The Tiznit–Dakhla expressway connects southern Morocco with Laayoune, Boujdour and Dakhla through disputed Western Sahara. Dashed arrows indicate proposed Atlantic Initiative access toward Mauritania and the landlocked Sahel. Illustration: Conflict Alert.
King Mohammed VI officially confirmed Morocco will name its 1,055-kilometre Tiznit-Dakhla expressway the “Donald J. Trump Highway,” according to a July 2 letter to Trump that state news agency MAP released on August 1. Trump had thanked the king for the “great honor” in a July 26 Truth Social post.
The road runs through Western Sahara, a territory on Africa’s northwest coast. When Spain withdrew as colonial ruler in 1975, Morocco moved in and annexed most of the territory. Morocco administers most of Western Sahara, but sovereignty over the former Spanish colony remains unresolved under the UN process. The Algeria-backed Sahrawi independence movement, the Polisario Front, still controls a strip along the territory’s eastern edge. A UN-brokered ceasefire largely held from 1991 until hostilities resumed in 2020. The United Nations still lists Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, and a promised independence referendum has never been held.
The highway, port and related investment deepen Morocco’s administrative and economic integration of the territory, raising the practical cost of any future separation. The expressway links Laayoune, the territory’s largest city, to the future Dakhla Atlantic deep-water port further down the coast.
Morocco is pairing this with regional diplomacy. Its “Atlantic Initiative” offers landlocked Sahel countries, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, a route to the ocean through Moroccan ports. All three have endorsed the initiative.
Trump recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in 2020 as part of a U.S.-brokered agreement under which Morocco normalized relations with Israel. The highway naming ties that disputed U.S. recognition directly to the infrastructure binding Dakhla to the rest of Morocco.
