Posted in Blog on Sep 15, 2026.
We are pleased to share an article by Almamy Soumaré, of our coalition member organisation, Bouga Té AgriServices - which focuses on sustainable farming, resilience, and protecting natural ecosystems - titled “Guidimakha: From Karakoro to the Senegal River, two mining projects and a territory undergoing rapid transformation” Published by Cridem. 10 August 2026. Original language: French
Overview
The blog examines the broader territorial, environmental and social implications of two major mining projects—the Ghabou gold project and the Diaguily copper-gold project—in the southern Guidimakha region of Mauritania. Rather than viewing these as isolated industrial enclaves, the author argues that they must be understood as interconnected parts of a single living, functional landscape.
Key Focus Areas:
The blog concludes that Guidimakha's true challenge is not just extracting resources, but preserving the environmental and human balances that sustain water, agriculture, grazing, and future opportunities amid climate change.
Author: Almamy Soumaré — machine translated into English. Please refer to original article.
In southern Guidimakha, two mining projects are currently drawing attention: the Ghabou gold project and the Diaguily copper-gold project. At first glance, these are two distinct initiatives, driven by different stakeholders and located on separate sites. Yet a territorial reading reveals a more complex reality: these projects are part of the same living space, where hydrological, ecological, agricultural, social and economic dynamics are deeply interconnected.
The recent announcement of the agreement allowing the Australian company Zeus Resources to progressively acquire the Diaguily copper-gold project, following developments around the Ghabou gold project, confirms that southern Guidimakha is entering a new phase of its development.
To the east, the Ghabou gold project spans a concession of roughly 451 km², illustrating the scale of the transformations ahead in this part of Mauritania. These investments open up significant prospects for the regional economy.
However, they invite us to go beyond an exclusively sectoral reading to better understand the transformations they could induce in a territory where natural resources, hydrological systems, agricultural and pastoral activities, and local communities have long maintained close relationships.
A territory evolving faster than its administrative boundaries
This new dynamic occurs within a specific context of territorial recomposition. Administrative reforms undertaken in recent years have led to the creation of new communes and a redefinition of the boundaries of several communities in Guidimakha.
While these developments reflect a desire to bring administration closer to the population, they also illustrate a deeper reality: investments, infrastructure and new economic flows are now progressing at a pace that often exceeds the adaptive capacity of local territories.
Future flows of workers, goods, capital and infrastructure will not stop at communal boundaries. They will cross landscapes, watersheds and living spaces whose functioning relies on ecological and human continuities much older than recent administrative divisions.
This observation does not call decentralisation into question. It simply reminds us that effective territorial governance must be able to connect administrative responsibilities with the actual functioning of landscapes.
Two projects, the same territorial system
The Ghabou gold project and the Diaguily copper-gold project must therefore not be considered as two independent enclaves.
To the east, Ghabou is part of the Karakoro system, a vast cross-border valley that has long structured human mobility, pastoral activities, flood-recession agriculture and trade with neighbouring territories.
To the west, Diaguily is developing within the commune of Gouraye, along the Senegal River corridor. The sector is crossed by a network of seasonal wadis, including the Touna wadi, which contributes to draining water from the interior plateaus towards the southern alluvial plains.
These two poles do not belong to the same watershed. However, they belong to the same functional territory, whose components remain linked by infrastructure, hydrographic networks, economic activities and human mobility.
This reading makes it possible to go beyond classical project-by-project analysis and to place mining investments within a much broader territorial dynamic.
Diaguily and Moulessimou: a landscape of memory and continuity
Around Diaguily, the issues are not limited to underground resources. In the immediate vicinity is Moulessimou, one of the ancient villages along the Senegal River corridor. Its antiquity and the vestiges preserved by the community bear witness to centuries of human occupation, reminding us that these landscapes carry as much cultural memory as economic potential.
Like many villages in Guidimakha, Moulessimou illustrates how communities have built, over generations, close relationships with agricultural lands, water resources, pastoral pathways and riparian ecosystems.
This human dimension invites us to consider future development projects not only from an economic perspective, but also through their capacity to maintain the ecological, social and cultural continuities that have shaped these landscapes over time.
Infrastructure that is gradually redrawing the territory
Mining projects are not the only transformations underway in southern Guidimakha. They are part of a territory where transport infrastructure is gradually altering conditions for mobility, market access and the organisation of the territory.
For over a decade, the Kaédi-Sélibaby-Gouraye axis, often called the Route des Baobabs, has profoundly improved transport services in southern Guidimakha. More recently, the new Sélibaby-Ghabou axis in turn strengthens accessibility to the Ghabou department and supports the emergence of new economic activities.
This infrastructure represents a major lever for development. It facilitates trade, reduces isolation and creates new opportunities for local populations. But it also transforms landscapes.
In Sahelian territories, a road does not just transport vehicles: it reorganises mobility, influences human settlements, alters certain natural flows and accelerates interactions between the various spaces it connects.
When accompanying the arrival of major investments, such infrastructure thus becomes a vector for territorial transformation far beyond its sole transport function.
Effects that can become cumulative
The issue therefore does not lie solely in each project taken in isolation.
It lies in the progressive combination of several dynamics developing simultaneously within the same territory:
the expansion of mining activities
the improvement of road infrastructure
the evolution of mobility and trade
growing needs for water resources
changes in land use
new pressures exerted on agricultural
and pastoral spaces and ecosystems.
Taken separately, each of these phenomena may seem manageable. Together, they are likely to produce cumulative effects that extend well beyond the boundaries of the sites concerned.
In Sahelian landscapes, watersheds, agricultural valleys, seasonal wadis and river corridors function as an interdependent whole. A localised modification can progressively produce downstream consequences, influence hydrological flows, alter sediment dynamics or reinforce certain pre-existing vulnerabilities.
This reality reminds us that a territory does not function as a juxtaposition of projects, but as a system through which water, sediments, species, populations, economic activities and public decisions constantly circulate.
Making development a factor of resilience
This new stage in Guidimakha's development offers an opportunity that goes beyond mining issues alone.
It calls for strengthening territorial planning capable of simultaneously supporting economic development, the preservation of natural resources and community resilience.
Such an approach does not mean pitting resource exploitation against environmental protection. On the contrary, it seeks to better understand the interactions between the various components of the territory in order to anticipate future developments, identify sensitive areas and maintain the ecological functions that sustainably support human activities.
From this perspective, landscapes themselves can be understood as natural infrastructure. Valleys, wadis, wetlands, agricultural spaces, pastoral pathways and ecological corridors do not constitute isolated elements; together, they contribute to the functioning of the territory and its capacity to adapt to change.
The true challenge for Guidimakha
The Ghabou and Diaguily projects likely mark the beginning of a new development sequence for southern Guidimakha.
The challenge will not only be to exploit underground resources. Above all, it will be to preserve the balances that allow the territory to continue sustaining water resources, agricultural land, grazing areas, biodiversity and opportunities for future generations. In a Sahelian context already marked by climate change, the question is therefore no longer just where to invest, but how to support these investments in a territory whose true wealth lies as much in its landscapes, communities and ecological continuities as in the resources it contains.
— Almamy Soumaré Certified Practitioner – IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions (NbS)
