Mauritania
In Mauritania, Oxfam's focus is on education, sustainable livelihoods, and helping ensure that people are able to cope with regular drought.
Coping with recurrent drought
Since the 1970s, Mauritania has had to cope with the effects of regular and recurring drought. Many people depend on the small amount of rain that falls each year between July and October.
Getting enough water is a daily challenge. Women and children often have to spend all day walking to collect water for their families. This deprives many children, especially girls, of the chance to go to school.
How Oxfam is helping
We have been installing and repairing wells and building dams. Through this work, we aim to give around 23,000 people the water they desperately need.
Now we have water, a well, one kilometre from our village. Now that water is next to us, we can wash, our children can wash, and we can clean the house. We also have more time for other things.
Salke and Salme, Affole
Taking the first steps out of poverty
The average income in Mauritania is just $530. Around 40 per cent of Mauritanians live below the poverty line. Millions are trapped in a cycle where they cannot earn or grow any more than their families need to survive.
How Oxfam is helping
We are providing small loans to groups of women who would not normally be able to get credit, to help them take the first steps out of poverty. The women use these loans to grow vegetables and make handcrafts – activities that will earn them money.
The loan changed my life. After my husband died, I depended on other people to care for my family, but now I am able to look after them myself.
Sadda Diop, loan recipient
Other development work
- Working with youth organisations
- Supporting vocational training
- Promoting women's rights
West Africa Food Crisis, 2005-6
Severe drought, following a locust invasion, devastated crops and plunged huge parts of West Africa into crisis in 2005.
Mali, Niger and Mauritania were particularly badly affected with an estimated 1.2 million people faced with starvation.
How Oxfam responded
Oxfam was one of the first organisations to respond to the crisis. Our initial focus was on distributing food, vaccinating animals and providing subsidised animal feed. Further activities helped people become self-sufficient again.
The locusts came and destroyed our crops – which were already suffering due to the lack of rain from the previous year. No one had any stocks of food to rely on. We were very weak with hunger before Oxfam came to support us with food like cereals and oil.
Resident of Zagoura village
Find out more about Oxfam's West Africa Food Crisis response
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