Mauritania’s SIM registration drive wipes out 18% of subscribers📱🇲🇷

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Mauritania just posted its steepest telecom drop on record. In 2022, the country lost more than 1.1 million phone subscribers — fixed and mobile combined — a fall of 18% in a single year, according to data from the national telecom regulator. Internet use, meanwhile, kept climbing, up 6% over the same period. Two numbers moving in opposite directions, and a clear reason behind the split.

A subscriber cleanup, not a market collapse 📉

The regulator points to one main driver: a sweeping SIM registration campaign. Mauritanian authorities required every phone number, whether held by an individual or a company, to be formally registered. Lines that weren’t compliant got suspended — no registration, no service.

The numbers reflect that shift directly. Total phone subscribers fell from 6,570,455 in 2021 to 5,405,043 in 2022, a level even below where the country stood in 2020. That doesn’t necessarily mean Mauritanians are logging off, though. Some observers suggest a chunk of the suspended lines were simply duplicate SIMs, cut once one of a person’s several numbers got registered.

For the regulator, this isn’t really about telecom growth or decline — it’s about accountability and cybersecurity. Knowing who owns which number lets authorities trace usage and hold people responsible for what happens on their line. It’s a capability Mauritania is actively building out.

Internet keeps climbing 🌐

While phone subscriptions shrank, internet adoption told a different story. The number of internet users grew from 2,214,035 in 2018 to 3,589,497 in 2022 — a steady climb across the period, including that 6% jump in 2022 alone. The takeaway: fewer phone lines didn’t mean fewer people online.

Part of the explanation likely overlaps with the SIM cleanup itself — people holding multiple cards who’d already registered one of them. And economically, a growing internet user base may be offsetting some of what’s lost on the traditional phone subscriber side.

Mobile penetration is still sky-high 📊

Despite the drop, Mauritania holds onto one of the region’s highest mobile penetration rates. With roughly 5.6 million mobile lines by the end of 2022, penetration reportedly hit 128% — meaning there are considerably more active lines than people in the country, largely because so many users carry more than one SIM card.

The mobile economy’s regional weight 💰

This shake-up is playing out in a sector that carries real economic weight across the region. GSMA estimates put mobile technologies and services at over $130 billion in economic value added across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2020 — roughly 8% of GDP — with that contribution projected to reach $155 billion by 2025.

Against that backdrop, expanding internet access and digital services remains a major stake for African economies. Mauritania has also moved on another front: national roaming between telecom operators has been in effect across the country since January 1, 2024 — another shift reshaping the local telecom landscape.

So, do you think mandatory phone number registration risks penalizing users who hold multiple SIM cards?