Current Analysis

Government Efforts to Reduce Inequality in Morocco Are Only Making Matters Worse

Inequality between rural and urban areas of Morocco has been deeply entrenched since the colonial era. But recent government public policies that ostensibly seek to reduce disparities are in fact further marginalizing already impoverished communities. Atia and Samlali's research reveals what is goin

Mona Atia, Said Samlali • 13 min read

Current Analysis

The Sub-Saharan African Turn in Moroccan Literature

With the increasing presence of sub-Saharan African migrants in North Africa over the past decade, public discussions of race and prejudice are losing their taboo. Moroccan writers are encouraging a broader awareness of structural racism by including more Black characters in their novels and by depi

Brahim El Guabli • 9 min read

Current Analysis

Sahrawi Self-Determination, Trump’s Tweet and the Politics of Recognition in Western Sahara

The Sahrawi people have been struggling for self-determination in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara since 1975. Despite years of nonviolent resistance, there has been no significant change in the stalled process of decolonization. Until now. The sudden end to the long-running ceasefire and Trump's tw

Mark Drury • 7 min read

MER Article

Global Aspirations and Local Realities of Solar Energy in Morocco

Morocco's massive Noor solar power installation in Ouarzazate is celebrated as an important step in the transition to renewable energy. But the benefits are not flowing to all citizens. Rural unrest and other demonstrations of discontent in recent years are piercing the government's techno-optimism.

Atman Aoui, Moulay Ahmed el Amrani, Karen Rignall • 15 min read

Current Analysis

Global Aspirations and Local Realities of Solar Energy in Morocco

Morocco's massive Noor solar power installation in Ouarzazate is celebrated as an important step in the transition to renewable energy. But the benefits are not flowing to all citizens. Rural unrest and other demonstrations of discontent in recent years are piercing the government's techno-optimism.

Atman Aoui, Moulay Ahmed el Amrani, Karen Rignall • 16 min read

MER Article

Protest Camp as Counter-Archive at a Moroccan Silver Mine

Eight years ago, residents of Imider in Morocco's rural southeast shut down a silver mining company's water pipe on a nearby mountain to protest the damages to their health and livelihoods. This direct action turned into the longest sit-in protest encampment in Moroccan history. Perched on a rugged

Zakia Salime • 13 min read

Current Analysis

Precarious Teachers Strike for Public Education in Morocco

Over the past three years, striking and demonstrating teachers have mobilized against their new precarious status as contract-labor under government privatization reforms implemented in 2016. The teachers’ struggle is bound up in the broader fight by Moroccan unions against the government’s neoliber

Zakia Salime • 10 min read

Current Analysis

Business as Usual in Western Sahara?

The end of 2018 witnessed potentially promising peace talks in Geneva between the Polisario Front liberation movement of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco in an effort to kickstart the stalled peace process for the nearly 45-year conflict over this North African territory. Nevertheless, the

Alice Wilson, Jacob Mundy • 12 min read

MER Article

Globalized Authoritarianism and the New Moroccan City

The transformation of the Moroccan city tells a broader story about the transformation of the state and the economy through neoliberal reform. Economic liberalization promised to undermine the power structures of authoritarian states, but in fact authoritarianism has persisted in new globalized form

Koenraad Bogaert • 12 min read

MER Article

Morocco Dispatch

Moroccans have been consuming regular coverage of Donald Trump since the US presidential campaign heated up. I was here in Fez in December 2015 when candidate Trump called for the United States to bar entry to Muslims—his notorious “Muslim ban.” News of it spread quickly. Moroccan students asked me

Brian Edwards • 5 min read

Current Analysis

Justice and/or Development

Ash al shaab! Ash! Ash! [Long Live the People!] Ash! Ash! Maghariba mashi “awbash!” [We Moroccans are not “trash!”] Ra’s al-mal?! [Where’s our capital?!] -Hirak protest chants in Fez, June 2017 What began in late October 2016 with protests over the horrific death of Mohcine Fikri, a fish

Emilio Spadola • 10 min read

MER Article

Juan Goytisolo

For the past 25 years, every evening around sunset, an elderly man could be seen gingerly crossing the Boulevard Pasteur, Tangier’s busy main thoroughfare. Shuffling toward the Grand Poste, he would walk slowly down the pavement to Café Maravillosa. Regulars would stand up to shake his hand. “Marhba

Hisham Aïdi • 40 min read