Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz on Monday carried out a partial cabinet reshuffle.
The most important change was the appointment of diplomat and former UN official Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed as minister of foreign affairs and cooperation in his first government post.
Ould Cheikh was the UN special envoy to Yemen between 2015 and 2018 and the UN deputy special envoy to Libya in 2014 before he was appointed at the end of the same year as coordinator of UN efforts to fight the Ebola in West Africa.
The current president will not run for another term, yet he announced that he would support a figure whose identity has not yet been revealed. The local press has named Ould Cheikh as a possible presidential candidate for the 2019 elections.
However, a team of observers linked the appointment of Ould Cheikh as foreign minister to Mauritania's readiness to host the African summit in July, the first African summit hosted by Nouakchott.
The other changes in the cabinet include the cancellation of “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, in charge of Maghreb and African Affairs and Mauritanians Abroad” after tasking Ould Cheikh with running its affairs.
Khadijetou Mbarek Fall, for her part, was assigned the trade, industry and tourism portfolio, and former Minister of Trade Naha Mint Hamdi Ould Mouknass was assigned the portfolio of social affairs, childhood and family.
In this context, the portfolio of relations with the parliament was assigned to Minister of Culture and Handicrafts, the official spokesman of the government, Mohamed El-Amine Ould Cheikh, and Mariam Mint Bilal was appointed Minister of Youth and Sports.
