In 1978 Daddah was met by soldiers who carried out the country's first military coup. There followed a series of weak and ineffective governments riddled with plots and coup attempts until Colonel Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya seized power as a result of a further coup in 1984. Although Taya was elected president in subsequent elections, these were widely seen as flawed and Taya effectively ruled as an autocrat. Like so many others before him, Taya made the mistake of leaving the country in 2005 and on 3rd August of that year troops announced his overthrow and the creation of a military council that would hold democratic elections. This duly occurred in 2007 and Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was elected Mauritania's first democratically elected president. Democracy however proved to be short lived and was quashed seventeen months later as a further military coup took place prompted by Abdallahi's attempts to sack senior members of the military. General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, leader of the coup, was elected president in July 2009 and remained in power until 2019 when he was peacefully succeeded by Mohamed Ould Ghazouani.

70% of Mauritania is either desert or semi dessert and frequent droughts have forced many living nomadic lifestyles into urban areas in search of food, water and work. Unfortunately Mauritania does not have the infrastructure required to meet these frequent influxes resulting in severe pressure, housing, sanitation and medical care. For those who continue to live outside urban areas, less that 10% have access to safe drinking water, whilst for the entire population of 4.736 million (2022) it remains at just 53%. With a life expectancy of 64.36 years (2021) and with an adult literacy rate of 53.5%, poverty is a major issue in Mauritania with most children just eating once a day. One mother reported proudly that one day her one year old son ate porridge one day and three days earlier was treated to couscous. Over one hundred and nine children die out of every thousand compared with just three in say a country like Spain. Locusts also plague the area, often wiping out entire harvests sending food prices rocketing.