Economic summary:GDP/PPP (2005 est.):
$6.198 billion; per capita $2,000. Real growth rate: 5.5%.
Inflation: 7% (2003 est.). Unemployment: 20% (2004
est.). Arable land: 0.5%. Agriculture: dates, millet,
sorghum, rice, corn; cattle, sheep. Labor force: 786,000
(2001); agriculture 50%, services 40%, industry 10% (2001 est.).
Industries: fish processing, mining of iron ore and gypsum.
Natural resources: iron ore, gypsum, copper, phosphate,
diamonds, gold, oil, fish. Exports: $784 million f.o.b. (2004
est.): iron ore, fish and fish products, gold. Imports: $1.124
billion f.o.b. (2004 est.): machinery and equipment, petroleum
products, capital goods, foodstuffs, consumer goods. Major trading
partners: Japan, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium,
Côte d'Ivoire, China, Russia, U.S., UK (2004).
Communications: Telephones: main lines in
use: 26,500 (2001); mobile cellular: 35,000 (2001). Radio broadcast
stations: AM 1, FM 14, shortwave 1 (2001). Radios: 410,000
(2001). Television broadcast stations: 1 (2002).
Televisions: 98,000 (2001). Internet Service Providers
(ISPs): 5 (2001). Internet users: 7,500 (2001).
Transportation: Railways: total: 717 km
(2002). Highways: total: 7,720 km; paved: 830 km; unpaved:
6,890 km (2000). Waterways: ferry traffic on the Senegal River.
Ports and harbors: Bogue, Kaedi, Nouadhibou, Nouakchott, Rosso.
Airports: 26 (2002).
International
disputes: Mauritanian claims to Western Sahara have been dormant
in recent years.
Mauritania, three times the size of Arizona, is situated in northwest
Africa with about 350 mi (592 km) of coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. It
is bordered by Morocco on the north, Algeria and Mali on the east, and
Senegal on the south. The country is mostly desert, with the exception of
the fertile Senegal River valley in the south and grazing land in the
north.
Government
Military rule. The legal system is based on Islam.
History
Mauritania was first inhabited by blacks and Berbers, and it was a
center for the Berber Almoravid movement in the 11th century, which sought
to spread Islam through western Africa. It was first explored by the
Portuguese in the 15th century, but by the 19th century the French gained
control. They organized the area into a territory in 1904, and in 1920 it
became one of the colonies that constituted French West Africa. In 1946,
it was named a French Overseas territory.
Mauritania became an independent nation on Nov. 28, 1960, and was
admitted to the United Nations in 1961 over the strenuous opposition of
Morocco, which claimed the territory. In the late 1960s, the government
sought to make Arab culture dominant. Racial and ethnic tensions between
Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and blacks were frequent.
Mauritania and Morocco divided the territory of Spanish Sahara (later
called Western Sahara) between them after the Spanish departed in 1975,
with Mauritania controlling the southern third. The Polisario Front,
indigenous Saharawi rebels, fought for the territory against both
Mauritania and Morocco. Increased military spending and rising casualties
in the region helped bring down the civilian government of Ould Daddah in
1978. A succession of military rulers followed. In 1979, Mauritania
withdrew from Western Sahara.
In 1984, Col. Maaouye Ould Sidi Ahmed Taya took control of the
government. He relaxed Islamic law, fought corruption, instituted economic
reforms urged by the International Monetary Fund, and held the country's
first multiparty parliamentary elections in 1986. Although the 1991
constitution set up a multiparty democracy, politics remains based on
ethnic and racial lines. The primary conflict is between blacks, who
dominate southern regions, and the Moorish-Arabic north, which runs the
country. Racial tensions reached a peak in 1989 when Mauritania went to
war with Senegal in a dispute over the border. As each country repatriated
citizens of the other, critics accused Mauritania of taking the
opportunity to expel thousands of blacks.
Although Mauritania officially abolished slavery in 1980, the nation
continues to tolerate the enslavement of blacks by North African Arabs. In
1993, the U.S. State Department estimated that there were more than 90,000
chattel slaves in the country.
In 1992, Taya won the nation's first multiparty presidential election,
which opponents charged was rigged. Taya's attempts to restructure the
economy provoked periodic protests, the most serious of which were the
bread riots in Nouakchott in 1995.
In 2002, the government banned a political party, Action for Change
(AC), which has campaigned for greater rights for blacks, calling it
racist and violent. Two other opposition parties have been banned in the
past few years. The IMF granted Mauritania debt relief in June 2002,
wiping out $1.1 billion, half of Mauritania's overall debt.
Coup attempts in June 2003 and Aug. 2004 were thwarted. Taya's
crackdown on Islamists and his support for Israel and the U.S. were
believed to have sparked the attempts to overthrow him. In Aug. 2005,
however, President Taya was deposed by military officers while out of the
country. In June 2006, voters approved to limit the presidency to two
five-year terms.
Mauritania started its march toward democracy in November 2006, when
local and regional elections were held throughout the country.
Presidential elections followed in March 2007. None of the 19 candidates
won more than 50% of the vote in the first round, and the two top
candidates, Sidi Ould Sheik Abdellahi, a former government minister, and
Ahmed Ould Daddah, an opposition leader, faced off in the country's
first-ever second round of voting. Abdellahi prevailed in the runoff to
become the country's first democratically elected president.
