Despite threats from the Polisario, competitors, sponsors and participants of the 14th edition of Rallye Africa Eco Race fully enjoy the dunes and sandy tracks of the Sahara and are currently in this Wednesday to Akjoujt in Mauritania for a loop stage (Akjoujt/ Akjoujt) of more than 420 km of special.
The Africa Eco Race international rally-raid, created in 2009 by the desire of African countries to maintain a rally on the continent after the Dakar Rally moved to South America, has 550 participants and 212 vehicles (80 participating in the race) in four categories, namely motorcycles, four-wheel drive vehicles (4×4), vehicles halfway between buggies and quads (SSV) and trucks connects Monaco to Dakar via Morocco and Mauritania.
Thirty nationalities from all continents are represented there to compete for twelve days of extreme adventure, all full of surprises and twists and turns over a distance of more than 6,000 km including more than 4,00 km of special before arriving in Dakar, at Lac Pink on October 30.
There was a change of half the course compared to the previous edition before Dame Covid. The latter had forced the rally into a two-year hiatus. However, the crews covered five stages in Morocco, the first linking Nador and Bousaid (605 km), the second Bousaid and Tagounite (466 km), the third Tagounite and Assa (526 km), the fourth linking Assa and Es- Smara (455 km) and the fifth stage between Es-Smara and Dakhla (691 km) before crossing Guergarate, door of the Moroccan Sahara to deep Africa on Monday October 24. They then took the direction towards the city of Chami in Mauritania, after a stopover, Saturday, October 22, in Dakhla.
All is well under the blue skies of the Sahara and the Africa Eco Race international rally-raid is going well. We remember in the first week of September, the separatists had launched, in a press release, threats saying they reserved “the right” to use all “legitimate” means to respond to any action aimed at bringing undermining their “sovereignty” and their “territorial integrity”.
The Polisario accuses in this the organizers of the rally of collusion with the authorities of Rabat, trying to make the participants believe that the circuit crosses a war zone. The organizers did not care and did not even deign to respond to the press release.
Today, everything is good under the best of skies, that of the Sahara in this case, and the participants in the Africa Eco Race Rally are giving it their all, no offense to Algeria and its offspring. It must be said that this competition from its conception in 2009 had received security assurances from Morocco, Mauritania Senegal as well as those from the United Nations through Minurso.