IT Sector in Morocco: Outlook for 2014 and Development

Interview with Mehdi Kettani, President of the Numeric Cluster

Please give us an overview of the IT sector in Morocco and your outlook for 2014 and onward.

In Morocco, we want to position the country as the top emerging market in the IT sector, especially in innovation in the IT sector. That means that we want to make IT a vector of human development. We also want to have the IT industry as a pillar of the economy. We want to have innovation as the heart of this sector. We know that if we want to be positioned as an emerging market in IT, we have to be connected to the world, to the global market. We want to connect the innovation in the IT sector to the global market. To do that, we decided to create a cluster and this cluster is called Maroc Numeric Cluster.

Please tell us about the history of Maroc Numeric Cluster.

Maroc Numeric Cluster is a co-initiative between the IT actors and the government. The government is a coach for us and pushed us to create this cluster between the enterprises, companies, including large companies and SMEs, and universities and associations. The entire ecosystem of the IT sector can be a member of the cluster. This cluster has an ambition and that is to promote innovation in the IT sector.

What is the goal of the Maroc Numeric Cluster?

The first goal of Maroc Numeric Cluster is to animate the IT sector through the innovation process. As you may know, innovation is the heart of the development of IT in the market. If we want to do more innovation, we have to animate the IT sector through this innovation. This means we have to create together universities along with companies, associations and infrastructure. This is the first goal.

The second goal is to promote the emergence of innovation projects. The third axis for us is to mobilize the skills and competencies for the sector. But when you have an innovation project with skills, you also need to have the market. One of our goals is to be able to promise the companies to address their market. They address their local market but also their international market. Our last goal is to connect the Moroccan innovation to the international global market.

Please tell us about the partnerships you have built locally and internationally.

As I mentioned, one of our main goals is to connect the Moroccan IT innovations to the international market. That means that we try to get partnerships with international clusters. I can quote for example the partnership we have with Systematic which is a main cluster for IT in France. We have a typical partnership with them; we have worked together for a long time. It is interesting for us because they taught us how to do more and how to do better in terms of animation and emerging projects but they also can make it possible for our projects to get to the international market. Our local projects here in Morocco go to the international market through Systematic and through this partnership. This is an example of the type of international partnerships that we have.

We also have partnerships here in Morocco, for example with the media. Our animation goes through the media and we work a lot through communications agencies and the media to promote innovation. We have a lot of innovation in IT in Morocco.

Please talk to us about the human resources that are available in Morocco that help make this cluster successful.

I think it is well-known that in Morocco we have very good engineers working in the IT sector. We have very big off-shore centers working for French markets but also for English or American markets. We have companies, including startups and large companies, working for the international market and that is what is happening today. We also have skilled workers and engineers working on innovation for the global market. The Moroccan market is small but the world market is very big. We work for international companies and we have a lot of resources, engineers, here in Morocco. The problem is not whether we have the resources, but it is to mobilize the resources for the projects and to bring projects here from the international market. We want to do the projects here, develop the projects here, and export them for the global market. I don’t think that human resources is a problem here in Morocco.

We have vertical programs addressing the challenges to any sector promoting the emergence of projects but we also have transverse programs. Those transverse programs are related to skills and talent. We have a talent program and this program is led by the federation. The aim of this program is to promote innovation in this sector for the resources. It is easy to have engineers working on projects but it’s a little bit more difficult to have engineers working on innovation in the projects.

Maroc Numeric Cluster is a part of the program Maroc Numeric and the vision of IT in Morocco. When you see the infrastructure or the legacy or all of the infrastructure built in Morocco, you have the standard to develop innovation projects in Morocco. The aim of Maroc Numeric Cluster is to facilitate, accompany and support all the investors and all the entrepreneurs coming from outside to invest Morocco, but also to accompany the innovation within Morocco coming from Moroccan actors. We have the infrastructure as a standard to develop the innovation projects and it meets international standards as well.