Science and technology in Morocco

While research has yet to acquire the status of a national priority in Morocco, the country does have major assets that could transform its R&D sector into a key vehicle for development.

While spending on education has hitherto been relatively high (5% of GDP and 24% of government expenditures in recent years[4]), change has been slow in coming.

As a result, literacy for men aged 15–24 has risen from 84% in 1990 to 87% in 2008, according to the World Bank, while the percentage of all students completing primary school rose from 82% to 87% over the same period.

[1] Sectors declared as priority areas were: agriculture, fisheries, drinking water, geology, mining, energy, environment, information and telecommunications technologies, and transport.

[1] This approach highlighted the need for effective institutional coordination, which enabled different parties to work together around common priority socioeconomic objectives.

In 2002, 89% of the 542 researchers in a sample comprising INRA, INRH, IAV Hassan II, ENFI, and ENA were trained to the postgraduate level and 34% held doctorates.

Moroccan telecom operators were persuaded to cede 0.25% of their turnover; today, they finance about 80% of all public research projects in telecommunications supported through this fund.

[5] In May 2009, Morocco's prime minister, Abbas El Fassi, announced greater support for science during a meeting at the National Centre for Scientific and Technical Research.The aim was to give universities greater financial autonomy from the government to make them more responsive to research needs and better able to forge links with the private sector, in the hope that this would nurture a culture of entrepreneurship in academia.

[13] The same year, the Moroccan government signed DH12.6bn (€1.1bn) in new agreements to improve the quality of its universities, as part of the National Education Emergency Support Programme 2009–2012.

The project ranged from hiring additional lecturers and raising teaching credentials to expanding general infrastructure.

It has three main thrusts:[5] Morocco has managed to navigate the fallout from the global financial crisis relatively well, with average growth of over 4% between 2008 and 2013.

The Moroccan economy is diversifying but remains focused on low value-added products: the latter still represent about 70% of manufactured goods and 80% of exports.

One example is the Moroccan Phosphate Office (Office chérifien des phosphates), which has invested in a project to develop a smart city, King Mohammed VI Green City, around Mohammed VI University located between Casablanca and Marrakesh, at a cost of DH 4.7 billion (circa US$479 million).

These offices should be able to accommodate up to 100 enterprises, which share the premises with some of the project's key partners, such as the Moroccan Entrepreneurial Network and the Association of Women CEOs of Morocco.

[5][18] With university–business partnerships remaining very limited in Morocco, several competitive funds fostering this type of collaboration have been renewed in recent years.

In January 2020, the government launched a call for bids for three new industrial parks in the Casablanca-Settat region, to be developed via public–private partnerships.

Due to be completed in 2010, the 'knowledge campus' was part of a US$3.2 billion five-year renewable energy investment plan for 2009–2014 prepared by the Moroccan National Electricity Office.

At the time, IRESEN was financing research in the field of renewable energy that was being conducted by more than 200 engineers and PhD students and some 47 university teachers-cum-researchers.

[17][16] In 2017, the Green Energy Park opened in Benguerir, a sustainable city situated 50 km north of Marrakech that has been under development since 2009, with the well-equipped Mohammed VI University at its heart.

[17][16] The number of scientific publications on wind-turbine technologies has tripled from 148 (2012–2015) to 477 (2016–2019) and almost quadrupled for solar photovoltaics (from 145 to 569), according to the UNESCO study of 56 research topics.

Each year, 18% of Moroccan graduates head mainly for Europe and North America; this trend has led to calls for foreign universities to be established in Morocco and for the development of prestigious campuses.

The lack of jobs in engineering and technology (8% of total employment in research and development) reflects the fledgling culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in Morocco.

Between 2008 and 2014, Morocco's main scientific partners were based in France (3,465 articles), Spain, (1,338), the United States (833), Italy (777) and Germany (752).

Over the same period, Morocco's top partners for scientific co-authorship were, in descending order, France, Spain, the USA, Italy and Canada.

[17] Morocco leads the Arab region for the share of high-tech exports, according to the United Nations Statistics Division.

The great majority of Moroccan patents were registered by non-residents, a situation common to all Arab countries (see table).

[13] A total of 17 agreements were signed to develop Moroccan universities, as part of the 2009-2012 emergency program[27] which aims to reform the country's ailing education system and foster a culture of entrepreneurship in the academic community.

The Morocco-US science and technology cooperation plan, signed in 2006 in Rabat, promotes the exchange of innovative scientific ideas, information and knowledge, skills and techniques and the training of technical experts.

One of the strategy's key objectives is to involve the private sector more in regional and interdisciplinary collaboration, in order to add economic and development value to research and make better use of available expertise.

The Islamic World Academy of Sciences combines three functions:[34] This article incorporates text from a free content work.