Mauritania - Opportunities in the desert
Mauritania is one of the world’s least populated countries. At a density of just 5 people per square kilometre there are only 9 other countries in the world with a lower population density.
Not only is the population density low, but the population itself is also below 6 million people. Add to this a GDP per capita ranking amongst the world’s 50 poorest nations, and this leads to relatively limited container volumes.
According to Container Trade Statistics (CTS), Mauritania imports some 162,000 TEU per year and exports 31,000 TEU. This is based on data from January to July 2026 and assumes the rest of 2026 sees the same monthly volumes as the initial part of the year.
When driving through the country, the vast open emptiness is an ever-present dominant feature. For most of the country this is in the form of the Sahara desert.
There are only a few paved roads leading through here. The most important one being the road going north from the capital Nouakchott to the northern city of Nouadhibou and onwards to the border into Morocco where it connects to the 2200 km long stretch of highway all the way north to Tangiers at the Strait of Gibraltar.
Nouadhibou is an important export location for iron ore. Iron or mining has been going in in the mountains around the desert town of Zouerat since the 1950s and in 1963 a 700-km railway was opened connecting the mines in Zouerat to the port in Nouadhibou.
To this date there is no road directly connecting Zouerat to Nouadhibou, only the railway does that.
Trains stretching as long as 2 kilometres complete the journey in approximately 20 hours, sometimes with several trains per day depending on the mining output.
The iron ore port in Nouadhibou allows vessels with a draft of up to 16 meters. However, the general port in Nouadhibou is not located together with the iron ore port. Instead the general port only has a draft of less than 7 meters, although they will shortly open a new pier with a draft slightly more than 7 meters. This still leaves the port quite restricted in terms of vessel size.
Seen from a container shipping perspective, it is additionally limited by a lack of quay cranes, meaning it can only be serviced by geared vessels.
Nouadhibou has substantial fishing operations, and quite a range of fish companies are located in the town. These companies take delivery of the freshly landed fish, sort, package, process and freeze them and then subsequently export them. Several a Chinese owned and operated companies are amongst them, however they do not only use Chinese fishing vessels. Some use Turkish fishing vessels as these are better equipped for certain types of fishing offshore Mauritania.
Not all frozen fish are exported by reefer containers though. Some are loaded onto trucks and quite literally driven all the way to Europe. Solid statistics are hard to come by, but conversations with stakeholders in town imply this could be more than a hundred trucks per week.
From the perspective of importers and exporters, the attraction for overland trucking is not just the short 5-6 day transit time, but also that the present market makes an approximate trucking cost of 7-8000 Euro relatively comparable to a shipping solution which might run some 5-6000 Euro – and then the shipping solution will still need trucking for the final leg at destination. Note that these indicative prices are very rough indeed :-)
The attractiveness of the overland option might be further boosted by the recent agreement between Morocco and Mauretania to improve the road between the two countries.
However, there are still many fish products being exported by container. CTS data shows approximate annualized reefer exports of some 17,000 TEU per year. This is, however, from both ports in Nouadhibou and Nouakchott.
Liner service data from Linerlytica shows there are presently 5 regular liner services calling Nouadhibou. However, only 3 of these are weekly services. 2 link to the transhipment hub in Tangiers, two link to the Canary Islands and 2 link to ports further down in West Africa.
According to data from UNCTAD, Nouadhibou ranks as number 501 in the world in terms of connectivity to the rest of the world for liner services.
There is a plan being investigated by the Mauritanian government to see whether a public-private partnership model could be feasible for developing a new deep-water container and general purpose port possibly at the same place as the iron ore port. This could potentially be of benefit to other projects presently exploring the option for developing green hydrogen production in this area (more about this later).
Additional prospects for such a new terminal would include inland links to the Sahel countries as well as Algeria. Work is ongoing on creating a paved road across Sahara from Tindouf in Algeria to the Mauritanian mining hub in Zouerat opening a whole new transport corridor from southern Algeria. This road will some 860 kilometres across the desert where presently there is no paved road. Originally, it was supposed to be completed in 2025, but work is still ongoing.
The other main port in the country is located in the capital Nouakchott. The container port is equipped with two modern STS cranes as well as well functioning yard equipment.
Additionally they are about to introduce 7 fully electric trucks into the yard operations. They have their own on-site training facility including a start-of-the-art simulator for training operators for the cranes as well as yard equipment. Following a phase-in period with external consultants, the operation is now fully managed and run with local employees.
The access to better port facilities also means a higher degree of connectivity. Linerlytica data shows the presence of 13 liner services whereof 9 are listed as weekly.
On UNCTAD’s list of port liner connectivity, Nouakchott ranks as number 268. This is roughly on par with Helsinki in Finland, Fort-de-France in Martinique and Niigata in Japan.
A key challenge for the port is that it is presently not protected from swells coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. This on average means more than 50 days per year where some port operations have to be suspended, mostly in the winter part of the year.
The authorities are seemingly in a process of contemplating whether to built a breakwater to eliminate this problem. Seen from the perspective of using shipping to create more trade and growth opportunities, this would seem to me to be a vital infrastructure project to get planned and executed as quickly as possible.
Nouakchott is connected by 3 main important roads.
The N1 leads northeast to Zouerat – and hence all the way to southern Algeria when the road to Tindouf is completed.
The N2 follows the coast of Mauritania linking Morocco to Senegal with Noakchott in the middle. The most important element here is to complete the bridge between Mauritania and Senegal in the border town of Rosso. Presently all traffic has to use a small ferry – or perhaps barge is a better word. And the customs formalities are onerous to the point where Rosso is widely known as being one of the more difficult border crossings in West Africa.
The bridge has been under construction for several years. It should have already opened, but realistically this might not happen until 2027.
The N3 leads eastwards towards Mali. This highway has the name “Highway of Hope” and cuts through Sahel landscapes.
There is traffic here linking into Mali, however the security situation in Mali means connections into Bamako are tenuous at best.
There is a growing interest from companies seeking to explore mining and energy projects in Mauritania.
On the mining side this includes minerals such as iron, copper, gold, uranium and quartz. But the desert is also being contemplated as a location for rare earth minerals, lithium, manganese, titanium, chromite, phosphates, and gypsum.
There is also a growing interest in green energy projects in Mauritania, mainly aimed at taking advantage of the vast open, and relatively flat, landscapes to create major solar and wind energy farms, and then use this to produce green energy.
An example of such a project is Danish GreenGo Energy. They have in 2025 together with a German partner announced the “Megaton Moon” Power-to-X (PtX) project in Mauritania. The ambition is to create one of the world’s largest green ammonia production facilities powered by solar and wind.
Seen from a container shipping perspective, the exports of many of these raw materials is not likely to be containerized, although for some mining products this could be viable given the large imbalance resulting in high availability of empty containers in the country.
However, these projects all require major imports of both materials and components related to building the facilities in the first place, as well as components related to the running and maintenance of the facilities.
All in all, Mauritania has significant opportunities. These are in the main centered around supplying the raw materials industry – both inbound and outbound. The opportunities are therefore also not only related to container shipping but also to project, bulk and liquid cargo.
Several key elements warrants a look at investments and upgrades in order to facilitate unlocking these opportunites. These include:
Upgrading the quality of trucks in the country. I have been fortunate to visit some 150 countries in the world, and Mauritania takes the price in terms of the sheer amount of outright wrecks (trucks and cars alike) which remain in use on the roads.
Constructing a breakwater for the port of Nouakchott. Having some 50 days where parts of the port in the capital cannot be used due to swell needs to be improved.
Finalizing the bridge to Senegal to make cargo flows much smoother
Finalizing the road to southern Algeria
Upgrading the road to Morocco
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