This Selected Issues paper analyzes various aspects of fiscal framework in the Republic of Mauritania. Mauritania needs to avoid pro-cyclical fiscal policies and adopt rules that guide medium-term fiscal sustainability. Fiscal policy has been responsible and focused on fiscal consolidation, but important challenges lie ahead linked to price volatility, exhaustibility of resources, and effective use of resources. Mauritania has important natural resource wealth, and its fiscal policy is shaped by considerations resulting from its reliance on resource revenues. Prospects for price shocks in the short term and significant mining expansion in the long term could pose significant challenges to fiscal policy management. The analysis of fiscal framework options reveals that a fiscal rule which targets a nonresource primary balance for long-term sustainability, designed to allow some frontloading of public spending on productive investment, would be appropriate for Mauritania under the assumption of a finite resource horizon. A fiscal rule targeting a structural resource balance would be appropriate in the scenario of long-lasting resources, possible under the assumption of favorable developments in the global commodity markets.

Mauritania was one of the countries to reach the completion point under the enhanced Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. The revised fiscal, balance of payments, and monetary data, including data on commercial banks, revealed that the main program parameters were missed by large margins. In 2003–04, progress in structural reforms was slower than planned, and major weaknesses surfaced in fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate management. Executive Directors welcomed the authorities’ intention to gear medium-term spending plans toward poverty reduction.

Volatile commodity prices and a tightly managed exchange rate (ER) have led to boom and bust cycles with significant impacts on the public and financial sectors. While the previous Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement (December 2017—March 2021) has helped maintain macroeconomic stability, the pandemic has delayed structural reform implementation and widened the gap to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, surging international commodity prices since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine have deteriorated the external and fiscal balances and led to inflationary pressures and food insecurity. In March 2021, the authorities requested a successor arrangement to support accelerated implementation of their national development strategy, help increase social and infrastructure spending, and improve governance and the business environment.

This book focuses on the current issues and analytical approaches to the phenomenon of radicalisation in North Africa. Taking a comprehensive approach to the subject, it looks at the processes that lead to radicalisation, rather than the often violent outcomes.

Although slavery was legally abolished in 1981 in Mauritania, its legacy lives on in the political, economic, and social discrimination against ex-slaves and their descendants. Katherine Ann Wiley examines the shifting roles of Muslim arāīn (ex-slaves and their descendants) women, who provide financial support for their families. Wiley uses economic activity as a lens to examine what makes suitable work for women, their trade practices, and how they understand and assert their social positions, social worth, and personal value in their everyday lives. She finds that while genealogy and social hierarchy contributed to status in the past, women today believe that attributes such as wealth, respect, and distance from slavery help to establish social capital. Wiley shows how the legacy of slavery continues to constrain some women even while many of them draw on neoliberal values to connect through kinship, friendship, and professional associations. This powerful ethnography challenges stereotypical views of Muslim women and demonstrates how they work together to navigate social inequality and bring about social change.

A masterpiece of literary memory—a powerful exploration of the intersections of family, history, and memory "One evening in May 1948, my mother went to a party in New York with her first husband and left it with her second, my father." So begins the passionate and stormy union of Mikhail Kamenetzki, aka Ugo Stille, one of Italy's most celebrated journalists, and Elizabeth Bogert, a beautiful and charming young woman from the Midwest. The Force of Things follows two families across the twentieth century—one starting in czarist Russia, the other starting in the American Midwest—and takes them across revolution, war, fascism, and racial persecution, until they collide at mid-century. Their immediate attraction and tumultuous marriage is part of a much larger story: the mass migration of Jews from fascist-dominated Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a micro-story of that moment of cross-pollination that reshaped much of American culture and society. Theirs was an uneasy marriage between Europe and America, between Jew and WASP; their differences were a key to their bond yet a source of constant strife. Alexander Stille's The Force of Things is a powerful, beautifully written work with the intimacy of a memoir, the pace and readability of a novel, and the historical sweep and documentary precision of nonfiction writing at its best. It is a portrait of people who are buffeted about by large historical events, who try to escape their origins but find themselves in the grip of the force of things.

Ray Norman spent most of his life living in far-flung corners of the globe, working on long-term development projects and living out his calling as a Christian professional. By the time he arrived in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania around the turn of the millennium, he was veteran of life as an expat, at home in countries and cultures not his own. But in 2001, the world was about to change—and so was Ray’s life. In the aftermath of 9/11—a time when tensions between Muslim and Western culture were peaking—Ray and his daughter, Hannah, made the short drive from their home to the Mauritanian beach. But instead of spending the afternoon enjoying the waves and the water, father and daughter found themselves hurtling back to the city, each with a bullet-hole pumping blood into the floorboards of their jeep. Dangerous Love is an account of the Normans’ brush with violent extremism—and of the family’s unexpected return to Mauritania in the face of terrifying risks. This is the story of a call that could not be denied and of a family’s refusal to give up on love.

Charts the responses of the Sufi orders to the French colonial regime and their negotiations over power and autonomy.

In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas empire at the end of the Second World War. Yet just fifteen years later France had decolonized, and by 1960 only a few small island territories remained under French control.The process of decolonization in Indochina and Algeria has been widely studied, but much less has been written about decolonization in France's largest colony, French West Africa. Here, the French approach was regarded as exemplary -- that is, a smooth transition successfully managed by well intentioned French politicians and enlightened African leaders. Overturning this received wisdom, Chafer argues that the rapid unfurling of events after the Second World War was a complex , piecemeal and unpredictable process, resulting in a 'successful decolonization' that was achieved largely by accident. At independence, the winners assumed the reins of political power, while the losers were often repressed, imprisoned or silenced.This important book challenges the traditional dichotomy between 'imperial' and 'colonial' history and will be of interest to students of imperial and French history, politics and international relations, development and post-colonial studies.