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Research hub / Mauritania
§ Dossier · WEST AFRICA · updated 22 July 2026

Mauritania

Regulator
Autorité de Protection des Données à Caractère Personnel (APD) ↗
Law
Law No. 2017-020 on the Protection of Personal Data ↗
Status
Law in force, enforcement not found
Authority
Autorité de Protection des Données à Caractère Personnel (APD), established 2020
in force
DP law status
Law No. 2017-020 on the Protection of Personal Data
None found
enforcement activity
as of the last landscape verification
No
decisions published
no public record to collect

The law

Loi No. 2017-020 du 22 juillet 2017 sur la protection des données à caractère personnel IN FORCE

commenced 2017-07-22 · Official full text ↗

Scope
Processing by natural persons, the State, local authorities, and public/private legal entities in Mauritania.
Key obligations
Authorisation and control of processing by the APD; Consent and purpose limitation
DPO required
Not general.
Registration
Authorisation regime with APD.
Cross-border transfers
Transfers subject to APD control.
Breach notification
No general breach-notification duty: Law 2017-020 contains no security-breach notification article: only preventive security obligations and the French-model rectification-notification duty toward third parties. Any breach handling is a matter of APD supervisory practice, not statute.
Penalties
Administrative and criminal sanctions per law.
Authority
Autorité de Protection des Données à Caractère Personnel (APD, apd.mr)

Verified 2026-07-06

The regulator

Authority
Autorité de Protection des Données à Caractère Personnel (APD)
Website
https://www.apd.mr ↗
Established
2020
Operational
Yes
Enforcing
No enforcement activity found
Publishes decisions
No

Enforcement record

No enforcement decisions could be found for this jurisdiction as of the last verification pass (22 July 2026). A country with no published enforcement is a data point, not a gap: see the 54-state publication scorecard.

Related reading

Analysis is at lawlab.africa/analysis; method, inclusion rules and the correction policy are on the methodology page.

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