In his 2025 Throne Day address, King Mohammed VI advocated for a clear move away from "traditional methods" toward a framework of unified regional growth, stating a phrase that gained broad acceptance: "no room for a Morocco advancing at two speeds."
He outlined four urgent goals, which involve generating local employment, ensuring fair access to healthcare and education, taking active measures for water management, and restoration initiatives linked to the country's infrastructure.
The core of the speech presented a challenge to the nation's imbalanced development pattern. Growth, investment, and services continue to be focused along the Casablanca–Tangier corridor, while inland regions lag significantly behind.
What's the issue with Morocco's present system of growth?
Currently, progress is mainly managed through different sectors. The transportation ministry constructs roads. The health ministry establishes clinics. The agriculture department initiates irrigation initiatives. However, these efforts frequently occur independently, without collaboration, resulting in a road that goes unused, a clinic located far from the people who require it, and a dam that fails to benefit nearby farms.
This is where integrated regional development (IRD) plays a role. Rather than organizing initiatives department by department, IRD begins with the region itself: What are the area's advantages and limitations? What mix of infrastructure, services, and employment opportunities can stimulate local growth?
Under the IRD framework, various investments operate together. A single infrastructure project could link farmers to markets, students to schools, and healthcare professionals to clinics. Social services and economic initiatives are combined into a single strategy, rather than being spread out among different government departments.
What does the IRD resemble in real-life situations?
The United Nations refers to IRD as an approach that combines various disciplines and involves participation in planning, integrating both urban and rural regions on a common map. It aims to balance population distribution and economic activities, connecting infrastructure, education, healthcare, environment, and disaster readiness into a single spatial plan.
One of the most notable cases is Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Project. Initiated in the 1970s as a dam construction initiative, it evolved into a comprehensive regional development, incorporating power stations, irrigation channels, schools, roads, and agricultural areas within a unified strategy.
Power production increased, cotton output doubled, and rural communities received access to essential services. By 2023, Şanlıurfa province experienced income growth from below $1,000 in the 1990s to almost $5,000.
Nations such as Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, and European Union countries have implemented comparable systems, aligning infrastructure and services to minimize disparities between rapidly growing urban centers and slower-developing rural regions.
Morocco's regionalization initiative created a foundation, yet fell just short
After implementing a new constitution in 2011, Morocco has concentrated on promoting advanced regionalization, establishing elected regional councils, and gradually delegating some authority from Rabat to local administrations, by setting up legal and financial frameworks to support decentralized governance.
However, although these changes gave local councils authority on paper, they failed to resolve a key issue: national ministries continue to handle their finances and strategies independently.
What could integrated regional development imply for Morocco?
An approach based on IRD would alter both the flow of funds and the design of development initiatives. Rather than each ministry presenting individual project budgets, financial resources would be combined into regional allocations, sourced from health, agriculture, water, and infrastructure sectors.
For instance, Draa-Tafilalet: with IRD, a single plan could support a small dam, irrigation channels, rural health centers, and an agricultural processing area, all through a unified funding system.
This change would probably necessitate new systems for shared financial resources. Morocco's Regional Investment Centers (CRI) or an updated INDH model could fulfill this function, with joint supervision from the government and elected regional councils.
However, money is not the sole aspect that requires reconsideration. Instead of ministries in Rabat determining where to build a road or clinic, each region would carry out a territorial assessment: What natural resources and limitations define this area? Where is the population increasing? What are the current service deficiencies?
This diagnosis would influence the investment plan. For instance, a road in Béni Mellal would be positioned not only considering traffic levels, but also if it links farmers to processing plants, schoolchildren to schools, and communities to clean water supplies.
Achievement would be evaluated based on influence, not results
At present, every ministry monitors its own indicators: kilometers of road constructed, schools built, and clinics staffed. However, IRD requires a move towards territorial performance dashboards, which assess how regions are performing in terms of outcomes such as job creation, poverty reduction, access to services, and environmental sustainability.
The King’s 2025 address also highlighted local involvement as a fundamental aspect of this new strategy. For IRD to be effective, regional actors, cooperatives, companies, training institutions, and NGOs must drive development from the grassroots level.
I have requested the government to implement cutting-edge local development initiatives that leverage the unique characteristics of each area. I anticipate that it will guarantee that sophisticated regionalization is well-established, and that the concept of integration and mutual support between regions is followed.
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