Mauritania covers 1,030,700 km² (397,955 sq mi), making it the 28th-largest country in the world and the 11th-largest in Africa. It is about 4.2 times the size of the United Kingdom, almost exactly twice the size of Spain, and a little larger than Texas and New Mexico combined. Around 90% of that territory lies in the Sahara, and the whole country sits below 1,000 m: the highest point, Kediet ej Jill near Zouérat, reaches only 915 m (3,002 ft). Its roughly 5.46 million people (2026 estimate) give it an average of just over 5 people per km², and about a third of them live in one city, the capital Nouakchott on the Atlantic coast.
1,030,700 km²: The Measurements Behind Mauritania's Size
The area figure of 1,030,700 km² is the one used by the United Nations-based rankings and by Wikipedia's geography of Mauritania, and it is unusual in one respect: all of it is counted as land. Mauritania has no significant permanent lakes, and its only perennial river, the Senegal, forms the southern border rather than flowing through the interior. Most countries of this size report thousands of square kilometres of inland water; Mauritania reports zero.
The other basic measurements come from the same sources:
- Land borders: about 5,074 km in total, with Mali, Western Sahara, Senegal and Algeria.
- Coastline: about 754 km on the Atlantic Ocean, from Ras Nouadhibou in the north to the Senegal River mouth in the south.
- Highest point: Kediet ej Jill, 915 m (3,002 ft).
- Lowest point: Sebkha de Ndrhamcha, a salt flat near the coast, about 5 m below sea level.
- North–south extent: from the tripoint with Algeria and Western Sahara at roughly 27°N to the Senegal River at under 15°N, more than 12 degrees of latitude, or well over 1,300 km.
One more figure explains why Mauritania looks so plain on a relief map. It is described as the world's largest country lying entirely below 1,000 m (3,300 ft). The Adrar Plateau, its highest tableland, reaches only about 500 m, and isolated peaks such as Kediet ej Jill rise above the plateaus as single summits rather than ranges.
Mauritania Against Egypt, Spain and the United Kingdom
Within Africa, Mauritania's nearest match is Egypt. At 1,001,450 km², Egypt is only about 29,000 km² smaller, so the two countries are roughly the same size, and both are overwhelmingly desert. Its eastern neighbour Mali is about a fifth larger (1,240,192 km²), while Algeria to the north-east, Africa's largest country at 2,381,741 km², is about 2.3 times its size. Senegal, its southern neighbour, would fit inside Mauritania more than five times.
European comparisons make the scale clearer. Mauritania is about 1.9 times the size of metropolitan France, about twice the size of Spain, roughly 2.9 times the size of Germany and about 4.2 times the size of the United Kingdom. Put another way, metropolitan France, Spain and the United Kingdom together cover only about a quarter more ground than Mauritania alone.
Texas and New Mexico Together: A North American Yardstick
For readers in the United States, the closest single comparison is Texas plus New Mexico. Texas covers about 695,660 km² and New Mexico about 314,900 km², for a combined 1,010,560 km², roughly 20,000 km² short of Mauritania. Texas on its own would cover about two-thirds of the country.
The comparison also works for landscape. Like west Texas and much of New Mexico, Mauritania is dominated by dry plains, mesas and scarps, with most people concentrated where water is available. The difference is degree: rainfall in the northern two-thirds of Mauritania is less than 100 mm (3.9 in) a year, and some places can go a year or more without rain.
Ninety Percent Sahara: What Fills Mauritania's Interior
Most of that area is dry. About three-quarters of the country is desert or semi-desert, and sand covers about 40% of the surface. Geographers divide the country into four zones running roughly east to west.
- The Saharan Zone takes up the northern two-thirds, south to the line where annual rainfall reaches about 150 mm. It includes the regions of Tiris Zemmour, Adrar and northern Hodh ech Chargui, and in the north-east it merges into El Djouf, the "Empty Quarter", a vast field of dunes that continues into Mali.
- The Sahelian Zone is an east–west belt of steppe and savanna running from Boutilimit through Ayoûn el Atroûs to Néma.
- The Senegal River Valley, also called the Chemama, is a narrow strip north of the Senegal River with rich alluvial soils and the highest rainfall in the country, 400 to 600 mm a year.
- The Coastal Zone follows the Atlantic shore, where trade winds moderate the heat.
The interior is broken by south-west-facing scarps and sandstone plateaus, the Adrar and the Tagant among them, with spring-fed oases at their feet. The most striking single feature is the Richat Structure near Ouadane, a ring-shaped eroded dome about 40 km (25 mi) across that is visible from orbit.
The desert has also been growing. Severe droughts from the 1960s onward pushed the Sahara southward: the belt of better land north of the Senegal River, once 16 to 30 km wide, was badly eroded by the late 1980s. For the bigger picture of the desert that fills most of the country, see how big the Sahara Desert is.
A 704 km Railway from Zouérat to Nouadhibou
The Mauritania Railway, opened in 1963, runs a single line of 704 km (437 mi) from the iron-mining centre of Zouérat in Tiris Zemmour to the port of Nouadhibou, via Fderik and Choum. Its trains can be up to 3 km (1.9 mi) long, among the longest and heaviest in the world, and they carry iron ore from the hematite mines around Zouérat to ships on the Atlantic.
The route also traces how awkwardly the country's borders run. Near Choum the track hugs the frontier so closely that, since the closure of the Choum Tunnel, a 5 km section runs through the Polisario Front-controlled part of Western Sahara. At the coastal end, Nouadhibou sits on the eastern shore of Ras Nouadhibou, a peninsula about 50 km long and 13 km wide that is divided lengthways between Mauritania and Western Sahara, so the western half of the same strip of sand lies in the disputed territory.
Straight-line distances between the main towns give a sense of the scale. Nouakchott to Nouadhibou is about 340 km up the coast; Nouakchott to Zouérat is about 630 km; and Nouakchott to Néma, the regional capital of Hodh ech Chargui in the south-east, is more than 900 km, roughly the distance from London to Berlin. Between those places, most of the map is open desert.
Just Over 5 People per km²: Where Mauritanians Actually Live
A country of a million square kilometres with about 5.46 million people has a very low average density, and the average hides how concentrated the population is. Most Mauritanians live in the temperate south, and roughly a third live in Nouakchott. The city was chosen as the capital for the newly independent country, with construction beginning in 1958, and was originally planned for about 15,000 people; it grew rapidly in the 1970s as drought drove people out of the countryside.
The other main population centres are Nouadhibou on the northern coast and the towns along the Senegal River. By contrast, Tiris Zemmour, the vast northernmost of the country's 15 regions, had only about 53,000 residents in 2013, most of them in and around Zouérat. On the coast between Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the Banc d'Arguin National Park, established in 1976 and now a World Heritage Site, protects a large stretch of sandbanks and shallow water used by migratory and breeding birds.
Borders Drawn With a Ruler: How Mauritania Got Its Shape
Mauritania's outline explains part of its size. Most of its frontiers are colonial-era lines that run straight across empty desert. The Algeria–Mauritania border is a single straight segment of about 460 km. The border with Mali begins with a 172 km stretch along the 25th parallel and then follows a series of long straight lines, one of them about 955 km, before reaching the Senegal River system in the south-west.
The border with Western Sahara, about 1,560 km long, is just as geometric: from the Algerian tripoint it runs south for 146 km, west along the 26th parallel for 334 km, south down the 12th meridian west for 176 km, then through a broad arc to 21°20′N, which it follows west for 408 km before cutting south across the Ras Nouadhibou peninsula to the Atlantic. Western Sahara itself remains a disputed territory. Mauritania annexed its southern part in 1976 and withdrew its claim in 1979; Morocco now controls about 70% of the territory, including almost all of the coast, the Polisario Front controls the remaining inland strip along the Mauritanian and Algerian borders, and the United Nations lists it as a non-self-governing territory. None of that land is counted in Mauritania's 1,030,700 km².
The result is a country whose size is easy to state and hard to feel: the area of Egypt, the footprint of two Spains, and a population smaller than many single cities, spread along a coast and a river at the edges of the Sahara. For more on the country beyond its measurements, see our Mauritania country guide.