Sixty years old, Nouakchott was originally a village on the desert trail north from Dakar that only after independence developed as the capital of the new nation of Mauritania. During the Saharan droughts of the 1970s, Nouakchott became a major refugee center resulting in the rapid growth of population together with a sharp decline in the number of nomads. This caused massive urbanization and overcrowding: buildings continue even where roads are non-existent.