New routes to new markets.

ROAD construction; TRANSPORTATION; CITIES & towns; HIGHWAY engineering

MAURITANIAReport Available; MOROCCOReport Available; SPAINReport Available; MALIReport Available

The multi-billion dollar highway under construction between the northern port city of Nouadhibou and the capital city of Nouakchott is expected to facilitate a new era of inter-regional trade, as of February 2004. The Mauritanian government commenced the construction of a 300 mile stretch of paved highway from the northern port city of Nouadhibou to the capital Nouakchott in late 2003. With a price tag of $71.9m financed by the Kuwaiti-based Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, this stretch of two-lane highway is intended to connect the relatively good roads of Morocco and the Western Sahara to those of northern Mauritania. If all goes according to plan it will soon be possible to take a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, drive through Morocco and the Western Sahara and then travel via a two-lane paved highway to Mali, Niger and Senegal, before finally landing up in Lagos, Nigeria. From Punta Palomas, some 40 miles from Gibralter to Punta Malabata near Tangiers, this proposed rail tunnel opens up the eventual possibility of a travel by rail from northern Scotland to western and even southern Africa, covering distances and terrains the ancient desert travellers could not, in their wildest dreams, have imagined.