This is a list of heads of state of Mauritania since the country gained independence from France in 1960 to the present day.
A total of nine people have served as head of state of Mauritania (not counting one acting president). Additionally, one person, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, has served on two non-consecutive occasions.
Mohamed Ould Cheikh Mohamed Ahmed Ould Ghazouani (Arabic: محمد ولد الشيخ محمد أحمد ولد الغزواني; born 4 December 1956), also known as Ghazouani and Ould Ghazouani, is a Mauritanian politician and retired army general who has been the 9th President of Mauritania since 2019, and the 22nd chairperson of the African Union from February 2024 until February 2025.
Ghazouani is a former general-director of National Security and former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of Mauritania (2008–2018). He was defense minister of Mauritania from October 2018 to March 2019. At that time a close ally of his predecessor Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, he was elected president of Mauritania on 22 June 2019 following the 2019 presidential election. His victory in the 2019 presidential election was presented as having been the country's first peaceful transition of power since independence.
The 2008 Mauritanian coup d'état was a military coup that took place in Mauritania on August 6, 2008, when President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was ousted from power by the Armed Forces of Mauritania, led by a group of high-ranking generals he had dismissed from office earlier that day.
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (Arabic: محمد ولد عبد العزيز, romanized: Muḥammad Wald 'Abd al-'Azīz; born 20 December 1956) is a retired Mauritanian military officer and politician who served as the 8th President of Mauritania from 2009 to 2019.
A career soldier and high-ranking officer, he was a leading figure in the August 2005 coup that ousted President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, and later in August 2008, he led another coup, that removed President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. After the 2008 coup, Mohamed became president of the High Council of State as part of what was described as a political transition leading to a new election. He resigned from that post in April 2009 in order to stand as a candidate in the July 2009 presidential election, which he won. He took office in August 2009. He was subsequently re-elected in 2014, then did not seek re-election in 2019. He was succeeded by Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, who assumed office in August 2019.
Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi (Arabic: سيدي محمد ولد الشيخ عبد الله; 1938 – 22 November 2020) was a Mauritanian politician who was President of Mauritania from 2007 to 2008. He served in the government during the 1970s, and after a long period of absence from politics he won the March 2007 presidential election, taking office on 19 April 2007. He was deposed in a military coup d'état on 6 August 2008.
Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya (born 28 November 1941) is a Mauritanian military officer and politician who served as the President of Mauritania from 1984 to 2005. He also served as the fifth Prime minister of Mauritania from 1981 to 1992 except for a brief period in 1984.
Born in Atar, French West Africa, Ould Taya studied at Franco-Arab school and then French military school. He participated in the Western Sahara War against the Polisario Front. Ould Taya was appointed Chief of the Army staff in July 1980 and then as Prime minister in April 1981 after an unsuccessful coup attempt against Mohamed Haidalla.
The High Council of State (Arabic: المجلس الأعلى للدولة; French: Haut Conseil d’État) was the supreme political body of Mauritania. It served as the country's interim government following the coup d'état which ousted the President, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi on August 6, 2008. It was led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. After seizing power, it quickly pledged to hold elections "in the shortest possible period". A few days after seizing power, Ould Abdel Aziz named Mauritanian Ambassador to Belgium and the European Union, Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf, as Prime Minister.
On April 15, 2009, Ould Abdel Aziz resigned as President of the High Council of State in order to stand as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election. President of the Senate, Ba Mamadou Mbaré, succeeded him as head of state in an interim capacity, becoming the first black leader of Mauritania. The election took place on July 18, 2009, and Ould Abdel Aziz was elected President with 52.58% of the votes. He was sworn in on August 5, 2009.
The Union for the Republic (Arabic: الاتحاد من أجل الجمهورية; French: Union pour la République, UPR) was a political party in Mauritania. The party was formed on 5 May 2009 by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz after he resigned from the military, to run for President of Mauritania. Aziz resigned as chairman of the party on 2 August 2009 after winning the presidential election, as the President of Mauritania cannot be a member of any party. The party also won 13 of the 17 seats up for re-election to the Mauritanian Senate in 2009, giving the UPR control of a total of 38 of the 53 Senate seats.
As a result of the 2018 parliamentary election, UPR became the largest political party in Mauritania. Four major political parties merged into the Union for the Republic after the election. On October 18, 2018, a month after the previous legislative election, the Unionist Party for the Construction of Mauritania voted to merge itself into the UPR. On the 21st, Choura for Development adopted the same decision, while centrist El Wiam, which used to be on the moderate opposition, did the same on the 29th. The last party to merge into the UPR was the National Pact for Democracy and Development, which was the previous ruling party from 2007 until 2008's coup. PNDD-ADIL merged into the UPR on December 27, 2019.
Greater Mauritania (Arabic: موريتانيا الكبرى) is a term for the Mauritanian irredentist claim that generally includes the Western Sahara and other Sahrawi-populated areas of the western Sahara Desert. The term was initially used by Mauritania's first President, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, as he began claiming the territory then known as Spanish Sahara even before Mauritanian independence in 1960.
Its main competing ideologies have been Berberism, Sahrawi nationalism, Moroccan irredentism, Mali federationism and Tuareg nationalism.