A ship carrying ore moves like a behemoth toward Cap Blanc in Northern Mauritania. On this November morning, the sky is clear and the ocean perfectly calm. On the ship's bridge, Captain Mohamed Ould Kotob scans the horizon through binoculars. A few nautical miles off the Mauritanian coast, he guides the immense vessel into position.
"We expect to be alongside in twenty minutes," he tells the harbour master of Nouadhibou's mineral port. A routine interaction that conceals the quiet revolution that is underway.
Only a few years ago, a ship of this size would not have been able to enter the port. Depth limits meant vessels had to reduce their loads. "It was impossible to manoeuvre something this large in the old port," Ould Kotob recalls. Draft restrictions capped operations, limiting how much iron ore Mauritania could ship.
Today, those constraints are gone. A 25-kilometre channel has been dredged deeper, allowing ships to load far more weight than before. "Now we can load up to 230,000 tonnes," the captain says. The increase has been transformative.
Ould Kotob, who has worked at the state-owned Société Nationale Industrielle et Minière (SNIM) for three decades, has watched the company evolve from a constrained exporter to a competitive player. For him, port expansion represents more than engineering. It removes a bottleneck that once held back the country's entire mining sector.
Yet the port is only a waystation along a much longer journey.
Seven hundred kilometres inland, in the heart of the Sahara Desert, iron ore is extracted from SNIM's mines. From there, some of the world's longest trains--stretching up to 2.5 kilometres in length--carry the ore across desert plains to the coast.
"I drive one of the longest trains in the world," says Mohamed Takyoullah, who has spent twenty years at the controls. "In a way, I drive the engine of Mauritania's economy".
He remembers when the locomotives he drove were ageing and frequently broke down. Today, newer, more powerful engines haul heavier loads with greater reliability. The railway, like the port, has modernised to support rising production.
That growth did not happen all at once, nor by chance. Thirty years ago, when the original ore deposit at Tazadit began to decline, SNIM faced a turning point. "We had to rethink everything," says Cheikh Melanine, a production engineer with the company. "From extraction to transport and export, every stage required investment."
The result is a steady rise in output. In the 1980s, annual production stood at around 10 million tonnes. SNIM is now targetting 45 million tonnes in the medium term.
Quality has improved as well. Ore that once had an iron content of roughly 30 percent is now processed to a level of 66 percent before export. New plants and modern equipment make that possible, strengthening Mauritania's position in what is an increasingly competitive market. Over decades, SNIM's shareholders and development partners--including the African Development Bank Group, which has mobilised $500 million since 1978--have supported this long-term transformation.
Energy is another challenge for the company. Once heavily dependent on fossil fuels, SNIM is shifting toward renewables, having installed 19 megawatts of solar and wind capacity. At Nouadhibou, a wind farm supplies nearly 30 percent of the plant's electricity needs.
"This avoids about 12,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year," says Houley N'Dongo, an environmental engineer with SNIM. "And that matters."
SNIM, which has nearly 7,000 employees, contributes roughly 9 percent of Mauritania's GDP. In control rooms, on desert tracks, and along the quayside, employees share a common conviction: the company's fortunes are closely tied to that of the country.
As night falls over Nouadhibou, floodlights illuminate the port. From the bridge, Ould Kotob watches as the vessel eases away from the quay.
"Cast off--we're departing," he announces.
The ship, laden with iron ore, glides into open water, carrying the work of thousands of Mauritanians--miners, engineers, rail operators and port workers. For Ould Kotob, the cargo represents more than weight and income. It reflects the investments and reforms that have strengthened Mauritania's mining sector.
