Research and analysis

Women’s economic empowerment in Mauritania’s agribusiness sector

Published 30 September 2025

Query question

1. What is the current make-up of the agribusiness sector in Mauritania? What are the main agribusiness sub-sectors? In which areas of the country are they located?

2. What is the approximate size of each sub-sector (turnover and approximate number of people working in each)? Where do women participate in these subsectors, both in informal and formal businesses?  

3. What barriers and opportunities do women face in economic participation, progression and agency in the Mauritanian agribusiness sector, both as owners of agribusinesses and as employees?

4. What policy/advocacy recommendations are there for FCDO to support women’s economic participation, advancement and agency in the agribusiness sector, including in entrepreneurship?

Authors and institutional affiliations: Kavita Kalsi, Social Development Direct; Cathy Rozel Farnworth, Independent.

This document is an output from a project funded by UK aid from the UK government. However, the views expressed and information contained in it are not necessarily those of or endorsed by the UK government who can accept no responsibility for such views or information or for any reliance placed on them.

This publication has been prepared for general guidance on matter of interest only, and does not constitute professional advice. The information contained in this publication should not be acted upon without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this publication, and, to the extent permitted by law, no organisation or person involved in producing this document accepts or assumes any liability, responsibility or duty of care for any consequences of anyone acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this publication or for any decision based on it.

Acronyms

Abbreviation	Full form
AfDB	African Development Bank
FCDO	Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
GDP	Gross Domestic Product
SSA	Sub-Saharan Africa
UCDW	Unpaid care and domestic work

Executive summary

The purpose of this report is to provide a rapid market analysis of the agribusiness sector, focusing on the barriers and opportunities for women working in the sector, to help FCDO and its partners make investment decisions that will promote women’s economic empowerment. It has been undertaken via a combination of desk-based research on existing work in this area and interviews with eight stakeholders with knowledge of the agribusiness sector in Mauritania.

Current make-up of agribusiness in Mauritania

Over 70% of Mauritania’s food is imported, including rice, vegetables, sugar and cooking oil. It is self-sufficient in meat and fish. Food deficits are partly attributable to Mauritania’s challenging agro-ecological environment. Over two thirds of the country is desert. Just 0.5% (502,000 ha) of its 1.03 million square kilometres are suited to arable farming. There are four bio-climatic zones: the arid zone, the Sahelian zone (17,500,000 ha), the Senegal River zone (2,200,000 ha), and the coastal zone (720 km long and 50 km deep).

The agricultural sector (agriculture and livestock) contributes 19% to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Crops include millet, sorghum, maize, rice, dates, beans and vegetables. The livestock sector (cattle, camels, sheep, goats) is traditional and nomadic. Forest and pasture resources are overused, and both the quality and quantity of water resources are declining. Mauritania’s Exclusive Economic Zone contains some of the world’s richest fishing grounds. The fishing sector contributes 4%-10% of Mauritania’s GDP and accounts for 35%-50% of Mauritania’s exports.

Women are involved in all aspects of crop farming, including field preparation and maintenance, sowing, weeding, harvesting, storage, processing and marketing of produce. Women are particularly involved in horticulture and as livestock keepers and herders. Women market dairy products as well as livestock-based handicrafts (weaving, wool processing, etc.). In fisheries, women are well represented in processing and retail.

Barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the agribusiness sector

Agribusiness is challenging for both women and men, but women face additional gendered constraints due to their relative lack of mobility, time-consuming responsibilities for unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW), as well as their relative lack of assets (including weaker access to land and finance) compared to men.

All agricultural sub-sectors in Mauritania are weakly structured, and upstream and downstream actors are poorly organised and linked. Processing of agricultural products is limited due to poor storage, processing and packaging, inadequate transport and generally weak access to markets. This strongly affects women’s ability to maximise their profits in value chains such as dairy where women traditionally sell and process products. Vegetable value chains, another important opportunity for women, are affected by poor transport links to markets. Cold chains are almost completely lacking. Lack of ice negatively affects the profitability of post-harvest processing and retail of fish (where women are also strongly represented). Other constraints include: a lack of risk-sharing mechanisms and agricultural insurance; marked regional disparities; and low productivity, contributing to low overall levels of production. Generally, investment in agricultural production is low due to insufficient financing systems and lack of incentives.

Registering a business is less complex than in some countries, but, due to women’s lower levels of education, navigating the paperwork for registration can be challenging. Other informal barriers include perceptions of favouritism, a complex tax regime, and distance to registration centres, particularly for rural women. Human capacity is low. Just 1% of the working-age population has taken a technical or vocational training course leading to a qualification. Although women enjoy several freedoms, including freedom of mobility, married women must obey the man in his role as household head. The persistence of customary law means that few women can claim or inherit land. Women experience limited access to formal and informal finance. Women’s responsibility for UCDW limits time and opportunities for engagement in agribusiness development and growth and in moving up the value chain. Even so, some women have succeeded in developing effective businesses, for example in the dairy and rice sectors.

Recommendations to increase women’s economic empowerment in the agribusiness sector

Access to and control over key economic assets

• conduct a market analysis of specialised products where Mauritanian farmers (including women) may have a niche (e.g., strawberries, blueberries, etc.), and target national and international markets. Provide training to women farmers, processors and other value chain actors in products deemed viable
• increase the regional competitiveness of Mauritanian produce. Conduct market research to identify a shortlist of nationally popular agricultural products which are currently imported, and which could be produced primarily by Mauritanian women entrepreneurs
• develop an integrated approach to creating value chains aimed at middle-to-high end urban market segments in Mauritania. Work with key private sector agribusiness actors, women and their organisations, and other relevant bodies, to develop marketing strategies to encourage consumption of quality Mauritanian produce, particularly in value chains where women are already well-represented (such as fish and horticulture)
• invest/co-invest in technologies to assist with value chain upgrading, such as solar refrigerators and dryers, motorbikes with cargo-boxes (plateaux motorisés), etc. To ensure access and use, such technologies should be accompanied by appropriate women-friendly financial repayment mechanisms, training in the use of technologies, and training in their maintenance and repair. Relevant training on use of technology should be introduced alongside focused gender training courses targeted at household members and community leaders to help ensure that women can personally use, manage and control the benefits from these technology assets
• work with banks and their staff to see women entrepreneurs as an important market. Create financial products suited to women in agri-food systems. Encourage banks to provide women with business training and budgeting skills. Develop innovative mechanisms to establish collateral to enable women to finance the purchase of technologies
• promote digital and financial literacy to women. Train women as mobile banking agents

Gender-specific constraints and enablers

• develop a cadre of women veterinarians to work with livestock keepers. Consider developing a business model to help women veterinarians generate independent and sufficient income, e.g., training in entrepreneurship around poultry businesses alongside their work as veterinarians
• develop and promote digital-based participatory agricultural extension programmes to reach remote populations
• create in-person and online courses to develop women’s managerial competencies, business acumen, and customer orientation as relevant to specific value chains. Embed training on financial literacy in programmes. Offer courses in Arabic as well as relevant national languages

Gender norms and household relations

• develop gender-responsive and gender-transformative principles to develop ambition and inform theories of change, project design, indicators and implementation processes. Ensure that women (and other targeted groups) are involved at all stages of project development, from design through to evaluation. Build in scaling strategies for successful pilots from the beginning
• promote gender-responsive or gender-transformative behavioural change programmes in all interventions (whether extension, financial, governance, etc.). Ensure relevant intersectional analyses in all work (considering ethnic norms, age, disability, life stage, etc.)
• encourage and strengthen gender equity in intra-household decision-making through introducing Family Dialogue, Couple, Masculinities, and Household Methodologies. Application of these methodologies can bring the following benefits:  strengthening equitable decision-making within the household; building on and creating positive gender norms around masculinities; balancing and sharing workloads in paid work and UCDW; deepening asset sharing, management and ownership; improvements in informed and equitable technology adoption; and strengthening the equity of benefit distribution
• conduct a small exploratory gender study to identify key strengths and weaknesses in women and mixed gender cooperatives in fish, livestock, and crops. Design group-building interventions focused on training women (and men, as relevant) in methods they can use to improve group discussion processes and group dynamics, including tools for handling conflict constructively. Consider the development of alternative models to cooperatives (along with an assessment of legal implications)
• build on existing work to strengthen women’s presence on community councils. Work with women as well as male representatives to identify and act upon key gender issues at community and household level, with particular reference to developing economically viable agribusinesses

Law and policies

• devise mixed systems (including, but not restricted to, quotas) to increase women’s representation in parliament and particularly within local government structures to help promote gender-responsive strategy development and implementation
• work with relevant ministries, together with businesswomen and their organisations, to improve the gender-responsiveness of the private sector. Measures may include developing and promoting gender-responsive financing goals and mechanisms and updating business legislation

Introduction and methodology

The Work and Opportunities for Women (WOW) Helpdesk is a research, advisory and knowledge service. It was launched in March 2018 to support Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and wider HMG Economic Development programmes and policies to improve outcomes on women’s economic empowerment. This report is part of the demand-led technical assistance query service offered by the Helpdesk.

The purpose of this report is to provide a rapid market analysis of the agribusiness sector, focusing on the barriers and opportunities for women working in the sector, to help FCDO and its partners make investment decisions that will promote women’s economic empowerment. It has been undertaken via a combination of desk-based research of existing work in this area and interviews with eight stakeholders with knowledge of the agribusiness sector in Mauritania. For the desk research, existing evidence reviews and mixed-methods studies were prioritised. Given its rapid nature, it does not take a comprehensive or systematic review standard. The stakeholders were a combination of government donors (n=3), UN donors (n=2), investors/investment advisors (n=2) and local agribusinesses (n=1). Interviews were carried out in English and French.

Agribusiness in Mauritania: current situation

Country overview

Mauritania’s land area is 1,030,700 km2, more than two thirds of which is desert. Only 0.5% (502,000 ha) of its 1.03 million square kilometres are considered arable (USDS, 2023). Mauritania experienced its first democratic transition of power in 2019, with President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani re-elected in 2024. In 2023, 23% of seats in the national parliament were held by women (roughly the same as in 2010). A 2006 decree stipulated that one fifth of political party positions be reserved for women (Deschamps et al., 2024). The current rate compares to the average rate in lower middle-income economies (World Bank, 2024c). Corruption, hereditary slavery, discrimination, and imperfect public administration remain significant issues which challenge the achievement of fully inclusive democracy (USDS, 2023).

The total population is estimated at 4,173,078 (2019) and is highly urbanised (49% in 2019) with an average household size of six (GIZ, 2022a). Rural areas (48% of the population, 2020 data) are impacted by significant outmigration to urban areas due to natural resource degradation, climate change, political unrest in neighbouring countries including Mali and Burkina Faso, together with global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine (AfDB, 2024a). These factors contribute to food insecurity, malnutrition, marginalisation, cross-border tensions, and the potential for people, particularly youth, to engage in illicit forms of income generation (AfDB, 2024a; USDS, 2023).

According to an IMF report (cited in BTI, 2024) Mauritania experiences high levels of government regulation, low quality of governance, and weak access to financial services. An important barrier to entry is the oligopolistic nature of the Mauritanian economy, whereby less than a dozen large conglomerates – controlled by a few White Moor families and tribes – dominate most key economic sectors. The share of informal employment in total employment is estimated at 89%. Prices are set by market forces (BTI, 2024). Mauritania’s gross domestic product (GDP) country rank was 142/197 in 2022 (MSU, 2024).

The working age population (14-64 years) is 54% with young people (aged 14-35) (66.6%) in the majority. The employment-to-population ratio is 37%, indicating that a large proportion of the working-age population does not participate directly in formal economic activities (UN, 2020). Agricultural employment is 29% (2021 data) (MSU, 2024). Overall, 65% of the population depends on crop farming and livestock (BTI, 2024). The labour force participation rate among women is 26% and among men is 57% (2023 data). For women, this percentage has remained almost unchanged since 1990. Vulnerable employment (contributing family workers and own-account workers as a percentage of total employment) among women is 76% and among men is 61% (2022 data). This rate is lower than in most countries in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries (World Bank, 2024e). Just 1% of the working-age population has taken a technical or vocational training course leading to a qualification. Around 44% of young people aged 14 to 35 are neither in education nor employment (UN, 2021).

Extreme poverty^{[footnote 1]} stands at 7%, with most poor people living in rural areas (WFP, 2024). Discriminatory relationships between Arabic-speaking ethnic groups –“White Moors”, “Black Moors”, and Afro-Mauritanians (non-Arabic-speaking black African communities, e.g., Haalpulaaren, Wolof, Sooninko and Bamana) persist. Tensions around education policies (which until now have focused on teaching in Arabic), land tenure, and ethnic representation in the politico-bureaucratic apparatus are being slowly addressed in legislative reforms (BTI, 2024).

Mauritania’s Gender Inequality Index is 0.632 and its Gender Development Index is 0.81. Other indicators pointing to gender inequalities include the maternal mortality ratio (deaths per 100,000 live births) at 766, while the mean years of schooling for females is 3.8 years (BTI, 2024).

National laws do not treat women and men equally with respect to assets. Legally, women do not have equal ownership rights to immovable property, nor do they have equal administrative authority over assets. Women do not have the right to inherit assets from their spouse, and daughters do not have the same right as sons to inherit (World Bank, 2022). A law criminalising violence against women and girls has been drafted but has faced some opposition and has not yet been voted upon.

What is the current make-up of the agribusiness sector in Mauritania?

It is difficult to get consistent data on the size of Mauritania’s agricultural subsectors. One estimate is that the agricultural sector (agriculture and livestock) contributes 19% to the country’s GDP, with livestock (cattle, camels, sheep, goats) representing 80% of this figure. By way of comparison, services contribute 40%, industry 37% and manufacturing 6% (CBD, 2024).

Mauritania’s Exclusive Economic Zone contains some of the world’s richest fishing grounds. The fishing sector contributes between four to 10 percent of Mauritania’s GDP and accounts for between 35% to 50% of Mauritania’s exports (with Spain being the primary destination). Annual catch is estimated at 750,000 tons (ITA, 2023).  Mauritania processes 1,800,000 tons of fish per year, but over-exploitation by foreign and national fleets threatens the sustainability of this key source of revenue (ITA, 2023; IFAD, 2016). Agriculture, forestry and fisheries contributed 20% of GDP in 2023 (World Bank, 2024a).

Key crops include millet, sorghum, maize, rice, dates, beans and vegetables. Agriculture provides 40% of Mauritania’s food needs; cereal production covers 30% of needs. As a consequence, Mauritania relies heavily on imports and food aid (over 70% of food is imported, including rice, vegetables, sugar and cooking oil) (AfDB, 2024a; IFAD, n.d.^{[footnote 2]} (see Box 1 below). It is self-sufficient in meat and fish. The livestock sector is mainly traditional and nomadic (GIZ, 2022b). Forest and pasture resources are over-used, and over the longer term the quality and quantity of water resources are expected to decline (AfDB, 2024a; GIZ, 2022a).  

In numbers, goats and sheep are the most important livestock, followed by cattle and camels. Cattle are raised primarily in the southern region, whereas goats and sheep are dispersed as far north as the borders of the Sahara. Camels are raised mostly in the north and the centre, especially in the Adrar region (Deschamps et al., 2024).

Box 1: The role of imported goods in Mauritania’s agribusiness sector

Most interviewees commented on the strength of imports in Mauritania’s agricultural sector. It was noted by some that importers have a strong lobby, unlike domestic producers. Importing is therefore cheap, and imported produce is often of a better quality than local produce due to more arable land available in nearby countries, superior farming techniques used abroad, and the use of refrigerated transport by foreign suppliers to keep produce fresh. The existing quality of foreign produce is a disincentive to investors to invest in local production. Foreign suppliers have reportedly been able to provide better credit terms to domestic retailers, which further incentivises Mauritanians to buy imported agricultural goods.

In which areas of the country are Mauritania’s productive areas located?

Mauritania has an estimated potential of 500,000 acres of arable land. Estimates of production under each agricultural system vary. This is partly due to year-on-year variation and potentially different methodologies for collecting data. USDS (2023) provides the following estimates:

• 1,350 square kilometres in the Senegal River Valley
• 120 square kilometres in the maritime zone
• 2,500 square kilometres in rainfed crops
• 1,000 square kilometres behind dams
• 160 square kilometres of palm crops

There are four bio-climatic zones: the arid zone, the Sahelian zone (17,500,000 ha), the Senegal River zone (2,200,000 ha), and the coastal zone (720 km long and 50 km deep) (GIZ, 2022b).

1. The arid zone is characterised by oasis-based production systems with cultivation of date palm crops (over 200 cultivars have been counted) and associated irrigated crops (cereals, alfalfa, vegetables and fruit). Livestock and rainfed crops are secondary (GIZ, 2022b; CBD, n.d.).

2. In the Sahelian zone, farming in the east is characterised by livestock breeding and traditional rainfed cereal crops (sorghum, millet, maize). In the western and southern parts, cereals are cultivated behind dams and dykes. Livestock farming is largely nomadic (GIZ, 2022b).

3. The Senegal River Valley is characterised by two farming systems. Irrigated crop systems cover around 30,000 ha (2014 data). Three harvests per year are gathered: rice in the rainy season (July-October), fruit, vegetables, maize and sorghum during the cold counter-season (November-February), and rice in the hot counter-season (March to June). Rice, the main irrigated crop, has an average yield of 4 tons/ha (potential of 6-8 tons/ha). The main crops in the natural or controlled flood recession crop system (walo) are sorghum and maize, both of which provide low average yields (0.6 tons/ha in natural decline and 0.9 tons/ha in controlled decline). Livestock farming is sedentary and semi-intensive, with a short nomadic period during the growing season (GIZ, 2022b).

4. The Atlantic coastal zone lies between Nouadhibou and the Senegal River Valley. Due to its lower temperatures and higher humidity this zone is suited to horticultural crops and tree cultivation (GIZ, 2022b).

Women’s participation in informal and formal agribusiness

(1) What is the approximate size of each sub-sector (turnover and approximate number of people working in each)? (2) Where do women participate in these subsectors, both in informal and formal businesses?

Overview

Agribusiness in Mauritania is challenging. Agricultural sectors are weakly structured, and upstream and downstream actors are poorly organised and linked. The valorisation and processing of agricultural products is limited, meaning that little value is captured at the local level. Poor storage, packaging, marketing and access to markets are major constraints (AfDB, 2024a). Beyond this, agribusiness is a high-risk sector because:

(i) there is a lack of risk-sharing mechanisms and agricultural insurance

(ii) regional disparities are marked; (iii) productivity and yields are low and

(iv) the traditional rural land tenure regime provides little incentive for investors and contributes to land insecurity. Investment capacity is limited due to inadequate financing systems and lack of incentives for the private sector (AfDB, 2024a)

The Government of Mauritania (GoM) is tackling some of these challenges. The Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Shared Well-being (SCAPP) (2016-2030) constitutes the key policy reference framework for Mauritania. It is based on the following levers:

(i) promotion of strong, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth

(ii) human capital formation and access to basic services; and

(iii) strengthening governance in all its dimensions

The Rural Sector Development Strategy (SDSR) – Horizon 2025 covers five strategic areas of support:

1) Infrastructure

2) Research

3) Rural advice

4) Financing; and

5) Commerce

The SDSR is operationalised by the National Agricultural Development Plan (PNDA) (2016) (AfDB, 2024a).

Crops

Women are involved in all phases of the agricultural cycle, including planting, weeding, the protection and maintenance of fields, and harvesting, conservation, storage, processing and marketing of produce. Women play an important role in market gardening and agriculturally based handicrafts (weaving, wool processing, etc.) (AfDB, 2024). Men are largely responsible for land clearing and managing the cultivation of specific crops, such as wetland rice. Women are less active in rice production and processing, and even less so in marketing. However, there are some exceptions, as explained in Box 2 below. In some regions, women work together to construct small dams (FAO, n.d.). Interviewees reported that women are most commonly growers and sellers of fruit and vegetables. Women are rarely involved in processing and are present in lower numbers as buyers and wholesalers.

Box 2: Two examples of women in the Mauritanian rice sector

Berdis Mohamed is one of the few Mauritanian businesswomen operating in the rice sector. Originally from Trarza (South-West), a region bordering Senegal, today she is the head of an agricultural and rice promotion company called Berdis. Due to her efforts and success, she has received several awards, including from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Nouakchott on International Women’s Day 2024 (Seck, 2024).

Safietou Kane founded her company, Maaro Njawaan, in Tékane in Traza, Mauritania, after completing her Bachelor of Science degree in International Business and Management at the University of Tampa (United States). Maaro Njawaan supports local rice producers by buying their high-quality rice and then milling it in a local factory before packaging and transporting the product to stores in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. Due to the poor image of Mauritanian produce (which is considered low quality), Sefietou Kane has developed a range of marketing strategies suited to literate and low-literate populations. These include television advertisements, social media campaigns, training employees on a “proud to be local” pitch, and flyers highlighting the benefits of Mauritanian rice (O’Sullivan, 2016).

Fisheries

The fishery sector generates over 65,000 direct and 226,000 indirect jobs for sailors, fishers, fishmongers, and processors, of which 70% are in the artisanal fisheries sub-sectors. Most jobs are informal, and sometimes seasonal, due to fishing seasons for certain species (ITA, 2023). Women are estimated to perform about 30% of the onshore work in fisheries. However, they face very poor working conditions and play almost no role in the lucrative export sector. Rather, women retail fish in local markets where demand is limited. The best quality fish are reserved for wholesalers who supply to processing plants. Women retailers cannot afford ice or cold storage which limits their ability to negotiate with middlemen who sell to processing plants because sales must be made rapidly. In addition, women retailers lack space in Nouadhibou’s artisanal market and thus must sell outside the market on the street or close to their homes. These practices reduce profitability further. Women retailers experience limited access to capital, land and equipment (World Bank, 2017).

Livestock

Almost every family rears livestock. ‘Hut rearing’ refers to a family holding a small herd of sheep, goats, poultry and sometimes cattle at home. Families obtain milk, meat and other products from these animals. Livestock holdings serve as a savings bank to allow the family to meet urgent expenses (illness, family ceremonies, etc.). The domestic herd is usually managed by women. When the herd moves during transhumance, shepherds (men), sometimes accompanied by their families, move with it. Male shepherds can spend many months searching for fodder and water for their livestock – including moving into pastures located in Senegal and Mali, leaving women to manage their homes, farms, remaining livestock, and communities (GIZ, 2022a; BRACED, 2018). Interviewees reported that men predominate in livestock herding, although women sometimes raise smaller domestic herds. Women often transport the milk to collection points. Women are rarely involved in the processing of milk (e.g., pasteurisation and making dairy products). Much like their role in the sale of fruit and vegetables, women predominate in the selling of milk, e.g., on street food stalls.

Barriers and opportunities for women in agribusiness

What barriers and opportunities do women face in economic participation, progression and agency in the Mauritanian agribusiness sector, both as owners of agribusinesses and as employees?

This section is framed around a women’s economic empowerment framework developed by the WOW Helpdesk (see Figure 1, right). It draws on various evidence reviews, donor reports and programme documentation. It is also informed by the eight interviews conducted with the stakeholders outlined in Section 1. We have indicated where views were held by multiple interviews or only one person.

The interviews focused on the barriers and opportunities for women agribusiness entrepreneurs rather than employees, according to the stakeholders’ knowledge and expertise. The value chains of focus were dairy and fruit and vegetables, for the same reason.

Women as employees

The law does not prescribe a gender quota for corporate boards. However, since 2021 the law includes gender-sensitive provisions for public procurement processes (World Bank, 2024e). Women in formal employment are entitled to 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, and fathers can also claim paid paternity leave. The government pays 100% of maternity leave benefits (World Bank, 2022).

Laws protect women from sex discrimination in employment, but the law does not protect women from sexual harassment. Women can be dismissed upon pregnancy. Equal pay for equal work is not mandated, and women face restrictions in certain occupations (World Bank, 2024d). Women are legally entitled to live where they choose, can leave their home, and can obtain a passport independently and travel abroad (World Bank, 2024e).

Women’s employment in agriculture (% of female employment) (modelled ILO estimate) was 29% in 2022 (Trading Economics, 2024).

Women as owners of agribusiness

The share of formal women business owners across all sectors is low (11%) compared to men (89%). In this regard, Mauritania falls in the lowest quintile of all SSA economies for which there are available data^{[footnote 3]} (World Bank, 2024e). Mauritania scores 48.1 out of 100 with respect to providing an enabling environment for businesswomen. The overall score for businesswomen in Mauritania is lower than the regional average observed across SSA (71.5). Within the SSA region, the maximum score observed is 89.4 (Mauritius) (World Bank, 2022).

Starting a business is relatively simple in terms of procedures, time, cost and paid-in minimum capital to start a limited liability company. The World Bank (2020) awarded Mauritania a global rank of 49 (from 190 economies) (92% score; average SSA score 80%). Investors need to complete four procedures. This takes six days for women- or men-owned businesses^{[footnote 4]}. Women are legally permitted to sign contracts, register businesses, and open bank accounts (World Bank, 2022). The guichet unique system allows entrepreneurs to register a business in 48 hours, but only in person in Nouakchott. This is a barrier for some female entrepreneurs from outside the capital because their husbands will not allow them to travel away from home for the time required or for other reasons such as lack of finance for travel and accommodation.

Responses from our interviews suggest that there is no need for a woman to get approval from their husband, father or other male relative to register a business or to fear society disapproval for registering a business. However, women’s lower levels of education and literacy can be a barrier to navigating the paperwork required to register a business. One respondent reported that women’s business registration applications are often ignored, and that this is not because male applicants pay bribes to access preferential treatment. This suggests that informal sex discrimination may be a factor. Another interviewee noted that successful business registration can depend on having the right connections (this affects both male and female entrepreneurs). There is very weak formalisation of businesses in general due to bureaucracy and taxation requirements. One interviewee noted that the taxation regime in Mauritania is very complex and can be confusing, and that regulations may be enforced for some people but not others. Women may be more adversely affected by this favouritism, so this may be a disincentive to register their businesses. It is also important to note that women engaged in agribusiness sectors such as dairy, fisheries and horticulture (informal sectors where women predominate) may not have an interest in registering their businesses because the advantages are unclear and because informal businesses offer them greater flexibility to carry out their UCDW responsibilities.

Lack of access to education was noted as a barrier to successful female entrepreneurship by several interviewees. In 2019, 42% of girls and 46% of boys completed lower secondary school. In 2021, adult literacy was lower among women (62%) than among men (72%), which is comparable to other countries in SSA (World Bank, 2024c.) A lack of access to training and technical support was also noted as a barrier to agribusiness growth, for example, in relation to learning agricultural techniques, procuring quality inputs such as improved seed, and assistance with crop diversification. This means that women farmers often produce the same (frequently low-yielding) crops. Market saturation prevents them from charging higher prices and can lead to them making a loss at the end of the season.

Lack of access to land is a significant barrier to women being able to create and grow their agribusinesses. Women hold a minority of land across Mauritania. The Department of Land and State Assets and regional offices have registration processes for women and cooperatives. Sex disaggregation has been introduced into land data and registration systems. Sharia law recognises the right of women to own land (Bal et al., 2015). Nevertheless, customary law and patriarchal traditions persist, and, as a consequence, many Mauritanians do not register their individual or collectively owned land (Bal et al., 2015). In 2021, 28% of people had ownership or secure rights over land. Of these, 11% were women, and 40% were men (FAO STAT, 2024). It is rare for women to acquire land by succession. Most women are not familiar with statutory law and do not understand their rights^{[footnote 5]}. Interviewees noted that women are often last to be allocated rented land to cultivate in their villages.

• within the productive Senegal River Valley, women hold 5% (men 95%) of land. Among land holders, the proportions of women landholders range from 3% to 30% (Bal et al., 2015)
• in the Oasis Zone (part of the Senegal River Valley), land tenure is strict and patrilineal with no registered cases (in 2015) of women owning land titles, despite a national law in 1983 which provided for women holding equal rights to land (Bal et al., 2015). Women heads of household and widows represent 16% of all households in oasis regions, yet they do not have access to land titles that can be used as collateral for bank loans, leading to significant gender inequality (Bal et al., 2015)

Lack of access to financial services is a critical barrier to women both establishing and growing agribusinesses. In 2022, 16% of women and 32% of men in Mauritania had a bank account. The gap in account ownership between men and women in Mauritania (15.5%), is larger than the gap of the SSA: 12.3%^{[footnote 6]} (World Bank, 2024c). This gap was identified by an interviewee as related to women being less likely to have the down payment required to open an account.

Although the law does not prohibit discrimination in access to credit based on gender (World Bank 2024e), in practice women in Mauritania have limited access to credit and agricultural inputs (AfDB, 2024). Interviewees noted that credit services, including microfinance, are quite limited overall, particularly for agricultural activities, where women predominate. Lending is largely short-term and usually consists of small amounts, which may not be helpful for an agribusiness that requires time to make a profit. Loans are prohibitively expensive for both men and women entrepreneurs on low incomes. However, women are at a particular disadvantage since they are less likely to own land to use as collateral. One respondent noted that financial institutions do not encourage informal entrepreneurs to take out loans, and especially not if they are women and/or rural due to their increased financial vulnerability. Another commented that the paperwork required to get a loan is a barrier, especially for entrepreneurs who have weak literacy skills and lack time. These entrepreneurs are disproportionately women. Women farmers’ lack of access to credit is a barrier to them buying improved inputs, such as seeds and fertiliser, which could help grow their businesses beyond subsistence farming. While women’s lack of access to credit is a significant obstacle to their entrepreneurial success, an interviewee noted that gender-based violence can increase when women do get access to finance. This may be due to jealousy from family members. It may also increase a husband’s control over his wife’s mobility.

Lack of information about credit services is a further barrier to some female entrepreneurs. In some cases, even if women are aware of financial services, they may be afraid to access them due to concerns about incurring debt. Women agribusiness owners are insufficiently targeted for information dissemination on NGO projects designed to help them develop their businesses. This lack of information may be due to women’s weak literacy skills, limited internet access, absence of targeting of information for women, failure to provide information in languages spoken by certain ethnic groups, and restrictions on women’s mobility which means they are not exposed to publicity from NGOs and banks. Lack of access to information is particularly a problem in rural areas.

Gendered social norms are a barrier to many women entrepreneurs, particularly in terms of mobility. According to the law, men are heads of household and women are legally expected to obey their husbands (World Bank, 2022). While women legally have a right to mobility, in practice gender norms preclude this in many parts of the country. Interviewees noted that traditional beliefs, particularly in rural areas, can require women to only work close to their homes or may prevent them from travelling abroad alone (e.g., for trade purposes). One interviewee noted that some husbands prevent their wives from dealing with male commercial traders, which can significantly restrict the potential of a business to grow. However, beyond the agribusiness sector (and in more urban settings), one interviewee reported increasingly seeing women getting involved in the garment sector (e.g., tie-dye), owning shops or opening restaurants. Some women travel abroad for this (to Mali, Senegal, Turkey and even China) and have been successful. However, due to traditional social norms, women’s independent business travel abroad attracts negative comments and criticism from some conservative sections of society.

One informant observed that business deals in Mauritania are typically made in male-only spaces (e.g., late at night over tea in a restaurant). This can restrict women entrepreneurs’ access to favourable deals and business networks. The interviewee noted that women are unable to join these meetings due to the spaces themselves being culturally exclusively male and because women’s husbands are unlikely to be supportive of them attending such meetings at night. Although the practice of business dealings happening in male spaces is common in many countries, the interviewee, who had experience in many SSA countries, found it to be especially prevalent in Mauritania.

The gendered division of labour remains strong in Mauritanian households and is a further barrier to women growing their businesses. Many women lack time and experience intense workloads because they remain largely responsible for household and care work as well as productive work (AfDB, 2024). One interviewee noted that Mauritanian life is organised around the family, and women are expected to fulfil family duties more than men. If a woman works, there is understanding, but she is still expected to attend to her close family. Women who do not work are expected to look after extended family members, which can be a barrier to starting a business. Some women prefer to work in the informal sector as it can offer greater flexibility to juggle UCDW alongside paid work. However, it can be hard for them to grow their businesses and access finance, etc. Nevertheless, the same interviewee pointed out that many people in Mauritania may not be motivated to grow their agribusinesses because their existing operations already serve the purpose of providing sustenance or a sufficient income. People can experience fulfilment, they argued, from looking after their families so may not seek to grow their businesses if it means spending less time with family members.

Cooperatives were seen by several interviewees as being weaker in Mauritania than in other SSA countries. Official data show that many Mauritanians engage in cooperatives, whether single or mixed sex, and that women’s cooperatives provide women with the opportunity to develop micro-enterprises to better cope with difficulties in accessing resources (AfDB, 2024). Cooperatives can be important to women because they can offer a means of side-stepping gendered social norms to access land, credit, government and donor support. However, the potential of cooperatives is frequently limited because members typically specialise in food crops grown on small plots. The tendency of cooperatives to operate at low economies of scale can preclude women from accessing credit to increase their overall production (AfDB, 2024).

Interviewees noted that cooperatives in Mauritania are less dynamic and developed than in other countries, possibly because the precepts of cooperatives do not necessarily align with Mauritanian cultural norms or because of government involvement in the creation of cooperatives. One interviewee suggested that there may be a cultural resistance to cooperatives in Mauritania, e.g., not wanting to borrow money from a group of people in this way, people being more cut off from each other in rural/desert settings, and women being more isolated or enclosed at home and therefore less likely to engage in an external cooperative. Another interviewee commented that tensions between ethnic groups may be an impediment to cooperatives working well. Another noted that while tontines (a form of cooperative savings club) only require small guarantees (unlike formal financial institutions), they involve a burden of administrative tasks which can be off-putting for some women. For example, a woman in a remote setting may have to travel long distances to register, potentially having to return another day with the correct documents, and this can be difficult to juggle alongside UCDW and restrictions on female mobility.

More broadly, a lack of a strong, organised rural lobby was noted by some interviewees. In comparison to neighbouring countries such as Senegal, farmers have less lobbying power to compete with importers who reportedly have a strong lobbying influence (however, the Union Nationale de l’Inter professions de l’Horticulture, UNIH, the trade association for horticulture, reportedly advocates relatively successfully for the horticulture sector).  This partly explains why Mauritania is so dependent on imports of agricultural produce (see Box 1 on the role of imported goods in Mauritania’s agribusiness sector).

Across several value chains, the absence of value chain integration was identified as a key barrier to growth for small agri-entrepreneurs. In order to expand an agribusiness, an entrepreneur needs access to local buyers who, in turn, need access to transport and logistics networks, which were reported by interviewees to be underdeveloped. Storage and distribution centres are limited. Larger companies, such as dairies, can afford to work in a more integrated way, but it is challenging for individual farmers to do so, due to lack of access to finance and inputs, lower technical know-how and fewer business connections, etc. For example, in the milk sector, the lack of refrigerated transport to distribution networks is a barrier for women herders in remote settings, preventing them from preserving their milk en route to dairies and accessing both small local markets and larger, more profitable ones in towns (see Box 3 below). Restrictions on women’s mobility and women’s UCDW can also prevent them from travelling to more remunerative markets.

Box 3: Spotlight on the challenges for small herders in the milk sector

A critical challenge for small herders is that they usually cannot afford to buy animal feed which means their livestock are under-nourished for eight months of the year. During this time, any milk produced is for the herders’ personal and family consumption, resulting in no income for the household. Even during the four months when their animals are well fed, small herders lack access to a structured distribution network where their milk can be both sold and processed into other dairy products. This reduces their earning capacity in comparison to larger herders who can afford animal feed and are more organised and have contracts with dairies that purchase and process their milk.

The milk distribution system further exacerbates inequality. Large herders benefit from a professional circuit with refrigerated lorries and nearby collection points, ensuring their milk remains fresh and viable for sale. In contrast, being semi-nomadic, small herders are not consistently located close to collection points. They also have to travel long distances, often on foot or using donkeys, to reach small retailers in remote areas, risking spoilage due to their lack of refrigerated transport and storage.

In the fruit and vegetable sector, lack of effective transport to markets can lead to damage to produce. There is also an absence of widespread mechanisation in this sector. Tractors and other machinery are prohibitively expensive, even for cooperatives (where they exist). This is due to the lack of resources and access to finance experienced by small farmers as well as the low number of quality agricultural machines available in Mauritania.

It is challenging for women farmers to process their produce (e.g., pasteurising milk) due to lack of access to capital, materials, technical know-how and networks. Key inputs and materials may not be available locally, so women may be required to travel to obtain them, which may not be possible due to restrictions on women’s mobility. Women’s traditional home-based role is a barrier preventing them accessing knowledge and connections, a barrier that male farmers of a similar size do not face. There are reportedly various NGO projects to help women with processing their produce, but most of these initiatives are of very limited duration, e.g., one year only with no follow-up. However, some women entrepreneurs have successfully engaged in food processing, notably in the milk and rice sectors (see Box 4 below).

Box 4: Success story: Processing dairy products

One pastoralist women’s association has set up a processing unit for dairy products on the outskirts of their local city, where they collect milk from pastoralists and transform it into yoghurt and other long-life products. The unit, which boosts the incomes of about 20 women, also produces salt-licks for camels that they sell to herders. Although these and other pastoralist women enjoy their freedoms, obtaining finance to manage and grow their businesses in a difficult agro-ecological environment is very hard (BRACED, 2018).

Moving into previously male-dominated domains has been a challenge. One spokeswoman for a women’s herding association (with 20 members) reported that despite a great deal of reluctance among both men and women to work together: “It is now clear for all,” she says, “that it is a right for women to participate in the sector and that the revenues they generate help reduce poverty within families, households and communities” (FAO, 2022).

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The barriers for women entrepreneurs in moving up the value chain into diversified activities, such as marketing their products or becoming buyers, are varied. As in the case of both establishing and growing an agribusiness, lack of access to capital prevents some women entrepreneurs from moving into different nodes of the value chain. For example, a woman farmer of fruit and vegetables who lacks access to credit may fail to make enough money from her harvest to become a buyer of inputs for a cooperative (if she is a member) and then to sell the cooperative’s harvest to a wholesaler. Women’s UCDW responsibilities may also mean they lack time to develop their skills in different nodes.

The overall lack of integration between nodes in the agricultural value chain, due to a lack of investment in the sector as a whole, means that it is harder for an entrepreneur to move between nodes, such as buying, marketing and transforming produce. A further barrier noted by an interviewee relates to self-confidence and the fear of failure. Most likely, this arises from the insecure financial situation faced by many women agri-entrepreneurs. Additionally, there can be a reluctance amongst some women to use their own image in marketing materials due to shyness and fear or criticism from others, including family members. This is more of a concern for rural women where communities are smaller and cultural norms are more conservative.

Opportunities for women agri-entrepreneurs

Professionalising the agribusiness sector – via investment, integration and organisation – was identified as a key opportunity by interviewees to help women agri-entrepreneurs grow their businesses. This would entail investment in transport networks and methods (including cold chain), logistics and storage (including cold storage for dairy produce) to increase integration. A better organised rural sector (e.g., via cooperatives or farmers’ organisations) would incentivise investment from the private sector^{[footnote 7]}. Expanded access to plateaux motorisés (motorbikes with a cargo box attached) would be a quick win to increase remote women farmers’ ability to transport their agricultural produce to markets (including larger and more distant markets) while protecting their produce from damage.

Various opportunities in processing were suggested by interviewees. There are many missed opportunities for processing commodities available in Mauritania, such as leather production from cattle skins, dairy products and vegetable processing (for example, tomato paste, if tomatoes are grown intensively, and dried mangos). The vegetable processing sector is likely to be easier for women to enter given they are already heavily involved in vegetable growing, while heavier industry opportunities may be blocked by cultural or other barriers. Targeted lending to key growth industries will be required to increase processing, including better infrastructure, and more factories.

There is an opportunity for women farmers to develop expertise in specialised products – such as strawberries, blueberries and watermelons. These crops could be grown in Mauritania outside the European growing season and could then be exported to European markets. Specialised training would be needed for women farmers to make this possible, as well as access to land, glasshouses, and other inputs. For success with such production, it would be critical to manage farmers’ expectations, provide financial support and co-create complementary alternative income streams, since it may take three to four years for specialised products to return a good yield.

Training is a key opportunity to increase women farmers’ capacity across various sectors. Agricultural training for women herders would allow them to diversify their income sources. Training in fodder growing would be a significant opportunity to increase the productive capacity of livestock and to increase the food security of women and children. Training in more advanced, climate-smart farming techniques would help women farmers increase their yield and the quality of their produce. Training in financial literacy for women farmers was identified by several interviewees as essential to helping them progress to higher nodes in their value chains, such as marketing to retail chains or restaurants. Building an excellent business case together with innovative financing support alongside capacity development training are critical to success. For example, provision of training on conserving produce before sale could be combined with, providing (for instance,) introducing solar driers or solar refrigerators together with innovative financing packages. Grant funding could be used as a .de-risking instrument to leverage additional public and private finance. Blended financing is important to building the trust and confidence of private sector actors. This is particularly important in countries like Mauritania where so few women have access to formal sources of credit (Dialogue Earth, 2023). Other options include financing through voluntary carbon credit schemes directed at women. There are a number of options, including W+ credits offered through Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) (WOCAN, 2024). Increasing the number of women veterinarians could promote veterinary outreach to women livestock keepers, and, in so doing, contribute to improving overall livestock productivity and the quality of livestock products.

Increasing women agri-entrepreneurs’ access to finance through formal and informal credit and microfinance services is critical to enabling them to grow their businesses. Women are largely a missed client opportunity for financial services. It would be useful for credit providers to explore provision of credit terms that are more suitable to women’s situations (noting the need to create alternatives to traditional forms of collateral). There is also an opportunity to reach women who are currently unaware of credit services via more targeted advertising.

Increasing women’s political participation could help bring greater focus on women agri-entrepreneurs’ needs at a national and local level. There is an opportunity to increase the quota of 20% of designated officials being women. Members of the conseils municipaux used to be all men, but now women are reportedly present on some of them. An interviewee commented that training to help women speak in public enabled some to enter these councils. The participation of these women has also led to male council members discussing concerns raised by women.

At household level, there is an opportunity to increase gender equality and joint decision-making between spouses to increase women’s wellbeing. The commercialisation of commodities can lead to different incentives for men and women, which can in turn lead to adverse outcomes for women if behavioural change initiatives are not introduced at the same time as income-generation opportunities.

Policy recommendations

These recommendations are organised around the WEE Conceptual Framework outlined in Figure 1.

Domain of change	Definition	What is included?
Assets	Access to and control  over key economic assets	* conduct a market analysis of specialised products where Mauritanian farmers may have a niche (e.g., strawberries, blueberries, watermelons, etc.) and target national and international markets. Provide training to women farmers, processors and other value chain actors in products deemed viable. Include couple /household training to promote equity over household decision-making * increase regional competitiveness by identifying and meeting market gaps. Conduct market research to identify a shortlist of nationally popular agriculturally based products (processed fruit and vegetables, dairy products, tinned and dried fish, etc.) which are currently imported (for example, from Morocco or Senegal). Explore possibilities for these items to be produced by Mauritanian women entrepreneurs * develop gender-responsive and transformative approaches to creating value chains. Value chain design needs to intentionally build women’s capacities and assets seamlessly throughout the chain. Focus on clearly identified middle-to-high-end urban market segments in Mauritania (including quality input supply, storage facilities, processing technologies, effective transport links, etc., together with associated capacity development for value chain actors along the chain) * work with key private sector agribusiness actors, women and their organisations, and other relevant bodies, to develop marketing strategies to encourage consumption of quality Mauritanian produce, particularly in value chains where women are well-represented (such as fish and horticulture) * invest in relevant technologies to assist with value chain upgrading such as solar refrigerators and dryers, motorbikes with cargo-boxes (plateaux motorisés), etc. Such technologies must be accompanied by appropriate women-friendly financial repayment mechanisms, training in the use of technologies, and training in their maintenance and repair. All technologies should be introduced together with focused gender training courses (potentially completed by training programmes focused on building positive masculinities) targeted at household members (including extended family) and community leaders to help ensure that women can personally use, manage and control the benefits from the asset[footnote 8] * work with banks and their staff to see women as a market. Create blended financial products suited to hitherto non-banked women in agrifood systems. This may include a blend of grants to help de-risk the sector and to encourage formal sector financial providers to invest. Explore the potential of voluntary carbon credit markets. Ensure women obtain business training and budgeting skills. Develop innovative mechanisms to establish collateral (e.g., the machinery purchased is the collateral[footnote 9]
	Individual capabilities in relation to access and control over assets and jobs	* develop, with agronomists and social scientists, livestock fodder and feed programmes targeted at women and men herders and livestock keepers (differentiated for pastoralist and settled). Women as well as men should be trained in fodder cultivation, harvesting and processing. Work with social scientists to ensure gender-responsive decision-making around land allocation for fodder planting, preparation and allocation/feed preparation and use * train women to become motorcycle operators (MCO) or to drive motor cargo tricycles and developing leasing and other innovative financing structures to help women transport products to market. This would be particularly suited to women’s cooperatives and would need to be accompanied by a community level gender awareness training course * ensure that women are targeted, trained and mentored (potentially by existing successful entrepreneurs) to take on key positions across selected value chains * develop a cadre of women veterinarians to work with women (and men) livestock keepers * consider developing a business model to help women veterinarians generate independent and sufficient income – for example, training in entrepreneurship around poultry businesses alongside their work as veterinarians. Veterinarians can then train others in their business model together with providing veterinary services * promote digital-based participatory agricultural extension programmes to reach remote populations * create in-person and online courses to develop women’s managerial competencies, business acumen, and customer orientation as relevant to specific value chains. Embed training on financial literacy in programmes. Offer courses in Arabic as well as relevant national languages * promote digital and financial literacy to women. Train women as mobile banking agents to reach others
	Attitudes towards women’s access to and control over economic assets and work; social expectations of behaviour based on gender; gender relations affecting allocation of work and resources within household	* develop gender-responsive and gender-transformative principles to develop ambition and to inform theories of change, project design, indicators, and implementation processes * promote gender-responsive and gender-transformative behavioural change programmes in all interventions (extension, financial, governance, etc.). Ensure relevant intersectional analyses in all work (considering ethnic norms, age, disability, life stage, etc.) * ensure that women (and other targeted groups) are consulted and involved at all stages, from project design through to evaluation. Build in scaling strategies for successful pilots from the beginning, for instance “Gender Up”[footnote 10] * encourage and strengthen gender equity in intra-household decision-making through introducing Household Methodologies. Various approaches are available, including Gender Action Learning System (GALS[footnote 11], Nurturing connections (HKI), Journeys of Transformation (focus on working with men and boys for gender transformation[footnote 12], Gender Household Approach[footnote 13], Gender Model Family[footnote 14]  – among others. These methods help in the following ways: to balance and share workloads in paid work and UCDW (sharing the latter is particularly important for women); to deepen asset sharing, management and ownership; to improve informed and equitable technology adoption; and to strengthen the equity of benefit distribution. Apart from households, some of these methods can be used with community organisations, other institutions, and with value chain actors. * conduct a small exploratory study to identify key strengths and weaknesses in women’s cooperatives in fish, livestock, and crops. Design group-building interventions focused on training women in methods they can use to improve group discussion processes and group dynamics, including handling conflict constructively * consider developing alternative models to cooperatives (along with an assessment of legal implications). Examples include farmer associations, farmers’ unions, business associations, and gender-equitable out-grower schemes (contract farming model) * build on existing work to strengthen women’s presence on community councils (conseils municipaux). Work with women as well as men representatives to identify and act upon key gender issues at community and household level – with particular reference to developing economically viable agri-food businesses
	Changes in legal protection, reform of discriminatory laws and regulations, enactment of legislation, enabling women to exercise agency in relation to assets and jobs	* effective entrepreneurs need to exercise effective decision-making power. The Government of Mauritania may wish to consider developing legislation to end the requirement that a married woman obey her husband. Further work on gender-equitable legislation could include allowing women to be head of household and enacting legislation to protect women from domestic violence (World Bank, 2022) * devise mixed systems (including, but not restricted to, quotas) to increase women’s representation in parliament and particularly within local government structures to help promote gender-responsive strategy development and implementation * work with relevant ministries, together with businesswomen and their organisations, to improve the gender-responsiveness of the private sector. Measures may include developing and promoting gender-responsive financing goals and mechanisms and modifying extant business legislation (e.g., to simplify selected procedures, address low literacy issues, etc.) * create One Stop Shops to handle all documentation needed to set up a business. These should be open to women and men. They should develop promotional material targeted specifically at women (appropriate visual materials and language), offer services in locally used languages as well as Arabic, and staff should be trained to be gender-responsive

References

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Annex 1

Selected SDG Indicators for Mauritania (2022/2021). Source: Compiled by the authors from FAO STAT (15.08.2024^{[footnote 15]}

SDG target	Value	Year
2.1.1 Number of undernourished people	0.4 million	2021
2.1.1 Number of undernourished people	0.4 million	2022
2.1.1 Prevalence of undernourishment	8.3%	2021
2.1.1 Prevalence of undernourishment	9.3%	2022
2.1.2 Number of severely food insecure people (female) (15 years old and over)	133,500	2021
2.1.2 Number of severely food insecure people (female) (15 years old and over)	177,800	2022
2.1.2 Number of severely food insecure people (male) (15 years old and over)	119,500	2021
2.1.2 Number of severely food insecure people (male) (15 years old and over)	144,800	2022
2.1.2 Number of severely food insecure people (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges)	436,400	2021
2.1.2 Number of severely food insecure people (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age)	551,100	2022
2.1.2 Prevalence of severe food insecurity (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	9.5%	2021
2.1.2 Prevalence of severe food insecurity (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	11.6%	2022
2.1.2 Prevalence of severe food insecurity (female) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	9.6%	2021
2.1.2 Prevalence of severe food insecurity (female) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	12.3%	2022
2.1.2 Prevalence of severe food insecurity (male) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	9.4%	2021
2.1.2 Prevalence of severe food insecurity (male) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	11%	2022
2.1.2 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (female) (15 years old and over)	737,800	2021
2.1.2 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (female) (15 years old and over)	897,800	2022
2.1.2 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (male) (15 years old and over)	696,000	2021
2.1.2 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (male) (15 years old and above)	795,200	2022
2.1.2 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age)	2,477,300	2021
2.1.2 Number of moderately or severely food insecure people (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age)	2,899,100	2022
2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	53.7%	2021
2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (both sexes or no breakdown by sex) (all age ranges or no breakdown by age) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	61.2%	2022
2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (female) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	52.9%	2021
2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (female) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	62.3%	2022
2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (male) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	54.5%	2021
2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (male) (15 years old and over) (no breakdown by urbanisation)	60.2%	2022
5.a.1 Proportion of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex (both sexes or no breakdown by sex)	27.7%	2021
5.a.1 Proportion of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex (both sexes or no breakdown by sex)	-	2022
5.a.1 Proportion of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex (female)	10.92%	2021
5.a.1 Proportion of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex (female)	-	2022
5.a.1 Proportion of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex (male)	40.04%	2021
5.a.1 Proportion of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex (male)	-	2022
5.a.1 Share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land	16.7%	2021

1. Defined as living on less than USD 2.15/day at 2017 purchasing power parity (World Bank. 2022. Country overview – Mauritania). ↩

2. https://www.ifad.org/en/web/operations/w/country/mauritania ↩

3. Share of business is calculated as the proportion of female or male newly registered limited liability company owners out of the total number of newly registered limited liability company owners in the economy in the calendar year. Data compiled from the most recent data point between 2016 and 2024. ↩

4. To make the data comparable across 190 economies, Doing Business uses a standardised business that is 100% domestically owned, has start-up capital equivalent to 10 times the income per capita, engages in general industrial or commercial activities, and employs between 10 and 50 people one month after the commencement of operations, all of whom are domestic nationals. Starting a Business considers two types of local limited liability companies that are identical in all aspects, except that one company is owned by 5 married women and the other by 5 married men. The ranking of economies on the ease of starting a business is determined by sorting their scores for starting a business. These scores are the simple average of the scores for each of the component indicators. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/3c0256ce-458e-5308-a70a-f7ce971cdf92/content ↩

5. Urban areas are less influenced by customary law. Women have many opportunities to engage with various sectors, and they are increasingly vocal and willing to insist on recognition of their rights. Consequently, women are better equipped to obtain and hold onto land (Bal et al., 2015). ↩

6. Account ownership denotes the percentage of respondents who report having an account (by themselves or together with someone else) at a bank or another type of financial institution or report personally using a mobile money service in the past 12 months. ↩

7. These groups could also serve as a counter to the strong importers’ lobby in Mauritania. ↩

8. WorldFish Bangladesh combined technical training on fish culture with behavioural change methods for change in gender norms (working at household and community levels). The latter were taken from HKI’s Nurturing Connections manual (https://helenkellerintl.org/our-stories/nurturing-connections-healthier-communities/) ↩

9. Women World Banking has many suggestions https://www.womensworldbanking.org/). Network banking partners with Women’s World Banking are listed here. https://www.womensworldbanking.org/about-us/our-global-network/.  Many African banks have developed financial packages for women, including in agrifood systems. ↩

10. https://gender.cgiar.org/tools-methods-manuals/genderup-gender-responsive-method-scale ↩

11. GALS https://p4cda.net/gender-action-learning-system-gals/#:~:text=Gender%20Action%20Learning%20System%20(GALS)%20is%20a%20community%2Dled,household%2C%20community%20and%20organizational%20development ↩

12. Journeys of Transformation https://www.equimundo.org/programs/journeys-of-transformation/ ↩

13. Gender Household Approach https://www.hrnstiftung.org/theory-of-change ↩

14. Gender Model Family https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0268b7ae-6cdd-4772-bb16-3f63719d1539/content ↩

15. https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/SDGB ↩