El Dorado in the Sahara: Western Sahara Booms As Tensions Grow 

The road from the northern border of Western Sahara to the southern city of Dakhla feels like a road to nowhere: It’s hundreds of miles of sand and sea, with a very occasional truck, sleepy town or military checkpoint interrupting the emptiness.  

And just a few years ago, Dakhla, a small city on the Atlantic of about 100,000 people, was a quiet outpost, with little infrastructure and few jobs. These days, however, it’s become a boomtown, a new “El Dorado,” luring those in search of the proverbial gold.  

Here, a new causeway is being built a mile into the ocean, part of a $1.2 billion port project that aims to connect this once remote corner of Africa with other parts of the continent, South America, and Europe. Officials and investors hope to export phosphate, gas, and fish – and other minerals such as oil from other African countries as well as green hydrogen and ammonia from local wind and solar farms – far beyond its shores.  

Already, tourists are beginning to pour in on new flight routes to stay in newly constructed hotels. A new airport is slated to open to accommodate the new boom in tourism.  

Aside from sunseekers and windsurfers, Moroccan officials say they are welcoming a steady stream of private investors and foreign officials these days, according to Bloomberg. Investment, currently at $10 billion, is expected to quadruple in 15 years.  

“The Western Sahara has gone from a disputed territory that was radioactive to foreign investors to an increasingly normal region that’s receiving a growing flow of capital,” Riccardo Fabiani of the International Crisis Group told the financial newswire. 

It’s obvious to see the political changes, too, in this disputed territory that is mostly under Moroccan control, that some call “Africa’s last colony,” analysts say. 

Recently, the United Kingdom threw its support behind Morocco’s proposal for autonomy for Western Sahara, a plan which would allow Morocco to retain control over defense, foreign policy and its currency, the Moroccan dirham, marking a shift in its position on one of Africa’s longest-running territorial disputes, the Guardian noted. 

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the plan was “the most credible, viable and pragmatic” way to resolve one of Africa’s longest-running and “most frustrating” regional conflicts and also counter Russian expansion in the Sahel region, mitigate irregular immigration to Europe, and take advantage of the economic opportunities.  

The shift in policy in the West on Moroccan claims of the territory was led by the United States in 2020, which analysts say set off the investment boom. Spain changed its stance in 2022 and France, two years later.  

Still, the new energy, excitement, and investment in the region belies the turmoil that is promising to heat up again, wrote Foreign Affairs. 

Morocco, which says the Western Sahara is historically part of its country, a claim the International Court of Justice disputes, has controlled the territory since 1975, when the Spanish withdrew their colonial claims. From that time, it fought the pro-independence group, the Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, in a conflict that killed thousands until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in 1991. 

That left three-quarters of the territory under Moroccan control. The rest, controlled by the Polisario Front, hosted refugee camps for displaced Sahrawis, as the local population is called. 

Still, Moroccan claims were not recognized by most of the world, while the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic proclaimed by the Polisario Front was recognized by more than 40 countries.  

Meanwhile, the UN lists the region as a non-self-governing territory and has tried to hold a referendum on independence for more than 30 years but never has due to issues over who would be eligible to vote.

That’s in part because of Morocco’s resettlement policies: For decades, it has lured Moroccans with incentives to resettle in the region. 

Still, analysts say the recognition by the US, France, and now the UK has left Algeria – where 170,000 Sahrawis live in refugee camps – simmering and the Polisario ready to escalate its fight because it says it has no choice.  

So far, the Polisario has declared the ceasefire dead and has taken its fight to international courts, arguing that Morocco does not have the right to profit from resources belonging to the Sahrawi people while the conflict remains unresolved. Rulings in its favor could hinder the boom. 

For example, in October 2024, European courts annulled two European Union-Morocco trade agreements covering fishing and agriculture, ruling that the deals lacked the required “consent of the people of Western Sahara,” according to New Arab magazine. 

Still, the Sahrawis from Western Sahara are not unanimous about the future of their territory.  

Some, like Kamal Fadel, a lawyer from Western Sahara based in Australia, say that most reject the Moroccan plan and want a referendum to decide.  

“The autonomy proposal is not a step toward peace, it is a sophisticated attempt to entrench occupation and delay justice, rooted in imperial logic, not international law,” he wrote in Modern Diplomacy. “It ignores the clear legal, moral, and political rights of the Sahrawi people to choose their own future.” 

Still, Sarah Zaaimi of the Atlantic Council, who is Sahrawi also, recounted conversations with dozens of people in the Moroccan-held portion of the territory for a field study and found that most expressed extreme fatigue from five decades of conflict and a desire for normality and prosperity. They hope, she said, that the Moroccan plan would bring that change and tackle the region’s issues – corruption and the trafficking of drugs, people, and stolen humanitarian aid.  

“Now, the time is up,” she wrote. “The Sahrawi communities can no longer afford another 50 years of political stalemate.”