Boujdour

Boujdour belongs to the province of the same name in the Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra region.¹ The town is the urban and administrative centre of the province.² Its port on the Atlantic coast is served by National Road 1, which links Laayoune with Lagouira.³

In the 2024 census the municipality of Boujdour had 57,360 inhabitants in 13,815 households and the province 65,381.⁴ The province's urban population grew from 42,651 in 2014 to 57,360, by an average of 3 per cent a year. The town accounts for 87.7 per cent of the province's population, the rest living in the municipalities of Gueltat Zemmour, Jraifia and Lamssid.⁵

In everyday life 91.9 per cent of the province's inhabitants speak Darija, 19.9 per cent Hassaniya and 16.6 per cent Amazigh.⁶ In 2024 a household had four members on average, compared with 4.4 in 2014. The share of people aged 60 and over rose from 4.4 to 7.1 per cent over these ten years.⁷

Cape Boujdour played a part in the history of Portuguese seafaring: for twelve years the ships of Henry the Navigator turned back before it, until Gil Eanes, a squire of the prince, rounded it in 1434.⁸ According to the port expert Najib Cherfaoui, it took fifteen expeditions before the cape was passed.⁹

According to Cherfaoui, a wood-fired lighthouse already stood near Boujdour in the 16th century; remains of it survive near the town.¹⁰ The present lighthouse, around which the town grew, was built in 1950 and entered service in 1956: a heptagonal tower 52 metres high whose electric light has a range of 24 nautical miles. About 50 kilometres from the town, at Cape Aghti El Ghazi, stands a second lighthouse, 32 metres high and solar-powered.¹¹

The port of Boujdour consists of a shelter for small-scale fishing behind a 386-metre breakwater and a new port, in operation since 26 April 2012. It is used mainly for coastal fishing and also receives the catches of the pelagic fleet.¹²

The new port is protected by a 724-metre main breakwater and a 260-metre secondary breakwater. Fishing has 490 metres of quay, of which 150 metres at a depth of five metres, 160 metres at three metres and 180 metres of floating pontoons; there are also eight hectares of quayside land, a basin of 8.5 hectares and a slipway for fishing boats.¹³

The Office National de l'Électricité et de l'Eau Potable (ONEE) produces drinking water in Boujdour by desalinating seawater. The first plant dates from 1977 and was extended in 1995, 2005, 2011 and 2016; an ONEE presentation from 2021 gives the capacity as 10,800 cubic metres a day in one place and 11,500 in another.¹⁴