Background
He was born on January 1, 1924, at Mbout in Middle Mauritania in a Moslem Toucouleur family. His father was a male nurse.
He was born on January 1, 1924, at Mbout in Middle Mauritania in a Moslem Toucouleur family. His father was a male nurse.
Educated at Rosso primary and Boghe regional school.
He became a clerk at Etablissements Lacombc (freres) at Rosso in 1942 and a government forwarding clerk in 1945 and accountant in the French West Africa Treasury in 1948. By 1958 he had risen to Chief Accountant in the Grand Council of French West Africa in Dakar, becoming the Chief Accountant for Mali in 1959 and Secretary-General of the Mauritanian Delegation in Dakar in 1960. He became First Councillor in the Mauritanian Embassy in the USA from 1961 to 1965 when he was called horn to become Director of Moktar Ould Daddah’s cabinet. Here his administrative qualities earned him promotion to Minister of Interior in July 1968 until 1971, when he became the secretary for organisation in the party office.
An African, with little formal education, whose rapid rise from clerk to the highest permanent office in the Mauritanian Peoples’ Party makes him one of the most powerful men in Mauritania. When the Party called a Special Congress in 1971 and decided on a new policy of economic and cultural independence and the démocratisation of party and Government affairs, he was asked to step down from the important Interior Ministry and concentrate entirely on party organisation.