Morocco’s GenZ Revolution: Government Scrambles to Address Youth Demands

After the popular protest, the speech of King Mohammed VI before Parliament, the government is finally taking concrete actions. Aziz Akhannouch has urged his ministers to improve coordination with the Ombudsman’s Office of the Kingdom, in an approach aimed at showing that the State is listening to citizens and responding to their complaints, reveals Jeune Afrique. His government has been questioned by a flood of oral questions directly inspired by the slogans of the protesters in the street. The Minister of National Education, Mohamed Saad Berrada, received 11 of them. In his speech, he acknowledged the existence of "errors" due to the lack of precise and reliable data within the ministry. He himself described the lack of evaluation of previous programs as "unacceptable", before presenting a series of quantified commitments. These include reducing the high school dropout rate by 50%, keeping 14,000 additional students in schools, finding solutions for 1.5 million young people without training or employment, and addressing the school transportation crisis.

For his part, the Minister of Health, Amine Tahraoui, presented an assessment of his sector. He announced an 83% increase in the number of medical school graduates between 2021 and 2025, the creation of 6,500 jobs and an overall 30% increase in the number of civil servants, as well as the opening of four new medical schools. His department plans to complete the hospital network with several university hospital centers by 2027. He acknowledged the deep dissatisfaction felt by the majority of users of public hospitals, attributing this to the lack of "professionalism and specialization" of more than 70% of the security, cleaning and reception companies, according to the same source. He has therefore committed to strengthening control and imposing minimum standards on these sensitive markets. For her part, the Secretary of State for Administrative Reform, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, announced the overhaul of the national anti-corruption strategy through a coordination workshop with the National Authority for Integrity, Prevention and the Fight against Corruption, in order to identify the flaws in the plan adopted in 2015.

The government is also tackling the housing sector. Fatima Zahra Mansouri, Minister of National Land Use Planning, Urban Planning, Housing and City Policy, said that 36,576 Moroccans under the age of 40 had benefited from the direct housing assistance program launched in 2024. The total real estate value of the beneficiaries exceeded 15.2 billion dirhams, supported by the State to the tune of about 2.9 billion dirhams, she said, adding that the digital platform of the program had received 166,680 applications, 63% of which came from people under the age of forty. Speaking about the delays in processing building permits, she explained that "urban planning documents are not just technical plans, but aim to organize the development of cities and territories and to provide citizens with a decent living environment". About 90% of the country’s municipalities have at least one urban planning document, the minister assured, noting the adoption of 405 documents since the beginning of her term.

The death at the public hospital in Agadir of eight pregnant women admitted for caesarean sections was the trigger for these social protests. The unrest resulted in 3 deaths and 400 injuries across the country. Isolated incidents of looting and arson were reported in some cities. More than 400 people had been arrested across Morocco for acts of vandalism related to the demonstrations. Some of them were placed in custody for investigation. A court in Agadir handed down a total sentence of 162 years in prison to 17 defendants for vandalism. These disturbances are the most significant since the Arab Spring protests of 2011. They are also the most violent since the 2016 protests in the Rif region. "Gen Z 212" has seen its subscribers increase from 3,000 to more than 200,000 on Discord, the platform that launched the movement.