Madar (Nouakchott) - Four student unions on Thursday, October 22, 2026, announced a new alliance, the "Student Front for the Defence of Rights and Gains", pledging to coordinate protests over what they called an "accumulation of problems" at university, the Al-Akhbar website reported, on the same day police dispersed students protesting over the university transport crisis.
The alliance caps a week of tension between students and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research: a protest over transport, accusations that scholarship and orientation criteria were breached, and ministry measures that have not calmed the debate.
A front of four unions
The alliance brings together the National Union of Mauritanian Students (UNEM), the General Union of Mauritanian Students, the National Students' Union of Mauritania and the National League of Mauritanian Students. It was launched in a lecture hall at the University of Nouakchott, followed by a march on campus led by the unions' secretaries general, during which participants called the ministry "failing" in its management and its decisions "improvised".
A joint statement said the alliance followed a series of meetings assessing higher education and the impact of ministry decisions, and that it would use "all legitimate forms of protest", including sit-ins, marches and rallies.
What do the students want?
Their demands include better university services, a review of grant criteria and the scrapping of those that "exclude" deserving students, transparency in foreign scholarships, fairness for graduates "denied" further study, more master's places and functioning doctoral schools, as well as union freedoms, student representation on university councils and a review of cases of "excluded" students.
Transport, the spark on the street
The same day, students protested in Arafat over the university transport crisis on the road linking Riyadh to the Madrid bridge before police dispersed them. On October 15, the ministry had announced free transport for 9,926 students on the social registry, a monthly pass of 5,000 old ouguiyas for others and a discounted ticket (50 old ouguiyas) available only through an app.
Scholarships and orientation: a battle of figures
On Wednesday, UNEM accused the ministry of breaching merit and transparency criteria in a new list of scholarship recipients in Morocco and in university orientation. The ministry, for its part, said on October 19 that 22,730 of 52,256 students meet the criteria for domestic grants for 2026-2027, more than 43%, and allocated 3,900 of the 4,000 beds at the Nouakchott university complex.
Update: ministry reorganises transport
On Thursday evening, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research announced in a statement that stops on the traditional transport network serving the university complex will be scrapped from Monday, October 26, with bus rapid transit (BHNS) lines serving the campus for a discounted monthly pass of 5,000 old ouguiyas and more trips at peak hours. It cited the steady rise in student numbers and pressure on transport, and urged students to understand the measures.
Open questions
The ministry had not responded publicly to the new alliance's statement at the time of publication. Several questions arise: will the ministry open talks with the unions before protests spread? Will the new transport measures be enough to ease a daily problem for thousands of students? And will a review of scholarship and orientation criteria, as students demand, settle the dispute at the start of the academic year?
