High-rise, high expectations: is Casablanca's finance hub a model for African development?

The Guardian

03-06-2025

For centuries, Casablanca was a significant trading hub for merchants from across the breadth of the Atlantic coast, given its geographical position between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
These days, Morocco's economic capital is merging those historical roots with a strong modern commercial identity. One such manifestation is the Casablanca Finance City (CFC) district, whose high-rise buildings stand as a symbol of the city's dream of being a main gateway for international investment into Africa.
Since the district launched in December 2010, its attractive tax regime has brought in entities from across the globe. There was a slowdown in sign-ups to the hub during the Covid-19 pandemic but it now hosts 240 companies, including Huawei and Schneider Electric, accounting for more than 7,000 jobs.
'We welcome companies from multiple sectors … [and] we also support them in their development into the continent,' said Lamia Merzouki, its chief operating officer.
Over the past decade, Moroccan investment across Africa has sharply risen: from $100m in 2014 to $2.8bn in 2024. As of March 2025, it was ranked fourth in the Middle East and Africa region and 57th out of 119 overall on the Global Financial Centres Index.
Brigitte Labou, the head of customs practice for Francophone Africa at KPMG Avocats, based in Paris, says hubs such as the CFC are 'important levers for accelerating the industrialisation of Africa.
'The financial hub that the CFC represents, as well as the related tax advantages, are assets that can attract the relocation of production chains to Morocco and Africa,' she added.
Representing a key entry point for business into Africa, the CFC is seen by the Moroccan government as a valuable component of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a trade agreement with the promise of a unified African market of 1.4 billion people and a combined GDP of $3.4tn. It was approved by the African Union in 2012 and launched seven years later, but implementation has been slow.
But in a time of global tariff wars, African economists are hoping agreements such as AfCFTA can help.
In May, as hundreds of African business executives in various shades of suits converged in Abidjan in Ivory Coast for the Africa CEO Forum, intracontinental trade during tariff disruption topped the agenda.
The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking during an all-presidential panel in Abidjan, proposed more collaboration on the continent as a solution. 'We would like the private sector to follow in tandem with the public sector, and to embrace the AfCFTA and also be active participants … [AfCFTA] is going to be the pathfinder', he told more than 2,800 delegates.
Merzouki agrees. 'In this context of trade wars, the African free trade area is really a must,' she said after the session. 'We need to accelerate the momentum. Regional integration is a must for us, and this is something that we have been nourishing since the beginning.'
There is criticism that the CFC's focus on attracting foreign capital has done little to address deep-seated inequalities within Morocco. Recent trade data for 2024 also shows that the EU – rather than Africa – is still a destination for at least two-thirds of Moroccan exports.
In response to this discrepancy, Merzouki said the data 'should not overshadow the dynamic cooperation between Morocco and the rest of Africa'.
There is also regular criticism of Morocco's constitutional monarchy system, but supporters say this has projected an image of calm that seems to have benefited Casablanca, compared with other African hubs.
'Even if there are lots of different trade wars and economic upheavals and so on, Morocco remains a stable platform,' said Merzouki. 'There is political stability, macroeconomic stability. We have a lot of international players that give us this feedback. They want to come to Casablanca because it remains stable.'
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It is now marketing this profile of a haven within chaos to draw in more entities amid one of the biggest global trade disruptions in decades. Since Donald Trump resumed his second term as US president, he has upended trade deals and hiked tariffs, including for all of Africa.
The CFC is also cooperating with two dozen African investment promotion agencies, including those of Nigeria and Ivory Coast, seeking new opportunities to increase infrastructural development. It also hosts the Africa50 fund, a vehicle launched in 2015 by the African Development Bank, with initial capital of $700m from 20 member states, to spur infrastructure development across the continent.
The district is also pivoting to accommodate its interest in artificial intelligence – having launched an Africa Innovation Lab to support fintechs – and sustainable financing.
Currently, Africa generates only 2% of its potential in carbon credits, which are permits countries or companies can exchange to fund initiatives that reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Merzouki, a former chair of the UN Development Programme's Financial Centres for Sustainability Network, thinks the continent can become an energy powerhouse with the right conditions: technology transfer, capacity building, financing.
Last September, the CFC signed an agreement with another Moroccan agency to launch a voluntary carbon market for private entities as part of a push to start a carbon-efficient ecosystem.
Still, there are limits to African financial hubs such as the CFC: doing business is notoriously difficult in many African countries and red tape and archaic policies continue to stymie the flow of cash and workers across borders.
Bright Simons, the vice-president of the Imani Centre for Policy and Education in Accra, Ghana, says the hubs are merely short-term solutions that cloud the big picture.
'The unique selling point for the hubs is to try and concentrate resources in a manner that tries to circumvent some of those [logistical and infrastructural] barriers,' he said. 'African governments, rather than go the long route of trying to actually fix these problems, are trying to look for shortcuts, and perhaps hubs have become the cleverest but most visible way.'