Mauritania

Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in the Maghreb region of West Africa bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Western Sahara, Algeria, Mali and Senegal, the eleventh-largest country in Africa with 90 percent of its territory in the Sahara, a population of 4.3 million concentrated mostly in the temperate south, and Nouakchott, home to roughly a third of the population, as its capital and largest city. Berbers occupied the region by the third century CE, and Arab tribes migrating in the late seventh century brought Islam, Arab culture and the Arabic language; France colonized the area as part of French West Africa in the early twentieth century, and Mauritania achieved independence in 1960, since experiencing recurrent coups and military dictatorship, including the 2008 coup led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who won subsequent elections, and the 2019 election of General Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, considered the country's first peaceful transfer of power. Mauritania has a poor human rights record, particularly for its perpetuation of slavery, estimated by the 2018 Global Slavery Index at about 90,000 people or 2.1 percent of the population. The economy rests primarily on agriculture and fishing despite abundant natural resources; Arabic is the official language, Islam the state religion practiced by nearly the entire population, and the multiethnic society is composed of the Haratin at 40 percent, the Bidhan at 30 percent, and various sub-Saharan ethnic groups making up the remainder.