegal River, irrigation since the 1980s has sharpened competition for farmland in the region called the Chemama.