Morocco has greatly modernised, but political freedoms are scant, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaicin Rabat
THE WEEKLY market at Bouqachmir may be just three hours from Rabat, but it feels worlds away from the cosmopolitan bustle of Morocco’s capital. In the foothills of the Middle Atlas mountains, the commune spreads out over virtually empty hills, small clusters of isolated farmhouses the only human intrusion.
At nine on a Friday morning, the souk is already open for business.
Stall-owners lay out their wares – fruit, vegetables, spices, chickens – on blankets on the muddy soil. Women in shawls and scarves arrive with donkeys to carry their loads. Men in boots and caps catch up over sweet tea and bread, swapping stories about the damage wrought by the previous week’s floods.
In the middle of it all, Bouaza Wahid opens a bright yellow parasol over his fold-out table and installs himself in one of the busiest spots, waiting for his clients to pass. Wahid works for Temasol, a French-owned solar-power provider that has introduced electricity to thousands of homes in the region for the first time. Instead of visiting every house in the commune to collect the monthly household subscription fee of 65 dirhams (€5.80), he sets up a stand at the weekly market and waits for the clients to come to him. “About half will come to me – the other half I have to go and find,” he says with cheerful resignation. And sure enough, quite a few farmers clearly do their best to avoid him. “Another 65 dirhams? Ah, Bouaza, you’re killing me,” comes the mock plea from one customer.
Temasol’s rickety stand at the Bouqachmir souk is symbolic of one of the most radical social changes to have taken place in Morocco in recent times.
In 1996, just 22 per cent of all rural homes in the country had electricity; today, after years of heavy state investment, the figure is 96.5 per cent.
Most villages have been connected to the standard network, but tens of thousands of the most remote homes across the country have been provided with heavily subsidised photovoltaic kits.
The basic Temasol pack includes solar panels, a generator, battery and sockets, and enables households to replace candles and gas lamps with lightbulbs, to charge mobile phones and use a television for the first time.
The effect has been revolutionary.
“It allows children to study in the evening, it allows people to watch television, to keep informed of what’s happening in the world,” says Khalid Semmaoui, the company’s managing director. “They’re no longer enclosed in their home. It allows them to charge their mobile phone, to communicate with their families and friends.”
Morocco’s interest in green energy is not confined to rural electrification.
In June, the largest wind park in Africa opened near the northern city of Tangiers, its 126 windmills putting down the most visible marker of the country’s strategic decision to wean itself off foreign energy and push its economy on through investing in big projects. As one of the few countries in the region with no oil or gas of its own, Morocco imports more than 95 per cent of its energy materials to meets its needs. But by harnessing the resources it has in abundance – sun, water and wind – the state plans to raise the share of renewable energy in its total output to 42 per cent by 2020.
Its heavy spending on infrastructure is one of the reasons Morocco has managed to insulate itself from the worst of the global crisis, posting levels of growth that are the envy of many of its neighbours.
It’s not that the country was untouched; a fall-off in tourists from Europe and in remittances, which alone account for up to 10 per cent of national income, have caused problems, but these have largely been offset by good harvests, investment in infrastructure and a resilient banking system.
“The question is to what extent the remittances can be sustained, because we know that a lot of Moroccans have lost their jobs, so they’re probably using some of their savings and this might not continue,” remarks Lahcen Achy, a senior economist at the Carnegie Middle East Centre. But the prognosis remains healthy.
When the United Nations published its annual human development index this year, it included for the first time a list of 10 “top movers” – countries that had seen the greatest improvements in human development relative to their 1970 starting point. One of the striking features of the list was the unexpected presence of three North African neighbours – Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
"However you measure it, the performance of these countries in health and education indicators – which, together with per capita income, make up the human development index – has been stellar," wrote Francisco Rodríguez and Emma Samman of the UN Development Programme in a recent paper entitled The North African Miracle.
While Morocco’s overall standing in the 2010 index is a mediocre 114 out of 169, the 40-year breakdown shows that it has been steadily progressing in recent decades.
There is a sharp contrast between Morocco’s fate, for example, and that of Ivory Coast, which had similar levels of development in 1970. Over the 40 years to 2010, life-expectancy rose 20 years in Morocco but just 11 years in Ivory Coast. Today, 61 per cent of Moroccan children are enrolled in schools, far more than the 38 per cent in Ivory Coast, while Morocco’s per capita income is 2.7 times Ivory Coast’s.
But Morocco’s surge comes with its own paradox. Unlike other countries that saw huge improvements in human development over the past 40 years – such as Nepal, South Korea and Indonesia – the strides made by Morocco and its neighbours Algeria and Tunisia have been accompanied by very limited political liberalisation. Morocco may have become one of the first countries in the region to have an opposition party take power after an election (in 1998), but the press is only moderately free and ultimate authority remains in the hands of the monarch.
Reporting this week on a batch of unflattering cables sent by the US embassy in Rabat and released by WikiLeaks, Le Monderelated how US officials believed that "corruption is prevalent at all levels of Moroccan society". The royal family was using the institutions of state to "coerce and solicit bribes" in the country's lucrative real estate sector, while a former US ambassador was recorded criticising the "appalling greed" of those close to King Mohammed VI.
Coming from a state that regards Morocco as its closest ally in the region, the revelations were startling. Not that they caused much public outcry, however. On the day Le Mondepublished the cables, the government simply blocked the paper's distribution in Morocco.
This series, which explores the impact of global recession on trends in the developing world through case studies in francophone west and north Africa, concludes today. It was supported by a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Fund.