Morocco’s Financial Hub Sparks Global Investment Boom

A 122-meter building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne houses Casablanca Finance City (CFC). "This building, the first in the district, was built on the site of Casablanca’s first terminal. This is where Mermoz and Saint-Exupéry’s planes landed," says Saïd Ibrahimi, CEO of the CFC Authority, the company that manages the site, to Challenges. On this 50-hectare platform, there are already 226 companies. "Foreign investors see the crazy energy that circulates here. This is Morocco 3.0," enthuses business lawyer Christophe Bachelot, DLA Piper’s Morocco manager.

On the seventh floor of this tower, Deloitte has set up its cybersecurity center, which opened in February 2023. The consulting giant plans to double its initial 25 million euro investment and hire 350 people by 2027. "Thanks to the flexibility of the CFC status, I can hire an Ivorian engineer in two days," says Imade Elbaraka, director of the center. And he adds: "Here, I can easily recruit 2,000 people, which would be unthinkable in Spain."

The success of CFC, created by Saïd Ibrahimi, who was also Treasurer General of the Kingdom, is based on tax incentives and administrative facilities. "Administratively, everything is easier at CFC. We can theoretically hire 100% expatriates, which is not the case elsewhere in Morocco," says Ghislane Guedira, Managing Director of A.P. Moller in Morocco. In recent years, multinationals present in 115 countries, including 50 in Africa, have set up or strengthened their teams at CFC.

The French company Schneider Electric, established in the kingdom for six decades, is participating in the Noor project, a 500-megawatt concentrated solar power plant. "We are also working on the electrification of the water highway," a network of pipelines connecting the north to the south of Morocco, says Diaretou Madina Gaye Dieng, President of the Francophone Africa and Islands cluster at Schneider. From Casablanca, its teams are preparing two major pan-African projects: the Morocco-Nigeria gas pipeline and the Morocco-Mauritania electricity interconnection. Orange, which operates in 18 countries on the continent, has chosen to set up its regional headquarters in Casablanca. A "very relevant" choice, according to Elisabeth Medou Badang, Human Resources Director of Orange Africa and Middle East.