Nouakchott - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

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The name of this city, Nouakchott or Noiakchott according to the retranscriptions, gave place to several translations, including four principal:

place where water appears when one digs a well
ground where shells abounds
the place with the pasture salted
where breath the wind

" Chott" can mean “beach” or “estran” " Noua" in hassaniya (dialect Moor) would be “bay” One would translate Nouakchott by " literally; the beach of the baie" Although the littoral Mauritanian does not present any bay to the accesses of Nouakchott, the shape of the coast is slightly hollow there. Nouakchott was in the beginning a French military camp, built of all parts, where the Mauritanians were not accustomed to remaining. The name would thus have come tardily (beginning 20th century).

History

The place in itself is known for a long time by the nomads. However the city, strictly speaking, was built by the French colonists, in the Années 1950. At that time, there were 500 inhabitants. In the beginning, it was about a Ksar , i.e. small extremely where fifteen French soldiers supervised trade route which connected the Morocco to the Senegal. It is in 1956 that one decides to create the capital strictly speaking. In 1959, the French architect the Tale draws up the plan of the new capital. Two cores get clear: one around the fort, which will become the European district nowadays; the other around the mosque, therefore a little more with the variation at the time. Crossed into two initially, the city is reunified quickly.

Population

One of the main issues of the city is the lack of management of its growth.

The estimates of 1960 give a population of: 8000 inhabitants in 1980 and of: 600000 inhabitants approximately today such demographic weight. The reasons of this considerable population growth are:

the regrouping towards the chief town in the desert places
attraction: the more one place concentrates inhabitants, the more it attracts of it new
in the Eighties, following a great dryness which ruins the stockbreeders (first richness of the country), those come to settle downtown to find a new employment.

Problems

Nouakchott knows many problems:

a bad urbanization due to the two cores which too quickly met: traffic jam, bad services, etc
a saturation of space: the poor districts, Kebbé , multiply
a poverty which increases
the risk of stranding
the threat related to the Atlantic Ocean: part of the city is located in lower part of the sea level; the dunes, already fragile, were used as supports with poor constructions, which increased their brittleness.
the complete absence of fresh water, which must be imported of a distant source of an about sixty kilometers.

The modification of the marine coastal currents due mainly to the construction of the port, involves a fast destablisation of the coastal dune cord. Whereas paradoxically the urbanization intensifies behind this cord, in a zone slightly lower than the level of the ocean.

Religion

Mosques

There are several hundreds of Mosquée S in Nouakchott.

More known two, built after independence, are on the one hand that known as " marocaine" , whose architecture does not fail to point out the Koutoubia Marrakech, and in addition the mosque called " saoudienne" , an imposing building with the slim Minaret S offered by the Saudi Arabia.

They are both inaccessible to the visitors.

Évêchés

Diocese of Nouakchott
Cathedral of Nouakchott

Twinning

Madrid, Spain

See too

Internal bonds

List of the capitals of the world

External bonds

Christophe Ayad, “Nouakchott, city haunted by water” in '' Libération '', 5/12/2006

Be-X-old: Нуакшот Simple: Nouakchott

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