Morocco Aims to Boost Digital Sector, Targeting $1 Billion Investment and 120,000 Jobs

Digital development was one of the topics on the agenda of the meeting of the National Committee on the Business Environment (CNEA) held on Tuesday, June 23. On this occasion, the participants were treated to a presentation. It emerges that digital has proven to be important in these times of coronavirus marked by confinement.

Two major findings were noted: the digital transformation of the economy is a fundamental trend affecting all sectors of activity and accelerated by the crisis, and the very strong growth of digital uses in the world due to the effect of confinement (e-commerce, teleworking, distance learning, social networks, entertainment, ...).

During his presentation, Minister Moulay Hafid Elalamy indicated that the same observations were made in Morocco. According to him, data traffic was multiplied by 2.6 on May 11 compared to the average traffic observed in 2019. Other figures: 600,000 daily users of the TelmidTICE platform for distance learning were recorded, the turnover of the national e-commerce leader was multiplied by two in April 2020 compared to April 2019, 3,600 cases were processed as part of remote trials during the first week after the launch of the service, 630 ministries, local authorities and public institutions have joined the digital registry as of May 31, 2020 (the number of members has been multiplied by 15 in two months).

If the digital economy department succeeds in "making the transformation of uses last over time" and in "reaching all stakeholders", this potential will not only allow Morocco to attract more than 10 billion dirhams in foreign direct investment, but also to create more than 120,000 direct and indirect jobs. The ministry is already studying a set of "concrete" projects to meet this challenge.