Madar (Nouakchott) - Mauritania is preparing to develop a system for disclosing the beneficial owners of companies, with support from German cooperation, through an advisory mission covering an assessment of existing mechanisms, the drafting of a decree and the design of tools to implement it, the Aqlame news site reported on Saturday, 7 November 2026, citing a call for tenders published by the German development agency GIZ.
According to the tender notice, published on 30 October 2026, the mission will cover the legal, institutional, technical and operational aspects of the system, including the collection, verification, storage and publication of beneficial ownership information.
Disclosure aims to identify the natural persons who actually own or control companies, including through intermediary companies. The step matters particularly in the mining, oil and gas sectors, where exposing these links helps detect risks of conflicts of interest and corruption when exploitation rights are granted.
According to the same source, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) found in its 2024 assessment of Mauritania that 66% of the companies on the mining licence register it examined had not declared their beneficial owners, although the companies that did provide the information included the main operators in terms of production and public revenue. The figure relates to the scope of that assessment, not to all companies in the sector.
According to the same assessment, Decree No. 2021-033 provides for a beneficial ownership register accessible to the competent authorities, while Decree No. 2023-048 requires companies applying for mining exploitation licences to declare this information, but neither requires it to be made public, underlining the need to improve the completeness, reliability and accessibility of the data.
The deadline for bids is 20 November 2026, and the mission is due to run from 21 December 2026 to 31 December 2027.
