Travel Guides

May be you did not hear until now about Nouakchott. I can forgive, there is no matter, I can understand that. But please don’t let it happen again, as you are a profesional traveler, aren’t you?

Aerial View of Nouakchott, a city initially designed for 15000 people, which is counting now 1 million

But Sahara must be well known to you, even if it is one of the toughest places on Earth. There are no many cities in Sahara, and Nouakchott is the biggest of them. I would say, Nouakchott is the capital of Sahara, if you understand what I mean. Fact is that Mauritania desperately needed a capital after gaining independence from France in the 60’s, and thus Nouakchott became the capital of Mauritania. Unfortunately, it was designed first for 15000 people only, but today counts 1 Million, and the explosive development continues. Meanwhile, the big infrastructure problems have been partially  solved. The city has some wealthy citizens in the neighborhood of Las Palmas, but also counts unending slums wit poor hygienic conditions (e.g. Kosovo). But even the poor citizens are very happy here in Nouakchott, as they are mostly Sahara refugees due to the dramatic droughts from the last decades.