Mauritania - 2024 Election - President

Mauritania is an Islamic Republic with a president as head of state and a constitution grounded in French civil law and sharia. The National Assembly exercises legislative functions but was weak relative to the executive. Voters elect the president, deputies to the National Assembly, municipal mayors, and regional councilors.

Voters elected former Minister of Defense Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani as president with 52 percent of the vote in the 2019 presidential election. Observers from the United Nations and African Union judged the election to be relatively free and fair. The elections represented the first transition of power from one democratically elected leader to another since the country’s independence in 1960.

The government took some steps to address the ethnic disparity in political leadership. Under the previous regime, the Beydane elite (“White Moor” Arabs) accounted for at most 30 percent of the population but occupied approximately 80 percent of government leadership positions; Haratines constituted at least 45 percent of the population but held fewer than 10 percent of the positions; and the various sub-Saharan ethnic groups (Halpulaar, Soninke, and Wolof) constituted an estimated 25 percent of the population and accounted for fewer than 10 percent of leadership positions. Of the 28 ministers in the sitting cabinet in 2022, three come from a Haratine ethnic background, and six come from a sub-Saharan ethnic background. Unlike in previous governments, the existing cabinet was largely made up of technocrats.

Ghazouani, who has overseen the West African country's relative stability in the violence-wracked Sahel, is widely expected to seek re-election in 2024, though he had not confirmed his plans.