An Overview of Morocco's Innovation Vitality

Morocco has recently made progress in some key Innovation Vitality metrics

Starting a Business Score: 93

Starting a Business Rank: 43

GDP Performance

Morocco has one of the most thriving economies in Africa as reflected by its GDP performance. Between 2010 to 2020, GDP (at current USD) grew by approximately 21%. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the real GDP growth rate was 5.7% in 2021. Furthermore, Real GDP is projected to grow by 3.1% in 2022. The main sector that contributes to GDP is the services sector. GDP per capita growth rates have been quite volatile since 2010 and in 2020 the GPD per Capita shrunk by 8.24%.

New Business Registrations and Entrepreneurial Fervor

New venture creation has grown significantly since 2010: the number of new business registrations more than doubled between 2010 to 2021. It is a positive sign that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, new businesses continued to spring forth in the nation thus signifying the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2020/2021 Report, Morocco had the fourth-highest Employee Entrepreneurship Activity Rate in the MENA region: 4% of employees they surveyed stated they were currently engaged in some form of entrepreneurial activity for their respective companies. Furthermore, nearly 50% of the surveyed participants in Morocco stated they intend to start a business in the future and 53.9% thought that it was easy to start a business.

High Tech Exports

Despite the steady growth of high-tech exports since 2015, high-tech exports still constitute a small proportion of exported goods for Morocco compared to other manufactured goods (only 4.9%). According to the World Bank, high-tech exports include pharmaceutical drugs, electronic products, and other R&D intensive inventions.

ICT Service Exports

This measures the value of Information, Communication and Technology services that are exported by a nation. It includes services related to telecommunications, courier, and news-related services. We estimate that the value of Morocco’s ICT Service Exports was more than USD1.5 Billion in 2021. Growth is predicted to be slow and incremental.

Human Capital

The capabilities of a nation’s labour force play a significant role in determining its innovation vitality. Nations with a relatively high proportion of researchers, firms that invest in R&D, and people in R&D tend to be more innovative as they spend more time creating new solutions to problems. According to the World Bank, Morocco’s tertiary enrolment rate was 40% (as a % of the population of the age group that should be at the tertiary level of education). In 2010, the tertiary enrolment rate was only 14.5%.

The Commercialisation of Intellectual Property

As illustrated by the graph, the amount of revenue generated by the commercialising of Intellectual Property fluctuated between 2010 to 2020. Nonetheless, USD 10,377,171 in 2020 (2.70 times the 2010 figure) is still a healthy return for an African Nation.