There is change in Mauritania with a cabinet reshuffle.
Five ministries are involved, including Foreign Minister Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, former UN Special Envoy to Yemen.
What must be remembered from this change of ministerial team in Mauritania is first of all this surprise change at the head of diplomacy.
All the more surprising since it comes three weeks before the summit of the African Union to be held in Nouakchott in early July.
The dispute was notorious between former Foreign Minister Isselkou Ould Ahmed Izid Bih and the Prime Minister. That may be why he left the government, but the timing is still surprising.
The new head of diplomacy has spent most of his career at the United Nations and Ismail Ould Sheikh Ahmed was again recently the UN special envoy to Yemen. A file very far from African affairs in which he will have to plunge in the coming weeks.
Also noteworthy in this reshuffle of new appointments to the Ministries of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Social Affairs, and that of Youth and Sports. The Ministry of Relations with Parliament is abolished as such. The file goes to the Ministry of Culture. The State Secretariat for Maghreb and African Affairs disappears. A measure that questions once again a few weeks before the African Union summit.
Source: RFI
