Moktar Ould Daddah (Arabic: مختار ولد داداه, romanized: Mukhtār Wald Dāddāh; December 25, 1924 – October 14, 2003) was a Mauritanian politician who served as the country's first President after it gained its independence from France.

[1] He established an authoritarian one-party state, with his Mauritanian People's Party being the sole legal political entity in the country, and followed a policy of "Islamic socialism" with many nationalizations of private businesses.

Moreover, drought in the Sahel, principally in the period between 1969 and 1974, and a decline in export revenues due to fall in international prices of iron, had lowered living standards considerably.

What brought an end to Moktar's regime was Mauritania's war in Western Sahara against the Polisario Front, an indigenous movement fighting against the Moroccan-Mauritanian attempt to jointly annex the territory, starting in 1975.

The Mauritanian Moors are closely related to the Sahrawis, and virtually all northern tribes had members on both sides of the (former) frontier, many of whom sympathized with the Polisario's demands for independence.

Further dissatisfaction arose in the South, from where Black troops were sent to fight what they regarded as an essentially inter-Arab conflict, and one which could, if successful, entrench Moktar's discriminatory rule even further by the addition of several thousand new Moorish citizens.

Polisario then turned to attacking the iron mines in Zouerate, at which point the country's economy started backsliding, and Moktar's public support tumbled.

[9] After a period of imprisonment, Moktar was allowed to go into exile in France in August 1979, where he organized an opposition group, the Alliance pour une Mauritanie Democratique (AMD) in 1980.