Firstly clearly GPS is not essential otherwise none of us would have been going anywhere 20 plus years ago. The main requirement is a map preferably with at least 1:1m scale. IGN does maps of most of the countries you are visiting. Mauritania is at 1:2,5000,000 but all you need to do is follow the main road.
Some days when I'm being carefree I head off and navigate by the sun. If you know the time, you can roughly work out which is north from the position of the sun.
A smartphone running Google Maps will go a long way towards basic navigation. When you have wifi, download the map areas you will be going through. When you are offline, the inbuilt GPS receiver will pinpoint your position on the downloaded map. However, the unit will quickly overheat if mounted in sunlight, so this is best used as an in-pocket resource.
You can download a compass app for the smartphone, so that's one less bit of kit to worry about.
I use GPS extensively in Morocco for real remote off-tarmac stuff where there's tracks headed in all directions and you would have little idea where to go. In circumstances like that I sometimes just put a rough waypoint in of where I generally want to go, and then use this as aid, but in reality choosing my route from what I see on the ground.
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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)
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