Mauritania’s Balancing Act amid Intensifying Algerian-Moroccan Rivalry

Growing economic and diplomatic rivalries increasingly define Algeria and Morocco’s relations with Sahel and West African countries. The Western Sahara conflict between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front is a key driver of that process. Recent years have seen a temporary military escalation between the Polisario and Morocco, an arms race between Algeria and Morocco, and Algeria’s severance of diplomatic relations with Morocco, partly in response to the latter’s normalisation with Israel. Meanwhile, Morocco has gained US and French support for its claims to sovereignty over Western Sahara, and successfully shifted the positions of numerous African states.

In this context, Mauritania has become a focus of geopolitical competition between Morocco and Algeria. Mauritania shares a border with Western Sahara – which it partially occupied between 1975 and 1979 – and has recognised the Polisario’s Sahrawi Republic since 1984, while maintaining what successive Mauritanian presidents have called “positive neutrality” towards its two North African neighbours. Mauritania provides Morocco’s only land route to Sub-Saharan Africa, via the Moroccan-controlled part of Western Sahara. Moroccan exports to Mauritania and Senegal have expanded steadily since 2004, when a paved road was completed between the northern Mauritanian port city of Nouadhibou, near the border with Western Sahara, and the capital Nouakchott. Mauritania’s location and relative stability also make it Algeria’s most direct and secure trade route to West Africa and the Atlantic.

All Roads Lead to Nouakchott

Over the past five years, Algerian and Moroccan engagement has boosted Mauritania’s trade with both states and led to a series of high-level meetings. 2024 saw the first Algerian presidential visit to Mauritania in 37 years, as well as an unofficial meeting between Mauritania’s president and Morocco’s king.

Regional connectivity, long hampered by the Western Sahara dispute, has become a particular focus of Algerian-Moroccan rivalry. Algeria opened its first-ever border crossing to Mauritania in 2018. While this did boost trade, the lack of a paved road remained a major impediment. An Algerian-funded joint project for a road linking Tindouf in Algeria to Zouerat in Mauritania was announced in 2021, but it was not until early 2024 that the two presidents finally met at the border to inaugurate the new border posts and officially launch the road construction. Around the same time, Algeria’s president announced the creation of five free trade zones with neighbouring countries, starting with Mauritania.

Grand Plans

Algeria was apparently spurred into action by the Moroccan king’s November 2023 announcement of the Royal Atlantic Initiative. Despite major doubts over its feasibility, this spectacular plan underlined Morocco’s ambition to deepen its links with West Africa. The Initiative’s core proposition is to build road and rail infrastructure across the Sahel to grant the region’s landlocked states access to the Atlantic via the port of Dakhla in Western Sahara – thereby consolidating their recognition of Morocco’s claim to the territory. Chad, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have welcomed the Initiative, even though they all already have connections to much closer ports in neighbouring countries. The Atlantic Initiative was announced at a time when these connections were temporarily disrupted, but the trade embargo imposed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) following military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger has since been lifted. Crucially, however, Mauritania, whose territory any such infrastructure would need to cross, has stayed aloof.

Morocco has also sought to connect the Atlantic Initiative with an older, even more ambitious project to build a gas pipeline along the West African seaboard from Nigeria to Morocco, connecting to an existing pipeline to Europe. That scheme is Morocco’s response to a plan for a trans-Saharan pipeline linking Nigeria to Algeria, which was first mooted in 2001 but has never moved towards realisation. Both pipeline projects would involve exorbitant costs, while fatal uncertainties around Nigerian supply and European demand render them unrealistic. Even if the Moroccan project were to surmount these obstacles, the proposed route would pose serious problems for Mauritanian participation. Morocco wants the proposed pipeline to come ashore at Dakhla, again underlining how closely such projects are bound up with its claims to Western Sahara.

Moroccan officials have sought to downplay Mauritanian reservations, even suggesting that Mauritania is on board with the Atlantic Initiative. But Mauritania is unlikely to warm to the project, for multiple reasons. To begin with, Mauritania is seeking to develop its own ports, and expanding Dakhla into a regional hub would run diametrically counter to Mauritania’s interests.

Neutrality: Necessity and Opportunity

More importantly, the Mauritanian ruling class is firmly wedded to the principle of “positive neutrality” towards its two North African neighbours. While that position is quite a balancing act in practice, there is a widespread conviction that abandoning it would incur incalculable risks. Interlocutors in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou point to the importance of trade with Morocco, and to the destabilising potential of Algeria and the Polisario. They also emphasise the close family ties that exist between northern Mauritania and the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria and the Moroccan-controlled part of Western Sahara. Abandoning neutrality in the Western Sahara dispute would alienate politically influential sections of the population. From this perspective, supporting any project that is directly bound up with Morocco’s claims to sovereignty over Western Sahara is simply out of the question. For the same reason, Mauritania has abstained from Algerian efforts to isolate Morocco, such as Algeria’s project to replace the defunct Maghreb Union with a new regional bloc excluding Morocco.

But balancing relations also brings opportunities: infrastructure development such as the road from Algeria and an agreement on connecting electricity grids signed with Morocco in early 2025; improved terms of trade; and bilateral military cooperation with both states. The challenge for Mauritania is to take advantage of the opportunities while ensuring that neither partner is alienated by its cooperation with the other.

This is all the more delicate because Mauritania’s ties with Morocco are clearly more developed and diversified. Morocco’s private sector, which is much more dynamic than Algeria’s, is far more active in Mauritania. Affluent Mauritanians tend to go to Morocco for university education and vacations, rather than Algeria. Sufi brotherhoods such as the Tijaniyya link Morocco and Mauritania, and Moroccan religious institutions train hundreds of scholars and preachers from Sahel and West African countries, including Mauritania.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani has particularly close ties to President Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, who is in turn a staunch ally of the Moroccan king. Bin Zayed is said to lobby Ghazouani in favour of Morocco’s plans. More broadly, Algeria and Morocco both have allies within Mauritania’s political class. Such initiatives do not override Mauritanian calculations of threat and opportunity, however – certainly not for now.

The Propaganda War

In the meantime, everyone involved – in all three countries – scrutinises developments for any signs that Mauritania might, after all, lean one way or another. Balancing relations, Mauritanian officials say, is hard work: both its partners worry about their rival’s activities and constantly seek Nouakchott’s reassurance. Mauritanian observers are watching closely, too, with some opposition forces accusing the government of jeopardising the country’s neutrality with the recent agreement to connect its electricity grid to Morocco’s.

Morocco and Algeria both attempt to shape perceptions and foster an impression that Mauritania is tilting their way. Here again, Morocco’s efforts are more advanced. There is a pattern of Moroccan announcements about cooperation with Mauritania being met with polite silence on the Mauritanian side – most recently concerning a purported agreement on a second road to link Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara to Mauritania, which was even picked up by French media. The narrative that Mauritania is moving into Morocco’s camp is ubiquitous in Moroccan media, for example in claims about a trilateral axis linking the two countries to the UAE and fabricated reports on social media concerning a supposed secret meeting of the three heads of states in the Emirates in 2024. Such claims undoubtedly alarm Algiers, where allegations about nefarious Emirati schemes directed against Algeria have circulated widely. Government-aligned Algerian media employ similar tactics, although to date on a smaller scale. For example there were suggestions that Mauritania could soon join Algeria’s project for a new Maghreb regional bloc excluding Morocco.

Such influence operations appear designed to stoke tensions between Mauritania and the respective other country. But if they grow they could potentially contribute to polarisation in the Mauritanian public sphere itself, where certain media outlets are reputed to be closer to one or other of the two rivals. European policy-makers should exercise great caution and avoid falling for disinformation that could lead them to adopt policies that would exacerbate tensions. For the time being, even as the pressure intensifies, Mauritania appears set to continue its balancing act.

Dr Wolfram Lacher is a Senior Associate in the Africa and Middle East Division at SWP and a Project Director of Megatrends Afrika. 

Dr Isabelle Werenfels is a Senior Associate in the Africa and Middle East Division at SWP.