Distillers Country guides / Mauritania
Mauritania
A one-page guide to Mauritania for the spirits trade: the country, its people, its economy and how it drinks.
At a glance
- Capital
- Nouakchott
- Official languages
- Arabic
- Currency
- Mauritanian ouguiya (MRU)
- Time zone
- UTC+0 (GMT)
- Area
- 1,030,000 km²
People
- Population
- 5.3 million (2025)
- Population growth
- 2.8% a year
- Living in towns and cities
- 61.5%
- Aged under 15
- 42.4%
- Aged 65 and over
- 3.2%
- Life expectancy
- 68.7 years
Economy
- GDP
- US$11.7 billion (2025)
- GDP per person
- US$2,198 (2025)
- Economic growth
- 4.0% (2025)
- Inflation
- 1.5% (2025)
Climate
About three-quarters of the country is desert or semi-desert, with sandy desert in the centre and north and savanna in the south-east (Wikipedia gives no temperature figures). Hot and dry conditions make cargo handling and storage demanding.
Alcohol
- Alcohol is
- Prohibited (all forms of alcohol, per Wikipedia Legal drinking age)
- Legal drinking age
- Prohibited at all ages (per Wikipedia Legal drinking age)
- Alcohol per adult a year
- <0.1 litres of pure alcohol (2019)
Sources: World Bank (population, economy and demographics), WHO Global Health Observatory (alcohol per adult and drinking mix); Legal drinking age; Mauritania (Wikipedia); World Bank country data; WHO Global status report on alcohol and health 2024 (via Wikipedia table); UN Comtrade public API, HS 2208. Figures are the latest each source publishes; the year is shown beside each one.