Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mah

As a youth, Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mah was involved in athletics, swimming, and football. In the former sport, he won several local and regional championships as a junior. He eventually turned to coaching and, in the course of his political activism, began to take roles in sports administration, serving as president of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania during the 1980s. In 1996 he became president of the Comité National Olympique et Sportif Mauritanien and, the following year, of the Mauritanian Shooting Sport Federation. He held the former position until 2019, when he was succeeded by Abderrahmane Ethmane.

Outside of sport, Ould Mah held a doctorate in economics and was engaged for many years as a political activist, beginning during his time in Paris in the 1970s, where he opposed the authoritarian ruling government in his home country. As the founder of the Popular Social and Democratic Union, he became the mayor of Nouakchott in 1986 in the first democratic municipal elections in Mauritania after a series of regime changes. He then ran for the presidency of the country in 1992 and 1997, but came in fourth both times.