ABSTRACT
Mauritania is a country situated on the periphery of the Arab world which acts as a hinge between the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa. Since its independence from France in 1960, the Mauritanian state has had to face the fragility of its socio-economic structure as well as its regional environment that initially saw independence as a maneuver on the part of French colonizers to maintain their interests in a territory which had for a long time belonged to Western French Africa (AOF).
