Pétanque in Mauritania

Pétanque runs deeper in Mauritania than its modest international profile suggests: the national team has held a men's triplette World Championship medal since 2010, and Nouakchott hosted the continent's flagship tournament, the African Championship, in 2025.

History

The Fédération des Jeux de Boules de la République Islamique de Mauritanie (FJBRIM), also referred to in some local media and on social platforms as the Fédération Mauritanienne des Jeux de Boules (FMJB), was founded in 1986 to develop and govern pétanque nationally. Mauritania is one of the roughly two dozen African national federations affiliated with the FIPJP through the continent's African Confederation. The federation's president is Mohamed Abdallahi Abidine, still listed as such on FJBRIM's own site as of mid-2026, with Tarek Akili having served as national team coach heading into the 2025 African Championship.

World Championship Success

Mauritania's best-ever result on the world stage came at the 2010 Men's Triplette World Championship in Izmir, Turkey (7-10 October), where the national team was eliminated in the semi-final by eventual runner-up Madagascar and shared bronze with Spain - France took the title. It remains Mauritania's only men's triplette World Championship podium finish to date. The team has continued to qualify regularly since: at the 2024 World Championship in Dijon, France, a squad including Amadou Traoré, Mohamed Ould Taher, Bah Def, and Mohamed Lemine Bakha won four of five first-round matches (beating Hungary, Portugal, Denmark, and Côte d'Ivoire, losing only to Turkey) to advance to the second round before finishing outside the medals.

That 2024 Dijon finish was strong enough to secure Mauritania one of Africa's eight automatic berths for the 52nd Pétanque World Championship (Men's Triples), to be held 20-24 November 2026 at Khon Kaen University in Thailand after the event's original host, Malaysia, withdrew earlier in the year. Mauritania qualified second among the continent's automatic entries, behind only 2024 runner-up Madagascar, ahead of the remaining automatic qualifiers Benin, Tunisia, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mali - with a further six African berths decided in a day-one qualifying tournament held during Mauritania's own hosting of the 10th African Championship in Nouakchott that November.

African Championships

Mauritania organized the 10th African Championship in Nouakchott (22-28 November 2025), contested across precision shooting, tête-à-tête, doubles, and triples. As host nation, Mauritania won its first individual African title when Amadou Traoré beat Tunisia's Khaled Bougriba 46-38 in the precision-shooting final, a tournament where Algeria's Samir Boutarfa also reached the precision-shooting quarterfinals before losing to Madagascar's Maminirina Andrianirainy. The host team also reached the doubles final before losing 13-7 to Senegal's Ciré Lamine Kane and Lamine Sow, taking silver. Côte d'Ivoire's Salif Kourouma won the tête-à-tête title, and Tunisia took the triples crown, with Congo-Kinshasa taking silver, Côte d'Ivoire bronze, and Senegal finishing fourth.

The Mauritanian Pétanque Scene

Pétanque is played on the sandy terrain characteristic of Nouakchott, where an estimated twenty clubs are active, alongside further clubs in Nouadhibou, Atar, and Rosso. The capital's main venue, the Espace Pétanque de Nouakchott in the Tevragh-Zeina district (also referred to as the Boulodrome Cheikh Ould Brahim), hosts competitions most weekends and staged the 2025 African Championship. The venue also hosted the Coupe Al Abtal, an annual tournament launched in October 2020 under the patronage of the Nouakchott regional authority.