The role of territorial intelligence in local development was at the centre of a meeting led, on Thursday in Kenitra, by a host of Moroccan and foreign experts who examined the prospects for creating a structure to bring together all stakeholders capable of working in a network to better manage data and knowledge and transform them into actions on the ground in the service of local development.

The speakers at this meeting, initiated by the University of Settat and the Research Association for the Development of Kenitra and the Gharb, emphasised the role of the region and its contribution to local development.

In this regard, academic Jamal Eddine Tebbaa argued that globalisation is generating increasingly strong competition not only between countries but between regions, noting that development, in this context, is no longer a centralised process, but an integrated and synergetic process involving different actors organised into network systems.

The challenge today, according to him, would be to know how to extend economic intelligence to territories, how to transform knowledge into development on the ground, and whether the next local and regional elections will allow for the emergence of a regional political elite capable of meeting the challenges of a true territorial intelligence policy for the benefit of territorial development.

For Belgian expert Thierry Moniquet, territorial intelligence is a set of actions conducted in a coordinated manner by public and private actors located in a territory in order to strengthen its economic performance and improve the well-being of the population.

It is a science whose object is the sustainable development of the territory and whose subject is the territorial community, he indicated. The same sentiment was echoed by Jaouad Dabounou, from the University of Settat, for whom intelligence is the fruit of an interconnection between networks, knowing that in territorial intelligence all actors have their importance and must act in a network because compartmentalisation is sterile.

This meeting was also marked by a presentation given by the regional delegate of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Sadok Driss, focusing on the National Pact for Industrial Emergence and the role of the delegation in the implementation of the national strategy in the service of investment.