Mauritania placed its capital on the coast

Mauritania is a Sahara state that had to build its capital. Nouakchott stands on the Atlantic, laid out as the place from which a country without an old royal seat could be governed. Behind the city the desert begins. In the south the same country becomes floodplain on the Senegal River. Arabic is official. Poular, Soninke and Wolof are national languages along the river.

Oasis towns such as Chinguetti in the Adrar are old. They were stages of the caravan and of scholarship, not the seat of a territorial state with ministries, a port and one address for the whole country. Nouakchott has exactly that origin: a capital laid out on the coast so that access to the Atlantic and the government would coincide. The state understands itself as an Islamic republic. Geographically it sits between the Maghreb and Senegal. That position is written into the constitution's language clause and onto the map.

Nouakchott was laid out

Before the new capital, political life was mobile, tied to desert places, oases and the older coastal town of Nouadhibou. Nouakchott was meant to be a centre belonging to the whole country, not to a single caravan stop. The city faces the Atlantic. The port and the road inland explain why it stands here. It is an address the state gave the sand, and it has since grown far past the first plan, into quarters the wind does not treat as finished.

Government, markets and the road inland still meet here. Leave Nouakchott toward the east and the Sahara is the country in front of you. Chinguetti and the other oases remain places of history and religion. They do not carry ministries. The capital is a coastal city because the desert had towns of scholarship, but no city that could hold the apparatus of a modern state. That division of labour is Mauritania's political geography: memory in the oasis, office by the sea.

Sand in the north, river in the south

Most of the map is Sahara. In the north the desert reaches Algeria and Western Sahara, which Morocco administers. Mali lies to the east, the Senegal River and Senegal to the south. Iron ore from Zouérat in the north goes by rail to the coast at Nouadhibou. That line is one of the few fixed paths through the sand. The south is another country inside the same state: the Senegal floodplain, Rosso, Kaédi, fields that depend on the river, a border that is water rather than a dune.

On 1,030,700 square kilometres live 5,315,065 people. The figures describe a large country with a coastal capital and thin settlement along the river and the ore railway. The ouguiya, issued by Mauritania's central bank, is the currency. Mauritania does not share the CFA franc of several Sahel neighbours. The note in the pocket and the city on the coast are two decisions of a state that did not want to be only an annex of the Maghreb or only a bank of the Senegal.

Nouakchott is the address the state gave to the sand.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Arabic in office, many tongues on the river

The constitution is plain. The national languages are Arabic, Poular, Soninke and Wolof. The official language is Arabic. The state is to preserve them. Arabic carries the law, the mosque and the written part of public life. Poular, Soninke and Wolof carry the Senegal valley and the southern towns, where Mauritania meets the languages of the West African river. Nouakchott has to hear both worlds, because the capital was built to gather a country that desert and river would otherwise keep apart.

French is widely used in administration and business. It is not the official language. The constitution keeps that distinction: an official language of the Maghreb, and national languages of the river frontier. The state is the join of Rosso and of the office in Nouakchott.

Mauritania is a desert state with a coastal capital laid out for the purpose, a currency of its own, and a constitution that makes Arabic official while naming the languages of the river. The sand is the map. Nouakchott is the address.