Map of Mauritania

Mauritania is located in Africa. Its territory lies in the northern and western hemispheres, centred near 20.0° N, 12.0° W. It shares land borders with 3 countries — Algeria, Mali and Senegal — and also has its own coastline. Within Africa, a continent of 54 countries bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, Mauritania is mapped here in full with its borders, capital and key facts.

Mauritania shares land frontiers with the following 3 countries. Select any neighbour to open its own map.

Mauritania covers about 1,030,700 km² (397,955 sq mi). That makes it the 28th-largest country in the world by area and the 11th-largest in Africa, larger by area than 43 of the continent’s 54 countries.

It is home to a population of roughly 4,927,532, the 126th-largest in the world and the 39th-largest in Africa, accounting for about 0.3% of the continent’s people. With that land area, Mauritania has an average population density of about 5 people per km². Among the 54 countries of Africa it stands 39th by population and 11th by area.

The seat of government is Nouakchott, and the official currency is the Mauritanian ouguiya (MRU, UM), and the main official language is Arabic. Traffic drives on the right, and the country observes the time zone UTC.

Mauritania carries the ISO country codes MR and MRT, dials on the international calling code +222 and uses the .mr internet domain.

Mauritania shares its land borders with 3 countries, each of which is mapped in full on this site. Listed from the most to the least populous, here is how they compare.

Its neighbours are Algeria (capital Algiers, about 47,400,000 people), Mali (capital Bamako, about 22,395,489 people) and Senegal (capital Dakar, about 18,593,258 people).

By area, Mauritania is larger than 1 of these neighbours and smaller than 2 of them, which places its size in context along its own frontiers. Open any neighbour above to see its capital, borders and full set of facts on its own map.

The interactive map above is centred on 20.0° N, 12.0° W and opens at zoom level 4, framing Mauritania within Africa. A marker pin sits at the country’s approximate geographic centre; drag the map or use scroll and pinch to move from a regional overview down to the streets of Nouakchott. The map is drawn from OpenStreetMap data, the same open dataset used across this site, so place names, roads and coastlines stay consistent from one country to the next.

Mauritania lies about 2,220 km from the equator, in the northern and western hemispheres of the globe. Zoom out to see how its coastline and land borders meet the wider region.

Mauritania keeps a single standard time zone, UTC. That figure is the country’s offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the modern reference that for everyday purposes matches Greenwich Mean Time, so local clocks sit +00:00 relative to UTC before any seasonal daylight saving change.

The official currency is the Mauritanian ouguiya (MRU, UM).

The official language is Arabic, which is what appears on signs, documents and many of the place labels you will see on the map.

For practical reference, vehicles drive on the right-hand side of the road, the international dialling code is +222 and websites commonly use the .mr internet domain.

In short, Mauritania is a coastal country in Africa, sharing land borders with 3 countries. Its capital is Nouakchott. Mauritania has a population of about 4,927,532 and covers around 1,030,700 km² (397,955 sq mi), ranking it 126th in the world by population and 28th by area. The interactive map, facts table and questions on this page bring those details together in one place for Mauritania.

The flag of Mauritania has a green field with a thin red horizontal band at the top and bottom of the field. At the center of the field is a five-pointed yellow star above an upward facing yellow crescent.

The flag of Mauritania is shown above as an emoji, rendered by your device’s own font; see it alongside every other nation on the flags of the world page.