Mauritania sits at a historic trading crossroads between North and sub-Saharan Africa, and boasts a rich commercial, cultural and religious history.
CLIMATE & GEOGRAPHY
The country is hot, dry and windy, and receives little rainfall over the course of the year, which contributes to ongoing desertification. Mauritania’s monthly temperature exceeds 25°C year-round, with the hot season occurring between May and October, and the mean monthly temperature reaching a peak of 33°C in June and July. The country is flanked by the teeming fishing grounds of the Atlantic Ocean, including the Cape Verde archipelago more than 500 km offshore.
Mauritania’s diverse population is concentrated in the temperate south of the country, where the wet season is controlled by the movement of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, which oscillates between the northern and southern tropics over the course of the year. On the southern border, the Senegal River acts as a natural divider with Senegal. Mali lies to the south-east and east, while Algeria flanks its northern borders.
Mauritania’s interior is essentially divided in two: the largely subsistence Sahel region to the south, and the Sahara region to the north, where a modern export economy exists and was thriving in the lead-up to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has since depressed global demand for commodities. While three-quarters of the country’s land mass is classified as a desert, the dunes are dotted with scarps and oases, as well as towering deposits of minerals.
RICH HISTORY
Mauritania takes its name from the Berber kingdom of Mauretania, which the Romans recognised in the 3rd century BCE and which was spread across coastal north-west Africa. Roman annexation preceded the spread of Christianity in the 3rd century, before Muslim Arabs conquered much of West Africa in the 8th century, displacing Christianity with Islam and instilling Arab culture and language. This shift has endured: both culturally and politically, Mauritania remains part of the Arab world, has Arabic as its official language and is a member of the Arab League.
There is more ample historical evidence of the Almoravid empire that flourished during the Middle Ages. The imperial dynasty of Berber Muslims considered present-day Mauritania to be the heart of their empire, which, at its peak in the 11th century, stretched 3000 km from Iberia to the southern Sahel and beyond. The ruins of Almoravid trading posts in the Sahara are still visible and attract a healthy stream of international visitors. Notably, the Banc d’Arguin National Park and the historic cities of Tîchît, Chinguetti, Ouadâne and Oualâta are included on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
The dynasty is notable for its incubation of the Almoravid movement, a conservative Islamic reform school inspired by Maliki jurisprudence. At the height of their power, the Almoravids were vital in preventing Al Andalus – as the Iberian Peninsula was known under Islamic rule – from falling to a Christian coalition of Castilian and Aragonese armies at the Battle of Sagrajas in the year 1086.
The period that followed was characterised by flourishing cultural interchange, the legacy of which remains visible in Morocco and southern Spain through ornate marble basins and tombstones, fine textiles and ceramics, and exquisite Islamic architecture and calligraphy.
COLONIAL PERIOD
Mauritania’s modern history is typical of the so-called Scramble for Africa that saw Europe’s leading powers compete for control of the African continent’s resources and populations. France gained a foothold in the littoral region in 1817 and by 1904 had declared Mauritania a formal protectorate, having won the support of the Moorish population in its bid to connect its North and West African possessions. Independence was formally achieved in 1960, but France’s lingering imprint is MAURITANIA OVERVIEW evident in the national motto – which translates from French to “honour, fraternity and justice” – and the fact that French is still widely spoken, especially among the highly educated.
URBAN GROWTH
While much of the country’s population is still nomadic, just over half of Mauritanians now live in urban areas. In the second-largest city of Nouadhibou, located on the north-west coast, the port serves as a centre for the processing and export of fish and fish products.
The city is home to a free trade zone and one of the three international airports located in the country, with plans to attract investment in fishing, tourism and related industrial infrastructure. The government also hopes to transform Nouadhibou into a regional centre for petroleum, though this will require further rehabilitation and expansion of the area’s oil storage capacity.
To the south lies the capital city of Nouakchott, designated as the seat of government when Mau7 National social indicators have been improving, with life expectancy at birth reaching 65 years in 2020 ritania was established as a republic in 1958, two years before official independence from French colonial rule. Nouakchott has been growing rapidly in the intervening years, catalysed by an influx of migrants displaced by the drought in the greater Sahel region in the 1970s.
Today, the city is a draw for economic migrants from across the region, and its rapid growth is partly responsible for the national population more than doubling between 1990 and 2020, to about 4.5m. It is also a microcosm of Mauritania as a whole, a vibrant mix of the Arab-Berbers who primarily reside in the north of the country, and black Africans from the south who have relocated in search of opportunity. They are drawn by the city’s thriving service trade, much of it informal, as well as government offices and the University of Nouakchott.
Nouakchott-Oumtounsy International Airport, which opened in 2016 and lies 25 km out of town, operates routes to several major African cities, as well as to major destinations like Istanbul and Paris. It also serves as the point of entry for attendees of the Mauritanides conference – one of the region’s largest international gatherings for representatives from the mining, hydrocarbons, investment, banking and service sectors, held every two years.
SOCIAL INDICATORS
In terms of its ethnicity diversity, Mauritania’s population is part Arab-Berber and Beidane/Moor, and part black (non-Arab); the latter category encompasses the Fula, Wolof, Soninke and Haratin people, among others. The rest of the country’s population is mixed.
Broadly speaking, Mauritania’s social indicators have been improving in recent decades. Life expectancy at birth, for example, reached 65 years in 2020, up from less than 45 in 1960. Meanwhile, primary school enrolment hit 100% – an increase from 46.1% in 1990. At the secondary level, education enrolment almost doubled between 2009 and 2019, rising from 20.5% of the country’s eligible youth to 39.4%.
However, as has been the case around the world, several measurements suggest that the Covid-19 pandemic is driving an increase in the incidence of poverty in the country, which rose from 5.4% in 2019 to 6.3% in 2020 and 6.4% in 2021.
POLITICS & RELIGION
In 2019 Mauritania experienced a peaceful transition of power. The former minister of defence, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, won the presidential election, succeeding the two-term incumbent Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who did not stand for re-election. Under a constitution passed in 2006, the country is in the second year of a political cycle that should end by mid-2024, when President Ghazouani’s first five-year term ends.
The constitution established Mauritania as an Islamic republic, and Islam as the sole and official religion of the nation and its citizens. The judiciary consists of a single system of courts based on a combination of sharia and secular principles. The law and legal procedures are derived from a mixture of French civil law and sharia.
SOCIAL STABILITY
Political and social stability in Mauritania has broader implications for both regional and international security. The Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Traditional Education collaborates with independent Muslim religious groups as well as foreign partners in order to combat what it designates as threats of extremism, radicalisation and terrorism in the broader region. Whereas a combination of weaker governance, limited state capacity, corruption, poverty and ethnic tensions has allowed some jihadist groups to take root elsewhere in the wider Sahel region, Mauritania has remained relatively unscathed.
A 2010 decision to establish a national counter-terrorism strategy, which included efforts to equip and train security forces, has served the country well. The Mauritanian response is characterised by an ideological approach that seeks to discredit terrorism in the eyes of the public, as well as encourage prominent Islamic scholars and imams to assist with deradicalisation efforts. The long-term effectiveness of this multidimensional counter-terrorism strategy remains to be seen, but for the time being Mauritania’s successes may offer lessons for the wider Sahel region.
AGRICULTURE
Economic development is another important plank in the country’s counter-terrorism strategy. The government has identified agricultural reform as key to strengthening the economy and promoting inclusive growth.
About 75% of the poor live in rural areas, where the prevalence of poverty is intertwined with weak performance in the agriculture sector, which accounts for 20% of GDP. Shepherds raise livestock, primarily goats and sheep, while farmers work to derive as much value as possible from the small proportion of land that is arable. According to the World Bank, this figure is approximately 0.5%.
The government is laying the foundations for more agricultural productivity, especially among family farms, women and smallholders, while also working to minimise the impact of climate change. It is partnering with the International Fund for Agricultural Development to implement climate-adaptation policies that aim to build capacity and knowledge, improve land management and promote water-saving irrigation techniques (see Agri-business analysis).
EXTRACTIVE ECONOMY
The country’s mineral deposits are replete with iron ore and gold – two of Mauritania’s largest exports. The country also contains deposits of copper, gypsum, uranium and rare earth elements. Phosphate is concentrated in the Kaédi region and petroleum along the coast.
The latter includes the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim natural gas field: one of West Africa’s largest offshore discoveries, in the waters between Mauritania and Senegal. The liquefied natural gas project is being jointly developed by BP, Kosmos Energy, the Société des Pétroles du Sénégal and the Société Mauritanienne des Hydrocarbures. BP is the operator, with commercial production of gas for export and domestic consumption in Mauritania and Senegal slated for 2023 (see Energy analysis). The government is keen to nurture the domestic petrochemicals industry, and to further develop hydrocarbons resources both onshore and offshore.
GREEN ENERGY AMBITIONS
Under a plan to achieve universal access to electricity by 2030, the government also aimed to increase the share of renewable energy in the power generation mix to 60% by the end of 2021, leveraging Mauritania’s substantial renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind and hydropower, as well as its conventional natural gas reserves.
The African Development Bank Group’s Board of Directors recently approved a $6m grant to kick off the first phase of the Desert to Power West Africa Regional Energy Programme. The initiative seeks to reshape the Sahel by harnessing the region’s vast solar potential to connect 250m people using 10,000 MW of solar generation capacity.
ECONOMIC FORECAST
Prime Minister Mohamed Ould Bilal Messoud, who took office in August 2020, is leading the implementation of the Expanded Priority Programme of the President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, which integrates the country’s Covid-19 response plan and focuses on resilience and recovery (see Economy overview).
While the economy was negatively impacted by the pandemic, contracting by 1.5% in 2020, growth is projected to recover to an average of 4.1% in 2021-23. However, that outlook remains subject to downside risks, including the potential for the Omicron variant to prolong the pandemic and delay the government’s reform programme, as well as weaker commodity prices and climate change hazards.
Read More from OBG
