Yearbook 2010
Mauritania. In March, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) granted Mauritania a three-year loan program totaling US $ 118 million. According to COUNTRYAAH, Mauritania has a population of 4.403 million (2018). The purpose of the program is to support the country’s economy, which has been adversely affected by the fuel and food crisis of 2007–08 and subsequently by the financial crisis and the global recession. According to the IMF, the economy was recovering at the beginning of the year and growth was expected at just over 5 percent.
In April, according to softwareleverage, Mauritania established a joint liaison center with neighboring countries Mali, Niger and Algeria to try to stop al-Qaeda’s increasing influence. The cooperation sought to prevent, among other things, suspected terrorists from seeking protection by moving across borders in the region.
In May, three people, with suspected links to al Qaeda, were sentenced to death for the murders of four French tourists in 2007. These were the first death sentences sentenced in Mauritania in over 20 years.
In July, a Malian was sentenced to twelve years in prison for the kidnapping of three Spanish aid workers in southern Mauritania in November 2009. According to the verdict, the man had handed the Spaniards to the North African al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which held another three Europeans hostage. A captured Frenchman was killed in July as revenge for France’s attempt to rescue the hostage. The other kidnappers were released at various times during the year. At the same time, the court in Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott sentenced a Mauritanian shepherd to a one-year conditional sentence, while four others were indicted.
In mid-September, the Mauritanian military conducted several air raids and ground attacks in northern Mali to combat suspected militant Islamists in the area. Twelve AQIM rebels and six Mauritanian militants were reported to have been killed. The aim of the campaign was, according to Mauritania, to deter the Islamists. The attacks were sanctioned by the Malian authorities as neighboring countries cooperate to fight al-Qaeda and have a deal that allows the militants to cross borders to fight militant Islamists.
- Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the two letter abbreviation of MR stands for the country of Mauritania in geography.
Demography and economic geography. – State of north-western Africa, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The population (3,984,457 residents, according to an estimate by UNDESA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, of 2014), for 51% under the age of 19, it grew by 2.7% per year (period 2005-10), then by 2.5% (2010-15). The urban one (59%) is mainly distributed in the capital, Nouakchott (899,887 residents). With a life expectancy of 61.6 years (2013) and a literacy rate of 52% (161st place on the Human Development Index), the population is still plagued by poverty (66%). After 2009, sustained economic growth (GDP + 6-7%) and the newfound political stability have allowed Mauritania to enter among the low-middle income countries: GDP per capita with purchasing power parity (PPA) of $ 3,379 (2014). Second largest exporter of iron (11.2 million t, 2012) in Africa, Mauritania also produces gold, copper and gas with good prospects. Fishing, then, due to recent agreements with the European Union, is among the sectors with the most significant growth potential.
Slum in Nouakchott
Although the main Mauritanian Islamist movements did not represent a danger from the point of view of terrorism in this historical phase (their leaders repeatedly rejected the violence), on the other hand they strengthened in the AQMI country (Al-Qā῾ida in the Islamic Maghreb), also following the war in Libya and the crisis in neighboring Mali, as well as through kidnappings and regional illicit trafficking.
Mauritania is a colony which is part of French West Africa and which extends over the western part of the Sahara. Borders NO. with the Spanish Sahara (Río de Oro), to the North. and NE. with the Algerian-Moroccan Sahara, to the East. with the French Sudan, to the West with the Atlantic Ocean, which bathes it over a development of coasts of 600 km. It has an area of 834,850 sq km. and but population of 322,000 residents, of which 300 Europeans.
The territory consists of an immense low plain, an ancient Quaternary gulf limited to E. by the Tagant massif which extends towards the NW. the Adrar massif. They are short ancient chains made of schist, sandstone and granite; the Tagant dominates from the height of 300 m. the contiguous plains, while the Adrar is a little higher, reaching 500 m. Some other granite rises emerge in the N. and NW. of Adrar.
Mauritania comprises three distinct areas. The first consists of a long strip of land, 5 to 10 km wide, called Chemama, which runs along the Senegal River and is almost entirely included in the area of periodic flooding of the river. It is a region of floods and food crops (millet), inhabited by sedentary black populations: Uolof, Toucouleurs, Saracole. The second zone, which succeeds the alluvial strip, extends up to about 18 ° lat. N. and is a region of steppes and pastures, scattered with rubber trees and acacias; it is largely covered by dunes, between which some strips of clayey soil are interspersed. Numerous flocks of sheep and cattle live on it. Beyond the 18th lat. N. begins the Sahara proper, the domain of the great nomadic camel herders. In the valleys where the ksour (ksar ; v.) and some palm groves.
The area that follows the course of Senegal and the Gorgol has a regular rainy season. Further to the North. the rains, produced by some hurricanes that occur between July and December, are too irregular to allow cultivation: sometimes seven or eight years go by without rain. The more you go towards the tropic, the more the country becomes desert. The prevailing wind is the NE wind.