Mauritania

Summary

Mauritania presents moderate risk for web crawling. Law No. 2017-020 on the Protection of Personal Data (22 July 2017) established a data-protection framework requiring lawful, transparent processing. The Personal Data Protection Authority (APD) was constituted by regulation in February 2022 and was sworn in; it signed an MoU with Algeria's ANPP on 8 October 2024, indicating growing operational activity. The primary text of Law 2017-020 is confirmed available at CYRILLA (cyrilla.org). Cybercrime Law No. 007-2016 (2016) criminalises abuse of privacy (Art. 24, covering intentional recording of voices, text, or images of persons without their knowledge using any means), and a range of digital offences. No EU-style sui generis database right; databases attract only compilation-originality protection. No TDM exception exists. Mauritania ratified the AU Malabo Convention on 9 May 2023, which entered into force on 8 June 2023; Malabo's data-protection and cybercrime standards are formally binding. No published case law on web scraping. Confidence raised to medium: primary sources for both laws are accessible, the APD is operational, and the framework (while novel in interpretation for scraping) is determinable.