Access to waste management services is crucial for urban sustainability, impacting public health, environmental well-being, and overall quality of life. This study employs logistic regression analysis on survey data collected from 1,032 household heads residing in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. The survey investigated key household factors that determine access to waste management services. The findings reveal a significant interplay among waste service provision, the presence of cisterns, housing type and size, and access to electricity. Socioeconomic disparity in service access, with poorer housing formats like shacks receiving substandard services. In contrast, areas with robust electrification report better service access, although inconsistencies remain amid power outages. The research highlights the challenges faced by Riyadh municipality, particularly rapid growth and inadequate infrastructure, which hinder waste management efficiency. Overall, the results not only illuminate Nouakchott’s unique challenges in service provision but also propose actionable recommendations for a sustainable urban future. These recommendations aim to inform and guide targeted policies for improving living conditions and environmental sustainability in urban Mauritania.

Governments in sub-Saharan African countries aim to increase married women’s household decision-making autonomy as it remains a critical determinant of desirable health behaviours such as healthcare utilisation, antenatal care visits, and safer sex negotiation. However, very few studies explore how household structure (i.e., monogamous or polygamous) is associated with married women’s household decision-making autonomy. Our paper seeks to address this gap. Using the 2019–20 Mauritania Demographic and Health Survey, a nationally representative dataset, and applying logistic regression analysis, we explore how married women’s household structure is associated with their household decision-making autonomy. We find that 9% of married women are in polygamous marriages, while 63% and 65% are involved in decision-making about their health and large household purchases, respectively. Additionally, 76% and 56% are involved in decision-making about visiting family or relatives and household expenditures. After accounting for socio-economic and demographic factors, we find that compared to women from monogamous households, those from polygamous households are less likely to participate in decision-making about their health (OR=0.65, p < 0.001), making large household purchases (OR=0.65, p < 0.001), visiting family or relatives (OR=0.72, p < 0.001), and household expenditure (OR=0.58, p < 0.001). Based on our findings, we recommend the urgent need to review and re-evaluate policies and approaches seeking to promote gender equality and women’s autonomy in Mauritania. Specifically, it may be critical for intervention programmes to work around reducing power imbalances in polygamous household structures that continue to impact married women’s household decision-making autonomy adversely. Such interventions should centre married women’s socio-economic status as a central component of their empowerment strategies in Mauritania.

This article centers on the life of Bilal Ould Mahmoud, an enslaved man who became a spiritual authority in the nineteenth-century Sahara. It examines how Bilal's piety allowed him to rise to prominence in a hierarchical context that subjugated him to an inferior position. Yet what makes him so fascinating to study is his ability to achieve the highest station as a Sufi saint without being attached to a Sufi order. Using Bilal's case, this article makes two important contributions to the historiographies of Sufism and slavery. First, it brings fresh perspectives to the studies of Sufism outside of ṭarīqa (Sufi orders). Second, it contributes to the studies of Saharan slavery by exploring enslaved Muslims’ experiences beyond the practice of illicit magic, and also as part of how they exercised their saintly authority as empowered agents. In the process, it analyzes the interplay among Islam, race, and slavery in the nineteenth-century Sahara.

Non-metallic raw materials are largely unexplored in many African countries. In an attempt to reduce this knowledge gap, kaolin occurrences in three promising regions of southern Mauritania were examined. The aim of the paper is to describe the occurrences and characterize the material in terms of mineralogy and potential technical use in the ceramics industry. The kaolins are geologically associated with various sedimentary rock units in either the Coastal Basin (Kaédi), the Mauritanide Belt (Hassi Abyad) or the Taoudeni Basin (Néma). Geochemical data show Al2O3 contents of between 9% and 38% (corresponding to 23–96% kaolinite). Samples from the Hassi Abyad and Kaédi regions have greater kaolinite contents on average and were further investigated mineralogically. The kaolin from the Néma region contained less kaolinite (<50 mass%). The region is also less accessible and hence is not considered further in this study. X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy confirmed the geochemically calculated kaolinite contents of the kaolins and identified quartz, anatase and goethite as the remaining major mineral constituents. The degree of structural disorder of the kaolinites (determined by infrared spectroscopy) is generally greater in the Kaédi occurrences than at Hassi Abyad. Ceramic tests proved that all of these kaolin raw materials might be used for the production of ceramics, and some may even be used for fine ceramics. From an economic point of view, the Hassi Abyad deposit is interesting in terms of its quality and reserves, aspects that will be addressed in detail in a follow-up study.

Recent research points to a renewed scholarly interest in the West African Middle Ages and the Sahelian imperial tradition. However, in these works only tangential attention is paid to the role of Muslims, and especially to clerical communities. This essay tackles theoretical and historiographical insights on the role of African Muslims in the era of the medieval empires and argues that the study of Islam in this region during the Middle Ages still suffers from undertheorizing. On the contrary, by using a ‘discursive approach’ scholars can unravel access to fascinating aspects of the history of West African Muslims and in particular to the crucial role played by clerical communities, who represented one node of the web of diffused authority which is characteristic of precolonial West African social and political structures.

Africanists struggle with Mohamedou ould Slahi’s story for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the Saharan region is often considered a space betwixt and between. Not only does the Sahara lie between the Maghreb and the Sahel, but Slahi’s experience illustrates how the military and political histories of counterterrorism and the intellectual and social histories of Islamist calls for religious reform are imagined as occurring elsewhere. The upswing in violence in Burkina Faso and Mali, the continued disruptions of Boko Haram, and the deep military involvement and investments in the Sahara remind us that the African continent has been an important site in the global war on terror (Thurston 2017). American and European foreign assistance, often in the form of military aid, has helped expand the surveillance capacities of African states, especially after 2001. In the case of Mauritania, American counterterrorism funds contributed to the consolidation of power in the authoritarian regime of Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, who ruled from 1984 to 2005, while the Mauritanian government ignored demands for democratization from its own citizens and instead pursued repressive policies that accused political opponents of Islamist activity, limiting their freedom of expression (Jourde 2007). Slahi’s story, then, can be seen as part of a much longer history of foreign incursion and neocolonial intrusion into African affairs, as the war on terror has led to a similar bolstering of authoritarian governments, an influx of military aid and funds that encourage corruption, and worrisome increases in weapons at the expense of other needed projects and investment, as happened during the Cold War (Schmidt 2013). Rather than promote economic development and democracy, these policies undermine Africa’s future.

Since 2012, when broadcasting licenses were granted to various private television and radio stations in Mauritania, the controversy around the Battle of Um Tounsi (and Mauritania’s colonial past more generally) has grown substantially. One of the results of this unprecedented level of media freedom has been the propagation of views defending the Mauritanian resistance (muqawama in Arabic) to French colonization. On the one hand, verbal and written accounts have emerged which paint certain groups and actors as French colonial power sympathizers. At the same time, various online publications have responded by seriously questioning the very existence of a structured resistance to colonization. This article, drawing predominantly on local sources, highlights the importance of this controversy in studying the western Saharan region social model and its contemporary uses.

This article examines the malaḥfa, a veil that has long been popular in Mauritania, using the scholarship of materiality to analyze how it and the wearer co-constitute each other. This approach demonstrates how the malaḥfa’s particular form and fabric provide women with certain constraints and possibilities; women activate these qualities to exercise agency, be it in redefining their positions in the social hierarchy, exercising control in their relationships, or asserting authority over others. Focusing on the malaḥfa’s materiality illustrates how such garments can be central to women’s agency and power, and demonstrates how women shape the broader social hierarchy.

This article examines events involving accusations of bloodsucking in the southwestern Sahara. French colonial archives allow researchers to identify specific cases in time and location; however, this article seeks to address but then move beyond histories of colonial governance. To highlight how communities in the Saharan desert dealt with crises provoked by environmental and social change, this investigation also relies on locally-produced written legal opinions and oral testimony. Emerging from these Saharan sources is one facet of how desert communities envisioned the enchantment of their social worlds and understood difficult periods caused by famine, weak economies, and domestic tensions.

This study was conducted in three villages of the Trarza region of Mauritania. The purpose of this study was to describe the management of and to characterize the local chicken. In the three surveyed villages, all the breeders were interviewed according to a questionnaire drafted in French and translated orally into hassanya or poular (national languages) as necessary. 56 poultry breeders were surveyed. Measurements were carried out on 260 adult chickens with 191 females and 69 males. The results showed that family poultry rearing is an activity managed by women. In spite of its socioeconomic importance, it is not considered as a main activity among the farmers responding to the survey. Feed resources deficiencies, animal health and the low productivity of the chickens were declared as the main concerns of the breeders. The average age of females when they start to reproduce is 6 months. The average weight of males was 1324 ± 249 g. That of females was 1028 ± 229 g. The average weight for both sexes together was 1107 ± 268 g. The average weight of the egg was 31 ± 4.81 g. The average weight of a chick on any given day was 26 ± 6.03 g. All the considered physical measurements were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in males. The variability of characters observed offers possibilities for genetic improvement (selection or crossbreeding). In the local chicken, the plumage was highly varied and presented several tints.

Newcastle disease (ND) is one of the most important poultry diseases worldwide and can lead to annual losses of up to 80% of backyard chickens in Africa. All bird species are considered susceptible to ND virus (NDV) infection but little is known about the role that wild birds play in the epidemiology of the virus. We present a long-term monitoring of 9000 wild birds in four African countries. Overall, 3·06% of the birds were PCR-positive for NDV infection, with prevalence ranging from 0% to 10% depending on the season, the site and the species considered. Our study shows that ND is circulating continuously and homogeneously in a large range of wild bird species. Several genotypes of NDV circulate concurrently in different species and are phylogenetically closely related to strains circulating in local domestic poultry, suggesting that wild birds may play several roles in the epidemiology of different NDV strains in Africa. We recommend that any strategic plan aiming at controlling ND in Africa should take into account the potential role of the local wild bird community in the transmission of the disease.