The Cairo–Dakar Highway or TAH 1 is Trans-African Highway 1 in the transcontinental

road A road is a thoroughfare used primarily for movement of traffic. Roads differ from streets, whose primary use is local access. They also differ from stroads, which combine the features of streets and roads. Most modern roads are paved. Th ...

network being developed by the

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA or ECA; , CEA) was established in 1958 by the United Nations Economic and Social Council to encourage economic cooperation among its member states (the nations of the Africa, African contin ...

(UNECA), the

African Development Bank The African Development Bank Group (AfDB, also known as BAD in French) is a multilateral development finance institution, headquartered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast since September 2014. The AfDB is a financial provider to African governments and ...

(ADB), and the

African Union The African Union (AU) is a continental union of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa. The AU was announced in the Sirte Declaration in Sirte, Libya, on 9 September 1999, calling for the establishment of the African Union. The b ...

. The major part of the highway between Tripoli and

Nouakchott Nouakchott ( ) is the capital and largest city of Mauritania. Located in the southwestern part of the country, it is one of the largest cities in the Sahara. The city also serves as the administrative and economic center of Mauritania. Once a ...

has been constructed under a project of the

Arab Maghreb Union The Arab Maghreb Union ( '; AMU/UMA) is a political union and economic union trade agreement aiming for economic and future political unity among Arab countries that are located primarily in the Maghreb in North Africa. Its members are the natio ...

. The Cairo–Dakar Highway has a length of and runs along the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

coast of

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

, continuing down the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

coast of North-West Africa. It is substantially complete except for a few kilometres on the Western Sahara-Mauritania border where there is currently only a desert track. The Nouadhibou-Nouakchott section was paved in 2005 ( :fr:Transport en Mauritanie). It joins with the Dakar-Lagos Highway () to form a north–south route between

Rabat Rabat (, also , ; ) is the Capital (political), capital city of Morocco and the List of cities in Morocco, country's seventh-largest city with an urban population of approximately 580,000 (2014) and a metropolitan population of over 1.2 million. ...

and

Monrovia Monrovia () is the administrative capital city, capital and largest city of Liberia. Founded in 1822, it is located on Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast and as of the 2022 census had 1,761,032 residents, home to 33.5% of Liber ...

across the

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

and around the western extremity of the continent. Since 1994 the land border between Morocco and Algeria has been closed completely, so the Cairo–Dakar Highway cannot be used in its entirety. Construction in Tunisia continues.

External links

* * 1 {{Africa-road-stub

See also

External links