All roads lead to Nouakchott Roads, uses and territories in contemporary Mauritania

While infrastructures have served as a support for the territorial development of Mauritania, from the Rosso road to the Nouadhibou road, not to mention the more recent ones that run along the Senegal River in the south or link Atar and Tidjikja in the centre, we need to take a different look at their effects on the movement of people and goods within and outside the country. Nouakchott, a capital created from scratch at the time of independence, has become a unique crossroads as the country has changed. The country’s major roads radiate out from this urban centre in three main directions: a North-South coastal route, linking Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal; the road to Tindouf in Algeria, which throws us into the regional diplomatic game; and finally, the Route de l’Espoir or Transmauritanienne, which crosses the south of the country from west to east, as far as the gateway to Mali. By attempting to go beyond the image that Mauritania gives itself in West Africa, that of a country linking its neighbours to one another, our aim is to grasp the way in which, in the country’s recent history, successive political powers have built up the infrastructure network, and above all the use made of it by the different categories of the Mauritanian population.