Morocco Unveils New Strategy to Eliminate Slums by 2028

"Indeed, in the past, we demolished these slums while keeping the populations on site, but the task was complicated by the fact that we did not find public land nearby, and that most people were rehoused very far from their work and the places of schooling of their children," Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri explained to Médias24. But this policy has consumed a lot of public land. According to the minister, it has also created other social problems. These problems have pushed the ministry to change its paradigm: it has favored an integrated approach with the launch of calls for expressions of interest aimed at real estate developers who offer their own plots to carry out, on behalf of the State, social housing at 250,000 dirhams or benefiting from direct State aid, in which the former inhabitants of the slums will be rehoused.

With 100,000 dirhams, each inhabitant becomes the owner. The program has been a great success. "This program, which began in the Skhirat and Témara region, with nearly 70% of the population rehoused in decent housing, continued in July last year, with a call for expressions of interest to build 62,000 homes in the economic capital, which has already allowed 7,000 households to be rehoused," the minister said, recalling that Casablanca accounts for 50% of slums out of a total of 120,000. The ambition of her department is indeed to solve the rehousing problem of the inhabitants of the 120,000 slums in the kingdom in less than three years.

In 2023, a new register was set up by the Ministry of Housing. It was discovered that there are 14,000 duplicates, with people registered twice, and sometimes more. El Mansouri’s department intends to put an end to this. Another flagship action: the ministry set up a drone system in 2022 to control the territories with a geographic information system (GIS). The control has made it possible to increase the average rehousing of populations from 6,200 per year to 18,500.

"The census, which was done manually by the authorities, had the effect of encouraging the proliferation of slums, while the new system, which manages to control in real time their number of inhabitants and their possible extension, allows the authorities to intervene if necessary," concludes the minister.