Akjoujt
| Akjoujt أكجوجت |
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 Rest area and shop on the main street |
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| State : |
 Mauritania
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| Region : | Inchiri | ||
| Department: | Akjoujt | ||
| Coordinates : | 19 ° 45 ′ N , 14 ° 23 ′ W | ||
| Height : | 117 meters above sea level | ||
| Time zone : | GMT ( UTC ± 0 ) | ||
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Akjoujt , Arabic أكجوجت, DMG Akǧauǧat , formerly Fort Repoux , is the capital and at the same time the only small town in the administrative region Inchiri in Mauritania . In the second half of the 20th century, copper and later gold were mined from the settlement built for this purpose .
location
Akjoujt is about 120 meters above sea level in a flat, firm and almost vegetation-free sand plain, which belongs to the western part of the Sahara . The place is surrounded by some up to 500 meter high conical island mountains (Guelb) . Akjoujt is the only stop on the asphalt road between Atar , which is 195 kilometers northwest, and the state capital Nouakchott , 256 kilometers southeast, and serves as a resting place for travelers. The road runs in the main direction of several successive ranges of hills on both sides of the plain. Fossil water , which is available at a depth of 90 meters in the Benichab oasis about 110 kilometers southwest , supplies Akjoujt with drinking water via a pipe. The daytime temperatures rise in June, shortly before the summer rainy season, to 45 to 50 ° C, only around the turn of the year do the maximum values during the day stay just below 30 ° C.
Mining and townscape
The copper deposits in the area were already known in the Middle Ages, they were discovered by geologists in 1940. During the French colonial era, a garrison called Fort Repoux was located here . A settlement was established in 1970 when the mining company Société Minière de Mauritanie (SOMIMA) began mining the country's only copper ore deposits in the immediate vicinity. A copper mine is located on the Guelb Moghrein, a hill five kilometers north of the village. In 1975 the company was nationalized, but due to a lack of profitability, the dismantling was stopped in May 1978 and part of the residents emigrated. One reason for this was the steadily falling copper price on the world market since 1974.
Other companies later tried to reactivate ore mining. From 1980 to 1983, these included the Société Arabe des Mines de Inchiri (SAMIN) with no production results. Between 1992 and 1996 a company (the MORAK Consortium consisting of SAMIN, General Gold Resources NL and the International Finance Corporation IFC) mined for gold in the old copper mining area.
The Canadian company First Quantum Minerals has been making a new attempt since 2004/2005 , which acquired a concession to mine copper and gold at the same time. In 2009, the Guelb Moghrein ore had a copper content of 1.6 percent. That year the yield was 36,608 tons of copper and 93,352 ounces of gold. For this, 2.74 million tons of ore had to be extracted with three times the amount of overburden . In December 2009 the company estimated the remaining mining time to be 7 ½ years.
The 2000 census showed a population of 7904. Along the main street there is at least one gas station, simple grocery stores and several resting places for travelers. These are sunbathing areas shaded with sheet metal roofs and equipped with mattresses. Tea and grilled meat are offered here. The almost exclusively single-storey residential buildings with one or two rooms open to an inner courtyard that is surrounded by a high wall.
The runway with the IATA airport code AJJ is not regularly served.
sons and daughters of the town
- Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (* 1956), head of state since 2008
Web links
- Akjoujt Mine, Akjoujt (Akjout; Fort Repoux). mindat.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anthony G. Pazzanita: Historical Dictionary of Mauritania. 2nd ed. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham (Maryland) / Toronto / Plymouth 2008, p. 55
- ↑ Guelb Moghrein Copper-Gold Mine, Mauritania. ( Memento of November 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (PDF; 3.53 MB)
- ↑ Statistiques Demographiques: Résultats du RGPH 2000 des Wilayas. ( Memento of December 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) République Islamique de Mauritanie