Mining fuels Mauritania job growth

By Bakari Guèye for Magharebia in Nouakchott

[TheMoonIsBlue/Creative Commons] An iron ore train makes its way through the Mauritanian Sahara.

The National Industrial and Mining Company (SNIM), the biggest employer after the government, just completed a massive recruitment campaign for qualified workers. Unemployment in Mauritania is over 30% but the state-owned mining giant is making significant inroads in tackling youth joblessness.

“466 young Mauritanians from 2000 applicants have been taken on by the National Industrial and Mining Company (SNIM), following the assessment of those with BTS, BT, BEP and CAP qualifications, degrees, master’s degrees and postgraduate engineering qualifications, all as part of its 2012 recruitment plan,” the company said in a November 23rd statement.

These new recruits take the number of new jobs created this year by SNIM to 606.

“For the first time ever, these assessments were decentralised, meaning that unemployed graduates were able to apply through the nearest centre to their usual place of residence,” the mining giant said.

“In addition to the technical and vocational training centres in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, centres in Boghe and Rosso were chosen as examination centres where graduates could apply for the selection assessment,” SNIM said.

The company has nine subsidiaries covering areas such as iron and steel manufacture, services and tourism, sanitation, civil engineering, maintenance and transport, mechanical construction, granite and marble, goods handling, metallurgical industries, as well as oil installation management and insurance.

“SNIM has demonstrated it is in good health economically, which has enabled it to create a lot of jobs,” economist Ba Mamadou said. “SNIM’s aim is to become one of the world’s top five exporters of iron ore by 2025, with a capacity of 40 million tonnes per year.”

Despite these efforts, unemployment persists. According to consultant Taleb Abderrahmane Ould El Mahjoub, “The National Agency for the Promotion of Youth Employment has launched three programmes to help with its efforts to deal with the problem of a shortage of new jobs.”

“In particular, there is a training programme focussing on short-term training, skills enhancement and retraining, a work placement programme providing a good opportunity to develop a partnership between the public and private sectors and to find ways of getting young unemployed graduates into work, and a self-employment development programme aimed at financing small-scale SME/SMI projects,” he explained.

Sy Oumar, one of those taken on in the latest round of recruitment, said that “SNIM is the company taking on the most young people. It has huge resources. There’s room for everyone here, but you have to have qualifications.”

The company’s efforts make a considerable contribution to combating poverty and unemployment as well as driving the country’s economic development in terms of GDP, exports and state finances.

SNIM provides a number of basic public services for people living in the Nouadhibou-Zouerate corridor, such as water and electricity supplies in Zouerate and F’Derick, water distribution along the railway, electricity supplies for people living around railway depots, plus rail transport for passengers and goods.
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