Chami, ville nouvelle et ville de l’or.Une trajectoire urbaine insolite en Mauritanie

Abstract

Based on the Mauritanian case, this article discusses the relationship between the spectacular development of the mining sector in the form of a gold rush and the settlement dynamics that a new national land use planning policy is attempting to frame. Following two exploratory field surveys that questioned the various actors, this analysis focuses on the multiple issues related to the coincidence of two unprecedented experiences in Mauritania : on the one hand, the creation in 2012 of a new town in the desert northwest of the country, Chami, thanks to the resumption of land-use planning policies thanks to the increase in state rents and, on the other hand, the spectacular development of artisanal gold mining in the Sahara and the Sahel which has spread to Mauritania and led to the appearance in 2016 of a gold rush in the hinterland of Chami. This analysis shows that these two phenomena have been mutually reinforcing, which explains why the stages of Chami's development are original with regard to urban mining trajectories. The town created by the State is first of all an almost ghost town, where networks and services precede the inhabitants, before the progressive supervision of gold mining and the centralisation of ore processing in Chami gave consistency and energy to this urban organism that became a mushroom town. We will see that the town is nevertheless subject to considerable uncertainty, which is due to the future of gold mining and the choices that will be made by the government in terms of regulating the activity, particularly in the distribution of the gold rent according to the actors (industrial or artisanal, foreign or national) and in reducing the environmental impact of this mining town located at the gateway to the country's main protected area, the Banc d'Arguin National Park.

Keywords

• new town
• regional planning
• gold
• small scale mining
• Mauritania
• Sahara