Mauritania: Government resigns after fire at two power plants, Moctar Ould Diay reappointed

The Mauritanian government submitted its resignation on Friday, October 9, 2026, just hours before the head of state reappointed Prime Minister Moctar Ould Diay and tasked him with forming a new team, reports RFI. The catalyst for this sequence of events was an investigative report into the fire at two electrical substations of Somelec, the national electricity company, which had left Nouakchott without power for several days in August.

Three to five days without electricity

The two transformer substations burned down on August 21 and 22, 2026, less than twenty-four hours apart. Large areas of the capital remained without electricity for three to five days, according to Africanews, as did the localities of Ouad Naga, Idini, and Aouleigat.

A report pointing to non-compliant connectors

Drafted by an independent commission, the report notes serious shortcomings in prevention, electrical protection, work supervision, and emergency management, according to Africanews. The connectors installed on three recently commissioned lines did not meet the required technical standards; they had been imported by a private company. The most likely scenario is deemed to be overheating, rather than sabotage or operational error. The document implicates the company in question as well as officials from the Ministry of Energy. RFI specifies that it explicitly names the former Minister of Energy, Mohamed Ould Khaled, for "failures in the monitoring and control system."

The opposition demands prosecution

Opposition figure Biram Dah Abeid sees this resignation as the consequence of a crisis that is simultaneously political, economic, and moral, according to RFI. The Democratic Opposition Coalition Pole is calling for the opening of judicial proceedings against those responsible for the fires.

That a government should fall over power outages remains rare on the continent, and the signal sent is significant: electricity can become a matter of political accountability, in a context where millions of Africans endure load shedding without anyone being held to account. The limitation of the exercise remains immediately visible in Nouakchott: the outgoing Prime Minister was reappointed the very same day.

Moctar Ould Diay has promised to form his new team in the following hours, according to RFI, which did not specify its composition. What happens next will depend primarily on what the Mauritanian justice system does, or does not do, with the names cited in the report.