By Professor Ahmed Azirar, economist, Director of Research at IMIS, President of AMEEN
I would like to warmly thank Groupe le Matin for involving me in this great Forum they are organising. The content and value, the relevance and topicality of the theme (maritime economy), the venue (Dakhla), and the chosen date (commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the enthronement of H.M. King Mohammed VI, may God assist Him) all speak for themselves.I am all the more grateful to the organiser for inviting so many experts and personalities to this debate who are capable of unravelling the ins and outs of the crucial issues that H.M. King Mohammed VI raised in his Speech on the 48th anniversary of the Green March, dealing with the maritime economy and the Atlantic seaboard. While waiting for the Ministry of Transport's ongoing study to be made available, this debate is highly welcome.
For my part, being neither a specialist in sovereignty theory nor a maritime expert, I take refuge in my capacity as an economist to underline here the importance of the strategic idea that H.M. the King developed in this Speech, around four aspects:
• Maritime sovereignty and its relationship with economic development.
• The mobilisable maritime economic surplus.
• Maritime territorial intelligence.
• Maritime economic diplomacy, known as blue diplomacy.
What is the link between economic development and sovereignty? In maritime sovereignty, there is sovereignty in short or national sovereignty. The sovereignty of a State implies the exclusivity of its legislative, executive, and judicial powers. A concept that also means an independent State. Sovereignty is a multifaceted and complementary set: food, water, energy, health, digital, financial..., and maritime, which concerns us here and now and which will be developed by the experts who will speak.
We believed with so-called happy globalisation that global development was accessible to developing countries, especially middle-income countries like Morocco. However, this was not the case. The excessive opening of the economy and adherence to the idea of specialisation in global value chains has, according to a dominant theory, blocked our development at a certain level. As if a glass ceiling, the famous middle-income trap, according to the established economic term, prevented our integral development.
Since the 1960s, it has been known that economic and social development can only come from the country's internal forces. Foreign trade must be undertaken, but directed towards the national interest, by developing an integrated and competitive economic fabric at the national level. This is to say that the sovereignty that the Western world wants to regain after the Covid-19 crisis is ancient, both in political theory (John Locke) and in economic development theory.
In any case, it is never too late to do well. Morocco is today determined to move towards the consolidation of its national sovereignty through the multiple forms of this sovereignty. The ongoing programmes of "Made in Morocco Industrial", food, health, digital, water, energy, and maritime sovereignty are the proactive choices that Morocco has made for the near horizon, 2035.
Yes, but how to succeed? Without going into the obvious details of the importance of good governance, in particular, we will recall another Royal motto: "Al Maakoul". Al Maakoul, seriousness, means in what interests us today the need to mobilise the material and immaterial surplus that the country abounds with. Starting with the maritime domain, by consolidating the regional development of maritime zones, both Mediterranean and Atlantic, around development hubs that will valorise the material and immaterial resources of these zones that have remained untapped until now. The maritime economy, an enormous mobilisable surplus. When Baran and Sweezy, and in our country, Habib El Malki, decades ago, made the concept of economic surplus the potential engine of economic and social development for countries newly freed from colonialism, they had touched on the essential. How to recover the still untapped resources, material and immaterial, or those transferred abroad, how to avoid waste, and promptly mobilise these resources to build the foundations of an economy productive of values for the benefit of human development? It is a thesis that has not faded. Far from it.
The sea keeps its mystery and its potential for danger intact in the subconscious of Moroccans, the most serious of which is the loss of national sovereignty. Yet, many Moroccans have historically taken to the sea and sailed to conquer new lands (Andalusia) or to regulate the movement of fleets (piracy of Salé, Azemmour, Nekor...) or simply to study (Ibn Battouta, Al Idrissi...), discover or trade, most legally, using boats leaving from dynamic ports at different times in our history (Essaouira, Tangier, Salé...). 3,500 km of coastline and an exclusive maritime domain of more than one million km², concerning 9 coastal regions out of 12 and three-quarters of the population, hold an immense surplus that is still under-exploited. As the maritime GDP remains very low.
Why such lethargy? What is the approximate size of this surplus and what are its major segments? What are the conditions to mobilise it? What are the territories and actors concerned? Can we imagine stages of a roadmap? Many questions arise. H.M. the King has, rightly, brought back to the fore this issue which was little developed in the Report of the Special Commission on the Development Model, produced as a new development model for the peninsula that is the Mediterranean-Atlantic Morocco (MMA).
At a time of a fragmenting economic world, and while awaiting the discovery of on-shore energy resources, the Moroccan maritime domain offers immeasurable opportunities for value creation. Especially since climate change is fiercely threatening our countryside and our cities, which we notice are almost all coastal. With the exception of a few like Marrakech, Fes, Oujda, Beni Mellal, Smara. Which cities are all attachable to their nearby maritime environment. The Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region and, more generally, the Atlantic seaboard hold significant potential.
The integrated maritime economy to be built (logistics, fishing, mining, industry, tourism, sport, research...), can play the role of accelerator of our own development, of realisation of our ambition of integration of Atlantic Africa and of opening up the Sahel countries. There are conditions for this, of course. Starting with the assembly of our national fleet using a competitive shipyard (starting immediately with national coastal shipping), and the consolidation of our maritime sovereignty. The work in progress by national private entities, or with the Koreans, augurs an excellent perspective. Maritime territorial intelligence. The advanced regionalisation that Morocco has been implementing for more than a decade has accumulated appreciable experience. It still needs to mobilise sufficient financial and human resources, to build at the level of each of the 12 regions the organisation, in relation to the capacities mobilisable locally and with the regional characteristics and needs, the impeccable governance and the appropriate development plans. These plans already exist. Their analysis leaves one wanting more regarding the maritime component. Around our ports, except Tangier Med, with the automotive industry in particular, and Jorf Lasfar with phosphates, there are not yet development hubs strictly speaking. Admittedly, fishing, mainly coastal, dominates in the majority of ports. Deep-sea fishing, for its part, prospers mainly in Agadir and Dakhla.
It is not nothing. It is not enough. The desalination of seawater which is accelerating, as well as the shipyard in perspective will constitute their ecosystems which could lead in their wake new activities. The maritime is not yet strictly speaking the engine around which the territorial development of our maritime regions is built. Approaches to territorial intelligence, including intelligent territorial marketing, are required. From experience, some regions are increasingly making the effort to train their executives in territorial intelligence. Which is an excellent approach to generalise and pursue.
One sells one's region today as one sells a product or a service (or almost!), at a time when modern communication technologies, including artificial intelligence, increasingly facilitate the collection, organisation, analysis, exchange, and exploitation of relevant data. Territorial intelligence is deployed all the more favourably as it links to national strategic intelligence, to promote abroad a plural, diversified, and locally anchored national image.
As much as the country develops comparative advantage, the regions develop competitive advantage so that companies build, on these two bases, the competitive development itself. The maritime component is in this respect the central ingredient of the future for the Atlantic regions directly concerned, as for the whole country. As a cord of co-development with our Afro-Mediterranean partners. At the head of which, the Sahel countries which greatly need this vital Royal boost, the opening to the Atlantic.
Maritime sovereignty and "blue diplomacy": the Sahel as a partner. It is since the 1980s-90s that the concept of "blue diplomacy" took shape after the negotiations that led to the adoption, in 1958, of four so-called Geneva conventions on territorial waters, the continental shelf, the high seas, and fishing. And it was the negotiation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed in 1982 and entered into force in 1994 after the renegotiation of Part XI relating to the seabed, which gave the starting signal for a specifically maritime diplomacy by largely renewing the concepts of international law of the sea and by developing rules that were to lead States to negotiate on the "oceans" issue.
Morocco, an oceanic country par excellence, realises that it should take its share in this blue diplomacy. To do this, it is undertaking to equip itself with an appropriate organisation and adapted means to deal with regional and global ocean issues. In this regard, Morocco already has an active diplomacy, it should integrate within it systemically the aspects relating to the sea and the oceans. The Kingdom should also equip itself with a state apparatus in charge of the oceans, a fully-fledged department of the sea, and above all an active merchant navy that would work to reconstitute a competitive national flag.
Everyone knows today that strategic diplomatic issues totally integrate the seas and oceans which are places of power struggle and influence for most States, regionally as globally. In this regard, Morocco not only has interests to defend, but also a field of partnership to develop with neighbouring States in particular, in accordance with its African orientation and its South-South co-development strategy. It is in this framework that the Royal proposal to allow Sahel countries to benefit from an opening to the Atlantic is prodigious. The four countries concerned quickly understood this. Synergistic work must be deployed between Morocco and its neighbours to benefit together from such a perspective.
H.M. King Mohammed VI, who has just closed 25 years of reign with brilliance and continuous success, is tracing for his country a promising trajectory with as many diverse projects as the industrialisation of the country, the generalisation of social protection, the reform of the family status, or the mobilisation of the integrated maritime economy. So many projects that not only accelerate the sustainable economic and social development of the Kingdom, strengthen territorial integrity, but also give it regional leadership and recognised international visibility. n
