Following up on a lead from a previous interview, two of us attended the DEMO AFRICA symposium, sponsored by international corporations, NGOs, and other civil society elements. Most of the attendees were under the age of 30 and excited about the opportunity to pitch their startup ideas and learn about launching their own businesses. The conference started with an African drum, vocal, and string performance; keynote speeches, and three pitches from aspiring or early business owners.
Participant after participant expressed a desire to create something new, citing “everything we have in Morocco comes from someplace else. I want to create something new and uniquely Morocco and bring it to the world!”
Participants also discussed important barriers to building out and accelerating their innovations. Market size, tax structure, financing gaps, and business-to-business networks were all cited as areas where improvements could be made. Participants had thoughts about the role of policy and government, but more often expressed the dogged determinism and do-it-yourself attitude we’ve come to expect from entrepreneurs.
Another part of our group attended a meeting with the Office of Vocational Training and Work Promotion (L'Office de la Formation Professionnelle et de la Promotion du Travail, or OFPPT) before traveling to Rabat for afternoon meetings with journalists, and later, the Millennium Challenge Account, the local entity implementing the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s second compact for Morocco.
The OFPPT was first created by royal decree in 1974 with the purpose of facilitating the entry of new workers into the job market through training and certificate programs and supporting small and medium enterprises by providing them with needed human capital. OFFPT’s Chargee de la Cooperation Technique, Soumaya Samlali, hosted us along with her colleagues for lunch.
We learned about the training opportunities available in OFPPT’s 356 vocational schools around Morocco. This year, OFPPT hopes to serve 564,000 trainees, a number which represents roughly sixty percent of all enrollees in technical and vocational education and training. One of the many challenges faced today is the expectations gap between the jobs that the market needs and individuals demand. This means that adaptation is a necessary feature of identifying and addressing training needs for workforce development.
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