About the Project
In Mauritania, an arid desert nation, more than half of the country’s inhabitants live as nomadic livestock herders, shepherding camels, sheep, goats and cows across the golden sands of the Sahara. Beginning in the 1960s, Mauritania has experienced a number of severe droughts causing the population of the capital city, Nouakchott, to grow from 100,000 inhabitants to one million as life for subsistence livestock herders grew increasingly precarious. In recent decades, more extreme drought across the Sahel – which borders parts of Chad, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – has led to severe impoverishment and food insecurity among these nomadic communities. Dwindling water has led to the widespread death of cattle, stillbirths of calves, and reduced milk production.
Milk and dairy products are critical to the Mauritanian diet, with a per capita consumption of milk and its derivatives up to six times higher than the average consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa. Given the country’s heritage as a pastoral country, nearly all of the milk produced locally does not enter the formal market and is either self-consumed or sold as raw milk. Owing to limited dairy processing capacity, Mauritania imports fresh milk equivalent products – powdered, UHT and evaporated milk – which fulfills nearly 80% of the country’s formal demand.
Given the country’s heritage as a pastoral country, nearly all of the milk produced locally does no