Mauritania
Mauritania (officially Islamic Republic of Mauritania) is a country in Western Africa, with its capital at Nouakchott, and is home to roughly 5.2M people.
Arabic is the official language; the currency in circulation is Mauritanian ouguiya (UM); people from here are called Mauritanian.
- »One of the world's longest and heaviest trains runs iron ore across the desert here, often over two kilometres long.
Mauritania straddles the Tropic of Cancer.
Mauritania touches four neighbours: Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the southeast, Senegal to the southwest and Western Sahara to the northwest. Directions run from one centre to the other.
Nouakchott was a small settlement of a few hundred people when it was chosen as capital in 1958, and has since grown to over a million as drought pushed people off the land.
1,038,034 km² (400,787 sq mi), 28th largest of 198 countries and territories on file, almost exactly the size of Egypt.
Population 5,169,395, 125th of 198 on file. That averages 5.0 per km² (13 per sq mi).
The crescent and star on green are Islamic symbols; the red bands were added in 2017 for blood shed resisting colonisation.