Mauritania Export Data: $4.07B in 2023, Up 7.60%

Iron Ore and Gold Are Running Neck and Neck

Mauritania exported $4.07 billion worth of goods in 2023, up 7.60% from $3.78 billion in 2022. Ores, slag and ash led every category at 37.82% of the total, worth $1.54 billion, almost entirely iron ore. Gold and other precious metals followed at 37.34% ($1.52 billion), close enough behind that the ranking between the two can flip from one year to the next. Mining alone accounted for roughly 60% of Mauritania's exports as far back as 2018, with the Canadian-operated Tasiast gold mine ranking among the country's biggest revenue contributors. Gold has since grown large enough to occasionally overtake iron ore for the top spot, a shift driven mostly by rising output at that single mine rather than any broader industrial shift. Iron ore, by contrast, comes from state-run operations that have supplied European and Asian steelmakers for decades. The two commodities move through entirely different corporate structures, yet land in nearly the same place on Mauritania's export ledger.

Fish and crustaceans added 16.62% ($675.82 million), the country's third pillar. Mauritania harvests 8% of the world's octopus supply, with nearly all of that catch exported to a single market. Everything else in the top ten is minor by comparison. Food industry residues added 2.30% ($93.42 million), and iron and steel articles contributed 2.14% ($87.20 million). Machinery supplied 0.86% ($35.14 million), and animal and vegetable fats and oils added 0.49% ($19.82 million). Mineral fuels contributed 0.48% ($19.50 million), optical instruments added 0.42% ($16.90 million), and fruit and nuts closed out the list at 0.40% ($16.11 million). None of these smaller categories reaches even a tenth of what fish alone brings in, let alone iron ore or gold. Mauritania's export economy runs almost entirely on three products pulled from its mines and its coastline.

Canada Buys the Gold, China Buys the Ore

Canada bought 24.45% of Mauritania's exports in 2023, worth $993.82 million, more than any other country. That is not because Canadian buyers consume that much gold. The country's largest gold mine, Tasiast, is operated by Canada's Kinross Gold. Output tied to a Canadian-owned operation gets recorded against Canada in trade data, even when the metal itself moves on to refiners and buyers elsewhere. China followed at 22.69% ($922.34 million), a far more literal relationship. Mauritania's ore exports to China ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years, with iron ore the dominant commodity in that flow, feeding Chinese steel mills that have made China the world's largest buyer of iron ore for years running.

Algeria took third at 8.17% ($332.00 million), a relationship rooted more in shared borders and overland trade than in any single commodity story. Switzerland followed at 7.36% ($299.01 million). Switzerland's position echoes a pattern seen across West Africa's gold producers. The country refines a large share of the world's gold despite mining almost none of it domestically, and doré bars from mines like Tasiast often pass through Swiss refineries before reaching final buyers. Spain bought 6.16% ($250.44 million), largely the octopus that Mauritania ships in bulk to Spanish importers who distribute it across the rest of the EU. United Arab Emirates added 5.57% ($226.36 million), and Italy contributed 3.77% ($153.39 million). Japan supplied 3.51% ($142.64 million), Australia added 2.62% ($106.31 million), and the Netherlands rounded out the top ten at 2.09% ($84.81 million).

Five Straight Years of Growth, Pandemic Included

Export values have climbed every single year since 2019, a run few commodity exporters can claim. The total stood at $2.27 billion in 2019, rose to $2.83 billion in 2020 even as the pandemic crushed trade almost everywhere else, then continued upward to $3.27 billion in 2021, $3.78 billion in 2022 and $4.07 billion in 2023. Gold's safe-haven appeal during a period of global uncertainty likely helped cushion Mauritania's export book at exactly the moment many other economies were shrinking.

That five-year run leaves Mauritania in an unusual position for a country this reliant on just two commodities. Iron ore and gold together make up close to three-quarters of everything the country sells abroad, and both have been rising in price and volume at the same time rather than one offsetting a decline in the other. A simultaneous downturn in steel demand and gold prices would hit Mauritania's export figures far harder than a slump in either commodity alone, since there is little else in the export mix large enough to absorb the shock. Fish offers some cushion, since seafood demand and catch volumes do not move in lockstep with metal prices. But at 16.62% of the total, the octopus trade is nowhere near large enough to offset a serious slump in either of the two commodities that dominate everything else.