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Morocco looks south, to the future
Cranes and heavy equipment seem to be everywhere in the North African kingdom as it aims to reposition itself as the continent's global investment and trade hub.
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Cranes stand ready to load ships on June 5, 2015 at the Tanger Med container port in Ksar Sghir, Morocco, northeast of the coastal city of Tangier on the Strait of Gibraltar. (AFP/Fadel Senna)
Morocco looks like a country in a rush.
Traveling anywhere in the country reveals the sight of ongoing construction activities, with tall cranes, scaffolding and heavy machinery bustling about high and low, arranging orderly piles of building materials.
Even in the capital Rabat, where the streets are lined with neatly trimmed banyan trees and all government buildings are in place, a major construction project is underway to erect the 250-meter-tall Muhammad VI tower, named after its reigning king.
The futuristic-looking tower, which is rising near an opera house that looks like a hovering spaceship, could be seen as representing Morocco’s ambition to be a leading economic player of the continent.
The North African kingdom is keen on supplementing its role as the gateway between Africa and Europe with a function of being the economic hub for West and sub-Saharan Africa.
King Muhammad VI has been making overtures across the continent in recent years and pouring foreign direct investment (FDI) into neighboring African countries, which now makes up 43 percent of Morocco’s FDI flows.
One of the country’s leading players in managing Africa investments is the Casablanca Finance City (CFC), which has positioned itself as one-stop service for international companies eyeing doing business on the vast continent.
