Mauritania targets end 2013 to make its entry in the phosphate market, as it awarded a license to establish a phosphate mine to Bofal Indo Mining Co.
The mine, in the southwest Bofal-Loubeira area, will include a phosphoric-acid processing plant to be constructed within three years. Mauritania is endowed with large volume, good grade sedimentary phosphate rocks. Estimated reserves of the deposits of Bofal and Loubboira are 70 million tonnes at Bofal, and 24 million tonnes at Loubboira. The phosphate resources of the whole area estimated as exceeding 135 million tonnes. The trace element concentrations of uranium and cadmium are low (U = 80 ppm, Cd = 12 ppm). The effort will have to confront climatic constraints and the remote location of the resources.
Agricultural production of cereals, as well as livestock and fish, make up approximately one third of Mauritania’s GDP in one of the poorest and less developed countries in the world.
In 2007 Sudan’s Danfodio Holding and China’s Transtech Engineering have signed an agreement to build a 460 million euro ($634 million) railway linking Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott with southern phosphate deposits at Bofal.
