Today, Mauritania presents itself as a country with enormous future potential. In particular, its location in Northwest Africa at the Atlantic with the neighbouring states of Algeria, Mali, Senegal and the southern provinces of Morocco is of particular interest.
With more than 1 million km², the country is almost three times as large as Germany. The population of Mauritania (approx. 4.4 million) is very unequally distributed, approx. 1 million live in the capital Noukchott. In addition, Mauritania is home to about 54,000 refugees.
Due to its role in combating crime and illegal immigration and its geographical proximity to Europe, Mauritania is a strategic country in West Africa. Mauritania is the largest recipient per capita of funds from an EU fund for Africa. The Fund aims to reduce the migration of the country’s poor people in search of opportunities to live abroad. At the Sahel Conference in February 2018, the EU pledged more than 400 million euros for this purpose.
In December 2018, the Sahel Alliance pledged further 1.5 billion euros in financial aid to the five Sahel states of Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad.
The country is working towards closer integration into the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) from which it left in 2000. At that time, Mauritania wanted to concentrate more on its membership of the Arab Maghreb Union. With a new accession, the country wants to boost trade flows along the Mauritanian Road of Hope (from Nouakchot in the west to the city of Néma in the east, approx. 1100 km). The Road of Hope is connected to the coastal road that connects Morocco with Senegal.
The port of Nouakchott is also to be developed as a gateway for inland regions of the Sahel.
In 2015, one of the largest deep-water gas fields of recent years – the Tortue West field – was discovered. The gas field extends between Senegal and Mauritania. As early as 2018, these two developing countries agreed on a fair and equitable distribution of resources. The Tortue project will produce gas from an ultra-deep underwater system and a floating production, storage and offloading ship (FPSO). Production is expected to start as early as 2022.
Politically, Mauritania is moving towards Morocco. Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz recently spoke out unconditionally in favour of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara and declared that the West does not envisage another state between Rabat and Nouakchott, a clear rejection of the sovereignty plans of the Polisario.
In view of these developments, Mauritania is certainly an interesting location.
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