Morocco Launches $5 Million AI Research Initiative Across 11 Sectors

On Saturday, March 16, a call for research projects was launched by the Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research in partnership with the Ministry of Industry. This concerns artificial intelligence. And the budget is 50 million dirhams. Enough to probably make some engineers who flee the country to work elsewhere hesitate...

This call for research projects includes 11 themes: education and pedagogical approaches; health; agriculture; finance, banking and insurance; energy, water and environment; industry: predictive maintenance; transport and logistics; telecommunications and networks; computer vision; natural language processing and smart cities. The deadline for submitting a project is May 15, 2019. Applications must be submitted to the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research (CNRST).

It should be noted that AI research projects must be relevant, feasible and have real socio-economic impacts.

Saïd Amzazi, the Minister of National Education, indicated during the launch ceremony that only 0.8% of Morocco’s GDP goes to research and that this, according to him, "remains below what the strategic vision of the 2015/2030 reform recommends, namely a gradual increase in the share of GDP allocated to the financing of scientific research to reach 1% in the short term, 1.5% in 2025 and 2% in 2030". The minister also stressed the importance of the private sector’s contribution to R&D funding, specifying in passing that only 22% of the funds raised for R&D are provided by the private sector, leaving the state to provide the rest.