Morocco to boost GDP with $10 billion AI contribution by 2030
Digital Morocco 2030 poster (via Africa News Agency)
Morocco is stepping up its investment in digital transformation and expects a 100 billion dirhams ($10 billion) contribution from Artificial Intelligence (AI) services to its national GDP by 2030, Minister Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni said at a conference in Rabat, according to a Reuters report on January 12th.
The Moroccan government has been promoting Morocco’s 2030 digital transformation plan (Maroc Numerique 2030), in which it envisions itself as a self-standing digital hub in North Africa by 2030 through investments concentrated on Artificial Intelligence, fibre optics, data storage capacity, and training people to adopt the technology.
At the conference, the Minister said that the GDP boost is expected to come from increasing domestic data-processing through sovereign data centres, developing cloud and fibre-optic infrastructure, and building an AI-skilled workforce to support the AI infrastructure.
The digital transformation project has been allocated a budget of 11 billion dirhams (approximately $ 3 million USD) from 2024 to 2026. The government has taken measures to facilitate the digital transformation, including introducing a new labour code that aligns with the rising platform economy and remote employment, launching initiatives to train people on AI, and rolling out 5G services to strengthen the digital ecosystem.
Seghrouchni had also previously announced plans to develop a 500 megawatt data centre in the city of Dakhla that is intended to support the growing data needs and reinforce Morocco’s digital sovereignty. In addition, an international consortium involving NVIDIA, Nauer, and Lloyds Capital planned to collaborate on building a next-generation AI data centre in Morocco.
Morocco aims to create at least 50,000 AI-related jobs and train 200,000 graduates in AI skills by 2030, and is collaborating with French company Mistral AI to support this effort through the development of generative AI tools in the Kingdom.
“We want to turn Morocco into a future excellence hub in AI and data science,” Seghrouchni said, while the government is also preparing legislation related to Artificial Intelligence.
Reuters, Maghrebi.org
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