Mauritania is opening its energy sector to private investors for the first time, including launching its first-ever renewable energy auction under an independent power project model (IPP) model.
Speaking at the Invest in African Energy 2025 Forum in Paris, the country’s Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Mohamed Ould Khaled, stated:
“All new power generation projects in Mauritania will be private. State-owned companies will no longer be involved in power generation.”
This marks a strategic move away from what has always been state-led power generation in the northwest African country.
The government has also approved two new IPP projects expected to add 550 MW to the national grid.
In his reaction, Alex Mokoka, an energy researcher at Ember Energy, says the move to privatise the country’s renewable energy sector could be a strategy to fuel Mauritania’s ambitions to become a major player in the green hydrogen market.
“If this model can attract gigawatts-scale renewables through IPP, Mauritania will be laying the foundation to become a serious player in green hydrogen. That could be the big-picture play”, Alex says.
With access to an Atlantic coastline with high solar and wind potential, the country could replicate the success of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).
The South African renewable scheme has attracted significant private capital of over US$14 billion, including installing 6 GW of clean power capacity since 2011.
Mauritania already has ambitious green hydrogen projects in the pipeline, which makes the IEA list it among countries with the most advanced green hydrogen potentials in Africa.
This includes Project Nour—a partnership between Chariot Energy and TotalEnergies—that aims for 10 GW of electrolyzer capacity by 2030.
Another is the $40 billion AMAN project (CWP Global), targeting even larger capacities of about 1.7 million tons of hydrogen per year.
However, the last project relies on a massive rollout of renewable energy capacity of 12 GW of wind and 18 GW of solar.
The shift to IPPs will significantly increase Mauritania’s hydrogen output to 12.5 million tons annually by 2035, according to the European Investment Bank.
That would amount to a quarter of Africa’s total projected green hydrogen output by that year.
As of 2022, renewable energy represented just 16% of Mauritania’s electricity generation, with the rest contributed by fossil fuels.
Despite recently joining the ranks of gas-exporting countries, Mauritania plans to make renewable energy at least of its total power generation by 2030, according to its nationally determined contributions (NDCs)