First Independent Mena Newspaper
Mauritania will hold presidential elections in June and President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is the first person to hand in his documents as a candidate to the Constitutional court. The elections could be boycotted as it has been for the case of the municipal and legislative elections. Alongside the preparations for the elections, he is […]
Maroc Telecom, the leading telecommunications operator in Morocco, held its General Assembly on Tuesday (April 22) to officially celebrate the entry of the new majority shareholder, the UAE Etisalat, which acquired 53% of the company’s capital, previously held by Vivendi. Etisalat reached the € 4.2 billion deal with Vivendi in November last year after months-long […]
Presidential elections in Mauritania are scheduled to take place in June according to a government decree despite differences between the opposition parties and the ruling party. The opposition has doubts over the transparency and the credibility of the elections. The legislative elections held at the end of last year were boycotted by some parties and […]
Over the past weekend, the Ukrainian government was ousted, Ukraine’s parliament reinstated the 2004 constitution and former President Victor Yanukovich is on the run in Russia. One might be forgiven to think of these developments in isolation. But it is in fact a reminder that reactionary regimes rarely deliver the sort of stability they are […]
Spain’s minister of state for security, Francisco Martinez Vázquez, recently completed his visit to Mauritania and Senegal that started on 4 February. The aim of his tour of the region was to bolster Sahel ties and discuss ways to tackle imminent threats to the region such as clandestine immigration, crime, drug trafficking, and cross-border terrorism. […]
About 500 entrepreneurs from the Gulf States, the Maghreb, Europe, and Mauritania, as well as officers of a number of different international organizations, attended the first Mauritania Investment Forum that took place in the Nouadhibou Free Zone on January 26-27. The event that was opened by Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was later crowned […]
The killing of three French journalists in northern Malian region of Kidal in early November 2013 is indicative of the ability of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to conduct terrorist attacks in the region despite French military presence. Similarly, the announcement of the creation of a new terrorist group called Al Mourabitoun out of […]
Mauritania which is pinpointed by several international and national NGOs for the practice of slavery that is still common in the country decided to set up a special court to try slavery crimes and help thus put an end to the practice. The Judiciary Supreme council, chaired by the head of State, decided this week […]
The ruling UPR party has emerged victorious in the second round of the legislative elections after winning more than 50% of the parliamentary seats. The elections have been criticized in several quarters and some opposition political parties preferred to boycott it. Tawassoul, a party participating for the first time, won majority of the seats among […]
International Anti-Corruption Day was celebrated all across North African earlier this week with dismal news on the fight against bribery. Overall, the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from Transparency International showed little to no improvement in graft around the region. For example, in Libya, the situation got even worse when the country was ranked as […]