Morocco: first industrial power in Africa

• Agadirtoday-Mohamed Laghouizi//

According to a recent report published by the African bank of development (BAD) in 2025, the kingdom of Morocco has advanced the South Africa after decades of industrial domination.

This performance is due to the progressive transformation of African economy. The BAD evokes the silent and irreversible industrial transition which has occurred in many African countries despite the inequalities which still exist between areas.

Through the edition 2025 of industrialization index of Africa (AII) and the launch of the first barometer of the industrial investment in Africa (AFIIB), realized by WITBA Invest SA & Trendeo, the bank had drawn up a detailed inventory of the most attractive African economies and also the sectors which concentrate more industrial investments.

The result shows a big contrast in spite of the progress made and the industrial integration of the continent which reminds limited. The trade intra-african represents only 14% of the global exchanges and for the BAD, this debilitation translates the fragmentation of some production lines and also the insufficient industrial corporations between countries.

“This report is roadmap of a diagnostic”, had underlined Ousmane Fall, director of the industrial and trade of the BAD. According to him, only 41 of 54 african countries progress into the right way while the industrialization of large scale needs more serious infrastructures, adapted finances and a creation of values locally rooted.

In this continental landscape, Morocco appears as a principal beneficiary of this new dynamic. The report highlights the industrial strategy followed by Rabat: infrastructures modernization, multiplication of industrial zones, improvement of logistic and active policy of attracting foreign investment.

The expansion of the harbor Tanger-Med, the first harbor in Africa, illustrates this conversion. A real commercial and industrial hub which had allowed the kingdom the possibility to boost his integration in lines of international values and attract big trusts.

The BAD underlines also the diversification of Moroccan economy for a long time dependent on phosphates and auto industry. Today, the national industry has extended to other sectors of high value especially the aeronautic.

“Every plane manufactured after 2005 contains at least one component produced in Morocco”, claims Abdelmalek Aloui, President of the Moroccan Institute for the strategic intelligence and writer of the novel “Maroc, le défi de la puissance”. According to him, the strategic choice of Majesty the King Mohammed VI to invest massively in the aeronautic, in parallel with the automobile, has profoundly modified the industrial positioning of the country.

In the meantime, South Africa conserves an important industrial basement but looses slowly its competitiveness. The report notes that North Africa and Southern Africa maintain their domination of the sophisticated industrial exportations while other regions of Central Africa have difficulties for finding their way.

With this first continental place, Morocco confirms his ambition to become one of the principal industrial and logistic poles in the Africa for the next years.