Mauritania >>

[Magharebia]Nouakchott -Renowned African writers, critics and artists are taking part in Mauritania's 3rd international "Literary Encounters", which closes on Friday (December 13th) in Nouakchott....

[CIO]Five African countries - Morocco, Mauritius, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda - have been ranked among the leaders in the internet Affordability Index report for emerging and developing economies compiled by the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) that studied the drivers of internet affordability in 46 countries....

[Magharebia]Nouakchott -Mauritania's electoral commission (CENI) on Tuesday (December 3rd) announced the results from the first round of the legislative and local elections....

[Magharebia]Nouakchott -Dr Ahmed Ould Habibi is among the most prominent cultural scientists in the region. Magharebia met with the Nouakchott academic to learn more about culture's role in both creating and stopping terrorism....

[RFI]"The world is in mourning" for Nelson Mandela, French President François Hollande told a summit on peace and security in Africa as it opened on Friday. Over 50 representatives of African countries will discuss conflict resolution and Hollande will try to convince them to keep doing business with France....

[UN News]A well-known Pakistani student activist and an anti-slavery campaigner from Mauritania are among the winners of the 2013 United Nations Human Rights Prize, it was announced today....

[Magharebia]Nouakchott -The presidents of Mauritania and Niger appealed to the rest of the Sahel to join their efforts to confront terrorism and trans-Saharan smuggling....

[IRIN]Mbera -Just 4,298 of the 14,000 primary school-aged children in Mbera refugee camp in eastern Mauritania are enrolled in camp schools, aid agencies estimate....

[AEP]Mauritania's ruling Union for the Republic Party has managed to win 37 parliamentary seats in the first round of the polls held last month, the independent election commission has announced. Opposition parties have managed to win 14 seats only, the commission added in a press conference....

s ally against al-Qaida, says rights expert Black Mauritanians are still subject to slavery-like practices, including sexual violence and discrimination, a UN human rights expert has said. The UN special rapporteur on racism, Mutuma Ruteere, told the Guardian that generations of people, particularly women and girls, were still living with families in a "slavery-like" relationship , and were being forced...

s lawyer says he is still US prison in Cuba and that statements by prisoners' rights group are false The US has denied claims from a prisoners' rights group in Mauritania that two Guantánamo Bay detainees have been released and returned to the African country. No inmates have been transferred from Guantánamo since October last year, said Army Lt Col Joseph Todd Breasseale, a US Defense Department spokesman....

s good harvest in Sahel not enough to alleviate deep-rooted poverty, as millions more face hunger this year Aid agencies are gearing up for a second year of emergency response in the Sahel where an estimated 10.3 million people could be affected by food shortages, according to the UN (pdf). Despite rains in 2012 leading to a good harvest in October-November, deficits incurred during last year's food...

s north African branch. The Noukachott Information Agency, or ANI, said Philippe Verdon had been killed. The ANI website is frequently used by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) to post messages. It was not possible to independently verify the claim and the French foreign ministry had no immediate comment. ANI quoted a man who identified himself as Ghairawani , a spokesman for Aqim, as saying Verdon...

s Nouakchott news agency has found that its contacts with the jihadists at the centre of the Algerian hostage crisis have paid off big time. Over the four days of the siege, ANI, as it is known by its French initials, reported extensively and often exclusively on the Mulathimun ("The Masked") brigade led by the Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Unnamed spokesmen told ANI that the attackers had arrived from...

s Commission on Population Movements to be 228,918. They are mainly in the capital, Bamako, Ségou, Kayes, Koulikoro, Sikasso and Mopti. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) has called on all parties to the conflict to respect the safety of civilians and leave medical facilities untouched. It said bombardments started again on Sunday morning in Douentza, a town to the north-east of Mopti, in central Mali....

t recount all the problems I've had or we'd end up spending all night. I am sick of answering questions to you people in 4x4s – that is all that anyone ever does here. They come, ask questions, and do nothing." PK6 is a scrappy village with half-built brick rooms scattered around a small shop with half a dozen sacks of cereal for sale, and a few corrugated-iron shelters covered in rugs to protect them...

accidental' shooting of the unpopular president has revealed the true colours of the country's rulers When the news spread that Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania had been shot my reaction was, "it finally happened!" While many of the details of the shooting remain unknown, and some accounts are contradictory, for those who have followed Mauritania's politics since August 2005, it was only a matter...

t believe the official version at all, this was an unsuccessful attempt at a coup d'etat by dissatisfied factions within the army," said Alassane Dia, from protest group Ne Touche Pas à ma Nationalité ("hands off my nationality"). "The situation in Mauritania is very complicated. There is huge dissatisfaction with the regime – it promotes racism and slavery, there is brutal repression of dissidents,...

s unknown what has happened to the soldiers who supposedly shot at the president and the "accident" is hard to believe. Governments in Mauritania are changed by coups. Nearly every leadership since independence in 1960 has involved the military. Abdel Aziz took office in 2008 after he and other army chiefs ousted President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who had been a rare commodity – an elected...

s president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, is in hospital in France after a bizarre incident in which he was shot in the stomach, apparently by mistake, by his own troops. Authorities in the west African nation, regarded as a key in the battle against al-Qaida in the region, insisted the shooting, which took place 25 miles outside the capital, was an accident. Before leaving for France the president appeared...