6. Conclusion
So, what next for this nation that Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz has led with such assertiveness for more than 10 years?
Although socially complex and confronted by large strategic challenges, Mauritania will soon have the resources to take significant steps towards a wider distribution of economic and social opportunity, lubricated by the revenues from new hydrocarbons development and diversification of the export and employment base. The door could also be opened to wider participation in political decisions and governance through decentralization and the reinvigorated and more diverse new membership of the national assembly and the regional and municipal councils.
But this is also a moment of tough questions: the government remains uneasy about the challenges posed by political Islam and the more vociferous campaigners for Haratine rights, while over the border, in Mali, the threat from jihadist terrorism remains persistent. Mauritania’s deepening engagement with West African neighbours promises to open up fresh economic opportunity but is also a reflection of the need to tackle these security challenges.
The presidential contest of 2019 will test the regime’s capacity to evolve after 11 years under the leadership of Abdelaziz. And the landscape beyond that election will be a proving ground for the longer-term thinking of the Mauritanian leadership.
As it seeks to maintain predominance, and contain a broadening opposition challenge, the government has sought to extend the political base of the ruling UPR through the mass recruitment of new party members. The logical consequence of this political reaching out might be a stronger effort to deliver economic benefits, social emancipation and better public services to an expanded base beyond the regime’s traditional core constituency.
Thus, the drive to maintain hegemony could become an engine of socio-economic change, while a failure to deliver prosperity and entitlements to wider sections of the population would risk undermining the regime’s political authority and ceding further ground to opposition and civil society critics.
These questions of domestic development and emancipation cannot be entirely disconnected from the profound reorientation of Mauritanian diplomacy that has been instigated by Abdelaziz and his close colleagues, deepening engagement with West Africa to balance the country’s participation in the Arab world.
These refreshed sub-Saharan relationships may gradually exert an incremental domestic influence – perhaps already implicit in the president’s announcement that he will respect constitutional term limits. The effect could be to nudge political governance, social and economic policy in a more pluralist and inclusive direction.
Such an evolution is far from certain, however. The presidential term that begins after the 2019 election will be a crucial indicator of how Mauritania’s leaders respond to this unfolding landscape of challenge and opportunity.