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Donald Mackenzie, sometimes spelled MacKenzie, was a British-Scottish entrepreneur and adventurer.

Biography
In 1874, Donald Mackenzie decided to launch a "water-highway" in Western Sahara, later in 1877 he presented the project of the Sahara Sea to permit the introduction of the water from the Atlantic to the desert, and allow the commercial navigation in Africa. This project is detailed in a book published the same year in London. After, Mackenzie decided to exploit the trans-Saharan trade by caravans.

He creates since that in 1879 the North West Africa Company, after requesting to Mahammad Bayruk, son of the local leader of Sous Mubarak Bayruk died in 1859, to cede a land at Tarfaya with two miles wide and eight miles long, where he build his company. The acquisition was later sold to Morocco by an agreement of six clauses dated 13 March 1895 and signed by the English and Moroccan Governments, respectively represented by Ernest Mason Satow and Ba Ahmed.

Three years later, in 1880, he opened with the help of Bayruk a trading post at Tarfaya.