Morocco's Atlantic gamble: a port for the landlocked Sahel

Rabat is spending heavily to give the Sahel an ocean, and to anchor its hold on Western Sahara.

Morocco is building a roughly 1.3 billion dollar port on the Atlantic coast of Western Sahara, the centrepiece of an initiative to offer Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso a route to the sea. Due around 2028, it is designed to remake the economics of a landlocked region and to deepen Morocco's influence over states drifting away from their old alignments.

It also serves a domestic purpose. By developing the territory and winning recognition of its sovereignty claim, most consequentially from Washington, Rabat hardens facts on the ground in a dispute that has shaped its foreign policy for half a century.

The project faces real obstacles, from Sahel insecurity to the politics of the territory itself. But it captures Morocco's method: long horizons, infrastructure, and the patient conversion of geography into power.