High-tension electric interconnection line between Nouakchott and Kiffa

The high-tension interconnection line between Nouakchott and Kiffa sits at Phase 1 of a five-phase programme that the EU has described as a vehicle for expanding solar generation capacity and broadening electricity access across Mauritania. The total investment figure has not been publicly disclosed, and the project remains at the announced stage, meaning there is no independent confirmation that construction has begun or that financing has been fully assembled. The most reliable financial signal available comes from EU development finance records, which show a related but not identical instrument: the RIMDIR programme, a broader rural energy initiative focused on deploying autonomous renewable energy units in localities distant from the national grid. That programme carries a committed envelope of €9 million, of which €4 million had been disbursed as of the available records, against a timeline running from mid-2019 to the end of 2028. The match between RIMDIR and the Nouakchott-Kiffa interconnection line is assessed at medium confidence only, meaning it would be premature to treat this disbursement data as direct evidence of progress on the transmission line itself. No EIB financing has been recorded for this specific project. Independent news coverage in the tracker period does not address the Nouakchott-Kiffa line directly. The most substantive regional story concerns a separate but related initiative: the African Development Bank's Desert to Power initiative, under which three construction contracts were signed in late April and June 2026 for a 1,373-kilometre transmission network linking Mauritania and Mali.