Madar (Nouakchott) - Several districts of Nouakchott have faced intermittent but repeated power cuts in recent days, according to Madar's monitoring, the latest cutting electricity to parts of Tiarett on Monday night, October 26, 2026, after a fire at a transformer house, SOMELEC said, as reported by the Al-Akhbar news agency.
The company blamed the fire on "electrical overload and high temperatures", said civil protection brought it under control and that the damage "remained local" without affecting the main distribution stations, and apologised to residents.
Not the first time
Madar reported on October 22 that many districts of the capital had faced long outages since the previous day, days after the new director general took office. The company has announced neither a load-shedding schedule nor the number of districts or customers affected.
The cuts come two months after fires at the Eastern (Toujounine) and Northern (Tevragh Zeina) substations on August 21 and 22 plunged most of the capital into darkness for days and led to an inquiry whose report found a "direct link" with new 33 kV connections.
A new chief on the ground
On October 14, the Council of Ministers appointed former minister Thiam Tidjani as SOMELEC director general, replacing Khermbali Ould Mohamed Lehbib, who a week later was named head of the national hydrocarbons company SMH.
Tidjani went to the Tiarett fire himself on Monday night. According to witnesses, he called company officials and had to call back several times people who did not answer. The publisher of one video said the director told residents that the 80001414 customer line was not working, which the company has not commented on.
Open questions
The repeated cuts in late October raise questions about the grid's capacity, the pace of maintenance of neighbourhood transformers and the company's channels with customers, pending an announced plan by the new management to stabilise supply.
