Morocco’s strategic choices in terms of industrial development have paid off, and The Kingdom now occupies second place in the AfDB ranking of the best-performing countries in this regard, and first in North Africa, according to the African Industrialization Index, established by the AfDB.
Morocco is one of the strongest manufacturing economies in Africa, and this is what emerges from a study conducted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), based on the key components of an industrialization policy.
The Kingdom thus records a constant improvement for all the dimensions of the “Index of industrialization in Africa” (IIA), established by the AfDB, based on an exhaustive set of available, relevant and comparable data, and which proposes a classification based on three criteria, namely performance, direct determinants and indirect determinants.
According to AfDB, this performance is the result of a strategy prioritizing industrial development, particularly in the automotive sector, between 2015 and 2018. This sector increased its share in Africa’s total manufacturing value added from 1. 7% to 7.6%.
At the same time, the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the continent’s weak participation in global value chains, except for a few countries which, like South Africa and Morocco, have suffered from the shutdown of part of the supply chains.
Other characteristics of this performance, Morocco exports electrical distribution equipment, motor vehicles, fertilizers and women’s clothing to global markets such as Europe, the United States and Brazil. The strong export performance has enabled the country to become the second largest exporter of manufactured goods on the continent, after South Africa.
Morocco now accounts for 21.2% of manufactured goods exports in Africa, well ahead of its direct competitors such as Tunisia and Egypt. Note that the Top 5 on a continental scale are made up of South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritius.
The Kingdom is thus at the top of the ranking of North African countries ahead of, in particular, Tunisia and Egypt, which are also equipped with sophisticated production tools. The AfDB notes that North Africa is the best-performing sub-region on this index.
Three of its six countries rank among the top 10 performers in Africa with an average score of 0.7. It should be noted that Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia obtain good results for each sub-component of the IIA. These good results reflect a long tradition of sustained efforts to promote key industries, create strong infrastructure, and strengthen industrial policy, especially over the past decade.
Which was characterized by a succession of several governments that participated in the development of new policy tools to support emerging industries and reduce dependence on imports, explains the establishment. Among the major industries in the region are inorganic chemical processing industries, fertilizer manufacturing, automotive, electrical appliance components, and textile industry.
Libya and Algeria still have some way to go to achieve the goal of non-hydrocarbon diversification. It should be noted that the countries concerned take advantage of their immediate proximity to the European Union but would benefit from strengthening connectivity between them while improving North-South corridors, particularly with the rest of the African continent.