Barren as the Aoukar dunes may be, the Tuaregs who'd navigated along the great route made a home along some of the more habitable parts — for the people of Azawad, Néma is one such place where they'd find refuge.

Before France collapsed in the Second World War, Néma was one of the few notable settlements in the Mauritania region of the French West African administration. Like other traditional Berber territories, the French army began its occupation in the 19th century through diplomatic unification and military conquests of native African kingdoms encompassing these nomadic lands. During this period of being a part of the French colony, most Moors of the area remained pastoralists — but few congregation sites formed regardless due to a need for central governance and trading posts. Out of practicality and due to a lack of arable land, Néma's primary purpose was to act to herders as a pitstop rather than a self-subsisting township, which led to a structure resembling autonomous quarters over a cohesive administration.

Néma's mainstay, as in many parts of the inhabited Azawad, is its status as the capital of an extensive slave trading network — a lucrative business that remains broadly practiced by the Arabic emirs and elites despite its illegality under the former French government. Currently, despite the West African debacle which has become a fact of life, the local nobility and chiefs choose to remain silent and neutral so long as their people continue to live uninfringed in their traditional way of life.