A five-hour time difference separates us from our loved ones in Washington DC. It also is an increment of time almost none of our 20+ SAIS MAGP students have seen of sleep since arriving in Morocco two days earlier. Bleary-eyed and highly caffeinated, today we eagerly began this adventure in international research and policy development which we have been anticipating for well over a year when we started the MAGP program.
So while our colleagues still slept back at home, the MAGP students with a special interest in economic opportunities and challenges in the developing world dove into complex and important policy issues affecting Moroccan development. We first stopped by the American Chamber of Commerce of Morocco, an institution representing foreign and domestic businesses with a stake in seeing the economic relationship between the U.S. and Morocco progress. The managing director, Rabia El Alama, offered a candid perspective of why this country in the Maghreb is so attractive to multinational businesses. Morocco has deftly positioned itself as a nexus between three very different worlds, with its physical location serving as the economic gateway between Europe, the U.S., sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. However, it is clear that businesses continue to face many structural and socioeconomic challenges in Morocco, dampening youth employment, entrepreneurship, and the trade balance.
We were then able to complement the practical experience faced by members of AmCham Morocco with a more theoretical approach to addressing Morocco’s economic woes. This perspective came from a discussion with a newly established local (and edgy) think tank, the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis (MIPA) where we were joined by MIPA’s managing director and scholars to compare solutions to these big policy questions, ranging from how to make education system more accountable and beneficial to employers to finding ways to prevent the brain drain.
Traveling back from Rabat--the political center of Morocco--to our hotel in Casablanca--the economic center--it’s clear that more needs to be done to bridge these two perspectives to deliver a stronger, brighter future for Morocco. It’s also clear that we’ll need much more caffeine before we come to any acceptable solutions.
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