AI in Morocco: a new ministry, but where do we stand against Europe, the US and China?

AI in Morocco entered a new phase in October 2026, when a ministerial portfolio bearing its name appeared for the first time. But the question many people ask is still open: is a ministry’s name enough to close the gap with Europe, the United States and China? The short answer is that Morocco is moving on this file faster than ever, with a public roadmap, partnerships and first tools in Darija, but it started late, and the gap in investment, computing power and legislation is still wide. This analysis relies on dated public sources, and ends with what it means in practice for a small business, from automation to AI-generated posts in Arabic.

Last updated: November 2026.

AI in Morocco in figures: the short answer

Summed up in four figures, it is the picture of a country advancing quickly from a low starting point, setting ambitious targets that have not yet turned into a law or a detailed published budget.

• Government readiness: in Oxford Insights’ 2025 Government AI Readiness Index, Morocco climbed about 14 places to rank 86th or 87th out of 195 depending on the source, after 101st in the 2024 edition. The United States is first and China eighth.
• The 2030 target: the “Morocco AI 2030” roadmap aims to add 100 billion dirhams to GDP, create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs and train 200,000 people.
• Legislation: there is no AI-specific law yet; Law 09-08 on personal data protection remains the reference.
• Innovation: Morocco ranked 54th out of 139 in the Global Innovation Index 2026 (WIPO), its best position ever, but 97th on the “business sophistication” pillar.

Each of these indicators measures something different: government readiness, state targets, the legal framework or the innovation ecosystem. That is why figures quoted in the press sometimes contradict each other, and they should not be merged into a single number.

From a delegate ministry to the Ministry of AI and Digital Transition

After the legislative elections of 23 September 2026, King Mohammed VI appointed Ahmed Rahhou on 16 October 2026 as Minister of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Transition and Administrative Reform in Fatima Zahra Mansouri’s government. He took office on 19 October, succeeding Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, as reported by Hespress. It is the first Moroccan ministry with “artificial intelligence” in its name. To be precise, though, the file did not appear out of nowhere: AI was added to the existing digital transition and administrative reform department, which was upgraded from a delegate ministry to a full ministry.

For comparison, the United Arab Emirates appointed a Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence in October 2017, about nine years before Morocco.

The main dated milestones:

• 2021: creation of the delegate ministry for Digital Transition and Administrative Reform, headed by Ghita Mezzour.
• 25 September 2024: launch of the “Digital Morocco 2030” strategy.
• 23 October 2024: appointment of Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, a professor at Sorbonne University and founding president of the AI Movement centre at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University.
• 1–2 July 2025: the first national AI conference in Rabat.
• 12 September 2025: a memorandum of understanding with the French company Mistral AI on training and applied research.
• January 2026: unveiling of the “Morocco AI 2030” roadmap under the slogan “AI made in Morocco”, and of the JAZARI ROOT national coordination centre.
• 8 September 2026: presentation in Rabat of the results of the roadmap’s first phase.
• 16 October 2026: the first Ministry of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Transition and Administrative Reform.

The Digital Morocco 2030 strategy

This is the broadest framework, built on two pillars: digitising public services and growing the digital economy. Among its frequently cited targets are 240,000 digital jobs and 3,000 start-ups by 2030. AI came later, with a roadmap of its own.

The Morocco AI 2030 roadmap

The roadmap was unveiled in January 2026, and its progress was presented in Rabat on 8 September 2026. According to the official portal maroc.ma, it has three pillars and ten programmes, including a sovereign marketplace for AI solutions, an agentic assistant called “Idarati AI” to simplify administrative procedures, and the “Al Jazari” network of institutes, with one institute in each of the twelve regions. We found no source confirming how many regional institutes are actually operating today.

Ahmed Rahhou: a profile that sparks debate

Rahhou is an engineer who graduated from École Polytechnique. He began his career in IT, then ran Crédit Immobilier et Hôtelier and chaired the Competition Council. Some commentators, as noted by Le360, criticised his age and the fact that he is not an AI specialist. For his part, on the day he took office he framed the file around two aims: better public services, and an economic ecosystem that creates jobs.

Why do people talk about Morocco lagging in AI?

Talking about Morocco lagging in AI does not mean standing still; the figures above show real progress. It means the core tools for delivery are not yet complete.

A law not yet passed

Uses of AI involving personal data are currently governed by Law 09-08, as the National Commission for the Control of Personal Data Protection has confirmed. Several projects are under discussion, including a revision of this law and a framework law called “Digital X.0” covering AI, data governance and digital identity, but their adoption timeline is unclear in the available sources. In contrast, the European Union’s AI Act entered into force on 1 August 2024 and is being applied in stages.

An unspecified budget and computing power on paper

We found no published breakdown of a multi-year budget dedicated to AI. On infrastructure, the sovereign data centre project in Dakhla (500 megawatts) was still at the technical study stage in April 2026, aiming for full capacity in 2030. The continental picture is harder still: according to a World Bank report (October 2026), Africa has 18% of the world’s population but only about 0.6% of global data centre capacity.

Talent that leaves

Professional estimates from 2020–2022 point to about 600 engineers leaving each year, and the Economic, Social and Environmental Council has warned of a shortage of specialised AI skills. These figures are relatively old, but nothing suggests the problem has gone away.

Morocco versus Europe, the United States and China: the comparison table

The table below does not rank “better” and “worse”; it puts confirmed figures side by side, with the year and source of each.

According to Stanford University’s AI Index 2026, global corporate investment in AI more than doubled in 2025 to reach $581.7 billion. It is enough to recall the shock of China’s DeepSeek-R1 model in January 2025, when Nvidia lost nearly $600 billion of market value in a single day, to see that the race for frontier models is being run between two powers. Even Europe, with its law and its investment initiative, postponed part of its obligations through the 2026 “digital omnibus” package, as shown in the EU AI Act implementation timeline.

The realistic conclusion: the right benchmark for Morocco is not catching up with the United States in building models, but becoming a smart user and a service hub for African, Arab and French-speaking markets, drawing on its local languages.

AI agents: the next wave, and where does Morocco stand?

In its guide to building agents (December 2024), Anthropic defines AI agents as systems in which the language model dynamically directs its own processes and tool use, keeping control over how it accomplishes the task.

From conversation to execution

According to IBM, a traditional chatbot has no tools, no memory and no ability to plan, and waits for your instruction at every step. An agent breaks the goal into sub-tasks and uses the available tools to reach it. Interest is high, but adoption is still early: McKinsey’s survey (November 2025) found that 23% of organisations had started scaling agents and another 39% were experimenting, 62% in total, without scaling exceeding 10% in any single function. Gartner expects more than 40% of agentic AI projects to be cancelled by the end of 2027 because of cost and unclear value. China, for its part, aims in its plan for the adoption of smart devices and agents to exceed 70% by 2027.

“Idarati AI”: Morocco’s bet on agents

The most prominent Moroccan project in this direction is “Idarati AI”, the agentic assistant included in the roadmap to guide citizens through administrative procedures. Its success will be measured by what it actually does for citizens, not by its announcement, and it is an important test, because the digitisation of services itself still runs into illiteracy and low trust, as a Hespress report noted in October 2025.

What does this mean for a small business?

A small business does not need a complex agent to benefit. Repetitive tasks are the best place to start:

• drafting posts and scheduling them in advance for a whole week;
• suggesting first replies to recurring messages, with a human review before sending;
• summarising comments to see what the audience asks about and what bothers it.

For those who run their business accounts themselves, Postilik writes posts in Moroccan Darija and other Arabic dialects and schedules them. To explore the idea further, read our guide to saving time with social media automation.

What to do now: four practical steps

1. Use an AI tool every day for a real task, not just to experiment, and always review what it produces.
2. Write in your audience’s language. Darija tools are now available, including open-source tools launched by the ministry with Mistral in September 2026 according to Morocco World News. Read about using AI to write posts in Darija, and about when to choose Darija or Modern Standard Arabic in your posts.
3. Automate one weekly task and measure the time saved before moving on to another.
4. Follow official programmes such as the “Al Jazari” institutes in your region, and developments in data protection law.

And if what worries you is the effect of these changes on your work, we have a dedicated article: will AI replace my job?

The future of AI in Morocco: two scenarios to 2030

Scenario one: the roadmap is delivered, a clear legal framework is adopted, a sovereign data centre comes online, and Darija and Amazigh tools become products people and businesses use every day. Morocco then moves closer to the role of a regional hub for services and adoption.

Scenario two: the targets stay as figures in documents, the law is delayed and the talent drain continues. Morocco then remains a consumer of tools built in Washington, Beijing and Paris.

The difference between the two scenarios will not come from the ministry’s name, but from the speed of delivery and transparency in publishing budgets and results. Morocco will not win the race to build giant models, but it can compete in the race for smart use.