How come Mauritania is almost always excluded from maps of North Africa?
This has been really confusing for me especially as i was growing up as a Mauritanian because whenever I was in the States and I said I am North African, i was told I wasn’t. Yet when i was in North Africa it was just fact. I looked into it and it seems like this is due to the French colonial boundaries in 1904 that removed Mauritania from the North and grouped it with the West. When Mauritania gained independence in 1960, the UN just built its modern regions on top of the colonial blocs made by the French for convenience. I think this could also have something to do with skin color as I notice other lighter Mauritanians don’t have this experience of being told they are not North African and that there is no chance they are Amazigh. If anyone has any knowledge about this I’d love to know