ABSTRACT
Nouakchott, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Mauritani, houses about one million people. In 1957, less than 5,000 people lived in the city, which was then under construction. Catalysed by a series of severe droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, vast numbers of destitute nomadic pastoralists who saw their animals succumb to famine, sought refuge there, and what was perhaps initially imagined as a temporary rupture of their nomadic livelihood became a permanent condition of life. Due to the rampant urbanization process and a general lack of government mediation, Nouakchott has grown into an infrastructural conundrum.
