Mauritania's president appoints woman advisor

The new chairperson of the Union for Democracy and Progress, Naha Bint Mouknass, has been appointed advisor to Mauritanian President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, the pan-African news agency PANA said, quoting a presidential decree.

Naha 33, was elected on May 19 at the end of the party's extraordinary congress, in replacement of her father, Hami Ould Mouknass, a former foreign minister who died last September.

A management graduate, she is the first woman leader of a political party in Mauritania, and the second in the Arab world, after Algeria's Louisa Hanoune.