Bouarfa

Bouarfa lies in the Oriental region and is the seat of Figuig province.¹ At the 2024 census the municipality had 30,068 inhabitants in 6,715 households, almost three times as many as the oasis of Figuig with 10,449.² The province as a whole had 144,451 inhabitants, 52.9 per cent of them living in towns, and between 2014 and 2024 it grew faster than any other province of the Oriental, at 0.43 per cent a year.³

In everyday life 83.2 per cent of the people of Figuig province speak Darija and 35.8 per cent Tamazight; across the Oriental the share of Tamazight averages 7.1 per cent.⁴

Geologically, the area belongs to the eastern High Atlas. The iron and manganese deposits near Bouarfa lie in Sinemurian carbonate rocks; the ores are mostly stratiform, with some separate bodies and veins along faults.⁵ According to a 2022 study, more than 1.5 million tonnes of manganese have been mined there, and reserves still amount to several million tonnes. The authors interpret the deposit as sediment laid down on a shallow carbonate platform in at least two phases of mineralisation.⁶

The Société des mines de Bou-Arfa was founded as a public limited company on 11 August 1922. Two dahirs of 5 December 1925 granted it mining permits for its manganese mines; extraction was to begin as soon as the question of transporting the ore was resolved.⁷

For this purpose the 310-kilometre railway from Oujda to Bouarfa was built. Its track was laid from the end of 1929 and was due to be finished in early 1931; the port of Oran was initially planned for shipping the ore.⁸ In 1957 the mines produced 61,884 tonnes of manganese ore, against 63,047 tonnes the year before.⁹

The Bouarfa weather station lies at 1,142 metres. On average over 1991 to 2020, 163 millimetres of precipitation fall there per year, most of it in October with 24.9 millimetres. The mean daily maximum ranges from 13.9 °C in January to 38.6 °C in July, and the mean minimum in January is 1.9 °C.¹⁰