Madar (Nouakchott) - Mauritania's Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty on Friday, November 13, 2026 made a field visit to check progress on the Skam irrigation canal project in Trarza region, the Mauritanian News Agency (AMI) reported.
The minister reviewed the state of the works and heard technical briefings from the project team on implementation stages and completion rate, stressing "the need to speed up the pace of work, in full compliance with technical standards and the terms of the contract specifications", according to the same source, which did not give the current completion rate.
The 34-kilometre canal starts from the Senegal River in the Skam area, in the Jidr El Mohguen municipality of Rosso department, and runs towards farming areas in Tekane and R'Kiz departments, covering four agricultural municipalities in the region.
The project is funded from the state's own resources, at a cost of about 14 billion old ouguiyas (about 1.4 billion new ouguiyas), under the supervision of the national rural development company SONADER. It aims to supply irrigation water to some 16,000 hectares, open up thousands of new hectares and bring flooded land back into production, particularly for vegetables and cereals, according to AMI.
The project also includes building and equipping modern pumping stations, as well as dykes and flood-protection works to shield nearby villages and farms.
The minister was accompanied by Trarza's deputy governor, SONADER's director general and administrative officials from Rosso, Tekane and R'Kiz departments.
In June, the Prime Minister described the Skam canal as one of the key projects to support agriculture, expecting the works to be completed by the end of September 2026.
