A World Economic Forum new report says that Morocco’s automotive experience presents valuable lessons for automotive custodians in other African countries, due to the success that Morocco has achieved in the car industry.
According to the World Economic Forum report entitled “Connecting Countries and Cities for Regional Value Chain Integration: Operationalizing the AfCFTA,” released on January 26, it says that “despite Morocco being the second-largest supplier of vehicles and their parts in Africa, the country mainly exports these vehicles and their parts to Middle East markets rather than African markets, thus it may not be featured as a key African vehicle and vehicle parts supplier to African markets”.
“It stands, Morocco’s automotive vehicle production revenue is $10.5 billion, i.e. 25% of Morocco’s total exports in 2019” the report says adding that “The country has been able to increase its local production, with 50 companies creating more than 148,000 direct jobs (in the 2014–2019 period) and producing in excess of 400,000 vehicles with a local integration rate of 60%”.
The report added that “Morocco’s proximity to the European – mainly France (31%), Spain (11%), Germany (9%) and Italy (9%) – Turkish (8%) and Middle Eastern (5%) markets has created the scale of production to grow with increased investment as it strengthens its capability to compete globally”.
Several other world reports have previously considered Morocco a great African example of success in the car industry. This success is expected to expand in the coming years as echoed by industry minister Moulay Hafid Elalamy: “We are also anticipating the technologies of tomorrow. In the future, we will work more on connected vehicles and we will continue to build ecosystems in this direction.”
