Where the Sahara Meets the Atlantic — Mauritania's capital is one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, built on dunes between an enormous ocean fish market and an encroaching desert, with a Port de Pêche that may be Africa's most visually spectacular fishing scene
Nouakchott is the capital of Mauritania — a city that barely existed in 1960 (population 5,000 at independence) and now holds over 1.2 million people, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa and the world. It was built essentially from scratch on flat coastal dunes after France chose it as the capital of the newly independent Mauritanian state. The city sits between two extraordinary natural scenes: to the west, the Atlantic Ocean with the Port de Pêche (fishing port) — possibly the largest and most visually extraordinary traditional fishing beach in Africa, where hundreds of br…
Nouakchott was chosen as Mauritania's capital in 1958 — two years before independence — by French colonial administrators seeking a coastal site equidistant from the country's main regions. The name means 'place of winds' in Berber. Unlike most African capitals, it has no pre-colonial history; it was a small fishing village with a French military post. Growth accelerated dramatically in the 1970s–80s when Sahelian droughts pushed tens of thousands of nomadic Moors off the desert and into the city, creating enormous informal settlements (kebbas) that still ring the urban core. The city has bee…