Art Moves Africa – Retracing Roots and Tracing New Routes: Mobility and Touring in North Africa

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Country-Specific Information
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FUNDING
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The Ministry of Culture is said to offer funding, but
procedures and budgets are not clear and funds
are poorly organized. Artists reportedly depend
heavily on cooperation institutes, embassies and
festival invitations to travel. Mauritanians are very
little represented in AMA’s statistics, as in those
of other funds in the region.
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IMPEDIMENTS
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Isolation: high costs of travel and lack of
funding
· Flight costs to / from Nouakchott are high.
· Mauritanian cultural actors are not well connected
to funding organizations. Conversely,
international funding organizations have so
far not made efforts to bolster mobility of
Mauritanian cultural actors.
· While Mauritanians are technically eligible for
all major funds (AFAC, al-Mawred al-Thaqafy,
RCF), its ambiguous status between North and
West Africa may feed (potentially unconscious)
exclusion from Arab / MENA-oriented initiatives.
· The Ministry of Culture does not support travel
of cultural actors.
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M
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Algeria have done a disservice to its relations
with Morocco, making visas to the
Kingdom more difficult to obtain.
Language
· Not all Mauritanians speak English or French
sufficiently to fill in funding applications
in those languages and as such may feel
intimidated.
Lack of professionalization
· Opportunities for professional artistic training
and development are virtually nil in Mauritania.
As such, artists do not necessarily
have the skills or knowledge to search for
funding, finance their careers, etc.
They want to travel but they are stuck inside
the country – they don’t understand cultural
management. – Atigh Ould, founder and director
of Festival Nomade, Nouakchott / Montreal*
Visas
· Mauritanian cultural actors must travel to Dakar
to get visas to countries that do not have a
diplomatic representation in Nouakchott.
Many young people want to attend events in Europe
and the USA; but it takes time, and if you don’t know
the ambassador, it takes months. Even Morocco
and Egypt are starting to get complicated as well. –
Mohamed Idoumou, Poet, journalist, documentary
filmmaker and cultural operator, Maison du
cinéma de Nouakchott*
· Mauritania’s neutral stance on the Western
Sahara issue and diplomatic relations with