Heritage Cities Festival
Organiser: Ministry of Culture, Arts, Communication and Relations with Parliament
Held every year under the High Patronage of His Excellency the President of the Republic, Mr. Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, the Heritage Cities Festival takes place on the second Friday of December. It aims to highlight every dimension of the tangible and intangible heritage of the four historic cities — Chinguetti, Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata — and to honour the cultural, scientific and commercial role these towns played over past centuries as beacons of cultural influence, major hubs of trans-Saharan trade, and centres of production for a culture and heritage whose reach extended to many parts of the world.
Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996, these cities remain a source of pride for all Mauritanians.
The Heritage Cities Festival is a cultural and developmental event that embodies the unique value and major role played by these desert-memory cities throughout centuries of cultural, social and economic growth in our country.
The Heritage Cities Festival is built on a series of cultural and social activities with a direct impact on residents’ living conditions, working towards the following objectives:
- Reviving the vast cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible.
- Promoting cultural activity and integrating it into the productive cycle so that it generates resources contributing to these cities’ development and to poverty reduction.
- Restoring recognition of the cities and their historic role, and lifting them out of isolation and oblivion.
- Boosting tourism, both domestic and international.
Overall, one can measure the main achievements that followed the introduction of a development component aimed at improving residents’ living conditions through significant economic and social projects. Introduced from the 10th edition, Ouadane 2021, the component has amounted to more than 3 billion old ouguiyas at each edition.
Areas of intervention
- Protection and preservation of cultural and architectural heritage.
- Traditional religious education.
- Primary and secondary education.
- Health.
- Agriculture.
- Social affairs, childhood and family.
- Tourism.
- Environment.
- Youth and sports.
- Vocational training.
- Housing and urban development.
- Energy.
- Roads.
- Communications.
- Social affairs.
The Heritage Cities Festival has thus become a major national event dedicated to advancing culture and heritage, a wager on sustainable development, and a landmark stage in the development of the historic cities.