Morocco and Sub-Saharan Africa: In the Shadow of the Western Sahara Dispute

Introduction

The US recognition of Morocco’s jurisdiction over the territory of Western Sahara in December 2020, during the closing days of the Trump Administration, in return for that Maghreb state reestablishing relations with Israel, may have quashed once and for all any hope of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) achieving independence through an internationally sanctioned referendum, though the African Union (AU) and a number of countries worldwide recognize that political entity. The US also agreed to establish a consulate in the disputed territory, where 15 African countries already had a presence (Middle East Monitor, 2020). ¹ During much of the last several decades, Moroccan actions in Western Sahara have impacted that country’s bilateral and multilateral ties, especially with other countries in Africa, though to a lesser degree in the Arab World. In recent years, Morocco has gained the upper hand in its conflict in Western Sahara and has been increasing its political and economic footprint on the continent of Africa, an area of interest since independence. Given the changing political situation, it is an appropriate time to review Morocco’s relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa, a subject that has not received the attention it has deserved being overshadowed by the Western Sahara dispute.

In 1956, Morocco became independent under the rule of then-Sultan Muhammad V–he took the title king from 1957 until his death in 1961–after having been largely a protectorate of France since 1912; Spain was a junior partner having influence over smaller areas in the far north and far south of the country, the latter of which it ceded back later to Morocco in 1958. Spain maintained control over the territories of Ifni, in the south on the Atlantic Ocean, and Western Sahara until 1969 and 1975–1976, respectively, and still has possession of the cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the Mediterranean Sea, choice destinations for some illegal African migrants hoping to settle in the European territory. Morocco entertained irredentist claims over northwest Africa beyond the borders it possessed at independence, given its past history of involvement in the region. King Hassan II (1961–1999), the son of Sultan Muhammad V, occupied the vast majority of Western Sahara by 1979 after having divided that territory with Mauritania in 1976. An earlier attempt to lay claim to Mauritania until 1969 and a brief border conflict with Algeria in 1963 ended in failure. Despite these actions, Morocco professed to be a strong proponent of European decolonization and of the territorial integrity of all African countries.

Furthermore, Morocco sought to develop and expand relations with other states on the continent, especially in Arab North Africa and Francophone West and Central Africa. In recent years, it has paid more attention to East Africa. During the Cold War, in line with its attitude toward decolonization, Morocco was also a strong supporter of the struggle against Apartheid rule in South Africa. However, over the years, Morocco has had, compared to other parts of the continent, a somewhat limited political and economic impact in the region of Southern Africa, where several countries there have recognized the SADR, established in 1976 by the Polisario Front, created three years earlier, and supported by Algeria (and initially by Libya). SADR is also a member of the AU, having joined that group in 1982, the reason for Morocco quitting the Organisation of African Union (OAU), the predecessor organization to the AU, 2 years later. Morocco was able to join the AU in 2017, while its diplomatic and economic activities have accelerated in recent years though it never lost interest in Sub-Saharan Africa even when outside the OAU/AU.

Morocco regards itself as a “gateway” to Africa for Europe and the USA. Indeed, King Hassan was quoted as saying that Morocco was “a tree with its roots in Africa and its branches in Europe” (Tobi, 2019). Morocco has always subscribed to nonalignment, but following its independence, after initially siding with countries more suspicious of Western intentions, developed generally friendly relations with both France and the USA for economic assistance and military supplies. Morocco has important trade links with Europe and the USA and, during the Cold War, was a partner with the West in providing support to African states and leaders that favored Western diplomatic interests. In recent years, it has supported efforts against jihadi groups in Africa. Such has enabled Morocco to maintain control over the vast majority of Western Sahara’s territory and to preclude any attempt to organize a referendum, determining the preference of its residents, regarding the territory’s political status.

Morocco is regarded as a middle power, as are a few others on the continent: Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa. They are also the countries with the leading economies in Africa according to annual gross domestic product (GDP), though there are great differences in wealth and incomes of the inhabitants in these states. In 2019, Morocco had the sixth largest economy on the continent behind Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Angola in that order (Omotayo, 2019). However, during the same year, while South Africa was the largest African investor on the continent, Morocco was second, with two-thirds of its foreign direct investment (FDI) going to other African countries. It was, nevertheless, the largest African investor in West Africa (Daily Morocco, 2019). ² While academics have paid attention in recent years to the involvement in Africa of other middle powers from the Middle East such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia and, in the past, of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt (1954–1970) and Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya (1969–2011), as well as Israel, deservedly so, Morocco has not stirred the same sort of interest. This article seeks to address that issue by examining all political and economic factors that have influenced Moroccan policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa, connected and unconnected with the issue of the Western Sahara dispute, a subject that has been dealt with thoroughly elsewhere (Damis, 1983; Hodges, 1983). ³

Morocco’s Early Involvement in African Affairs

In 1956, Allal al-Fassi, founder of the nationalist Istiqlal Party, promoted the idea of “Greater Morocco,” which extended south to the Senegal River and included the then Spanish Sahara, Mauritania, western Algeria, and northwestern Mali (Pennell, 2000, p. 341). ⁴ The then Sultan Muhammad V embraced the idea of territorial expansion (Pennell, 2003, p. 171). However, it was his son King Hassan II (1961–1999), who occupied the vast majority of Western Sahara. The inspiration for the idea of “Greater Morocco” was historical. Indeed, the Almoravid dynasty (1070–1147 CE), based in Marrakesh, controlled at its maximum extent lands extending into Spain in the north, western Algeria in the east, and Western Sahara and Mauritania in the south. Later, the Sa’di dynasty (1549–1659), which also ruled from Marrakesh, and whose state shared a border with the Ottoman Empire along North Africa’s Mediterranean coast, controlled a smaller political entity with lands from the Strait of Gibraltar in the north, western Algeria to the east, and portions of Mali, including the Niger River bend, in the south (Pennell, 2003, pp. 42, 81). ⁵

Rom Landau, who was a professor of Islamic and North African Studies and wrote extensively on Morocco having close personal connections with King Muhammad V, in a biography of Hassan II published in 1962 noted:

Like his late father, King Hassan took the greatest interests in the problems of Africa and of the underdeveloped countries. Books on these subjects had, in fact, had become his chief reading matter. To a great extent, it was due to his initiative that during the last few years of his father’s life, so many of the African leaders, Sékou Touré of Guinea [1958-1984], [Kwame] Nkrumah of Ghana [1957-1966], Modibo Keita of Mali [1960-1968], Egypt’s Nasser, Tunisia’s [Habib] Bourguiba [1957-1987], Patrice Lumumba of the [then-Republic of the] Congo and the Algerian and many other leaders, visited Rabat more than once. As crown prince, he was also instrumental in the convocation of the Casablanca Conference early in 1961 (Landau, 1962, pp. 88–89).

Before the Casablanca Conference, Morocco was active in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly during the Suez Crisis of 1956 and regarding issues concerning Algeria’s struggle for independence from France (1954–1962), the need for technical assistance to Morocco and the rest of the Maghreb, and opposition to European colonialism in Africa (Cohen & Hahn, 1966, p. 213). When the UN intervened in the then Republic of the Congo ⁶ in July 1960, Morocco dispatched 3,100 troops to that country. King Muhammad V, like Egypt’s President Nasser and Guinea’s President Touré, preferred an all-African force, which was not the case, as his government “had a genuine apprehension that the presence of Europeans might foster fragmentation of the Congo, a problem that France’s divide-and-rule policy in Morocco had clearly dramatized” (Cohen & Hahn, 1966, p. 241). In August, when Muhammad V hosted Congolese Prime Minister Lumumba in Morocco, the King was reported to have said: “You are on the side of law and justice which always end in triumph” (Abdelkhaleq, 1987, p. 146). ⁷ However, in December, following Lumumba’s dismissal by the country’s President Joseph Kasavubu (1960–1965) and the UN’s failure in its mission to prevent bloodshed in that country, ⁸ Morocco, Ghana, Guinea, Egypt, and Mali decided to withdraw their forces from the Congo, which totaled about one-third of the UN force of 19,400.

The Casablanca Conference of January 1961, which included the leaders of the aforementioned countries, was designed to seek out alternative arrangements in dealing with the Congo. The meeting produced a charter that pledged to nonalignment—something about which the then Crown Prince Hassan addressed the UN General Assembly in October 1960 (Landau, 1962, p. 88)—and was a forerunner to the creation of the Nonaligned Movement in Belgrade in September 1961. Indeed, King Hassan II also spoke in Belgrade, where he “urged greater economic self-reliance of the Africans and more positive effort to process their own natural products rather than content themselves with merely providing Europe and America with Africa’s raw resources” (Landau, 1962, p. 89). However, while the leaders at the Casablanca Conference discussed the formation of an African defense system similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, nothing came of that project (Cohen & Hahn, 1966, p. 242), while Lumumba, who was invited but was unable to come to the meeting, was executed a couple of weeks later. While King Hassan was sincere about nonalignment, his cooperation with Egypt’s Nasser in the Casablanca Group “strengthened the (still rather superficial) ties between them and staved off antimonarchist attacks in a period when they might have hurt the new king” (Cohen & Hahn, 1966, p. 238). Indeed, the two would eventually part ways as Nasser interfered in the civil war in Yemen (1962–1970) against the royalists and supported Algeria in its border war with Morocco; Nasser would also cooperate with the Communist bloc in assisting rebellions in the eastern part of the Congo until they were defeated at the end of 1964 by the Congolese National Army under the command of Joseph Mobutu, who became the President of the country the following year and ruled until 1997.

Meanwhile, Morocco developed relations in Sub-Saharan Africa, hosting South Africa’s Nelson Mandela in 1962, mainly in Oujda, where he received political and financial support as well as military training (Embassy of Morocco in South Africa, n.d.). The Moroccan government also signed a trade agreement with Senegal in February 1963 and discussed similar arrangements with Nigeria, both members of the Monrovia Group, a moderate bloc and rival to the Casablanca Group that favored a more gradual approach to African unity over continental federation. Ethiopia reconciled the two groups, and its capital Addis Ababa became a host in the establishment of the OAU, in which Morocco was a founding member in May 1963. Later in the year, Morocco recognized Holden Roberto’s Angolan government-in-exile ⁹ in August and hosted members of this group along with nationalists from Mozambique and the Cape Verde Islands, also seeking independence from Portugal (Cohen & Hahn, 1966, p. 244).

In 1972, Morocco concluded a preferential trade agreement—the first of many involving African countries conferring “most favored nation” status—with Zaire (Daher, 2018, p. 3), as the Congo was then called and whose leader had Africanized his name to Mobutu Sese Seko. Zaire would become one of Morocco’s closest political allies as in April–May 1977, 1,300 Moroccan paratroopers (airlifted by the French) came to the assistance of Mobutu’s regime in quashing a rebellion in Shaba province supported by Angola’s Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Soviet Union; Saudi Arabia provided financial aid for the Moroccan operation. Morocco did the same in June 1978, with a 1,500-strong contingent (airlifted by the Americans) as part of a force that included other troops from West Africa (Meredith, 1984, pp. 345–346; Odom, 1993, p. 22; The New York Times, 1978).

The Western Sahara Dispute and Morocco’s Relationship with Africa (1975–1999)

In December 1960, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 1514 with a list of territories, including Spanish Sahara, that should be decolonized. Beginning in 1963, the question of Spanish Sahara was individually discussed in that body; 2 years later, it passed a resolution calling on Spain to decolonize and to negotiate this process with Morocco and Mauritania. In September 1970, King Hassan met with Presidents Houari Boumedienne (1965–1978) of Algeria and Ould Daddah (1960–1978) of Mauritania to coordinate a policy vis-à-vis Spain. Sometime during the autumn of 1974, Morocco and Mauritania reached an agreement to partition Western Sahara following Spain’s withdrawal from the territory. In July 1975, Algeria presented to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a case for the self-determination of the Sahrawi people and for a referendum under UN auspices, the latter of which had been called for in a General Assembly resolution in 1976 and was something Morocco wanted to preclude taking place. Morocco took the position that it was in control of Western Sahara before the Spanish colonized the territory in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and that respect for territorial integrity was more important than self-determination in international law (Damis, 1983, pp. 45–65).

The ICJ ruled the following in October 1975:

The materials and information presented…show the existence, at the time of Spanish colonization, of legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and some of the tribes living in the territory of Western Sahara. They equally show the existence of rights, including some rights relating to the land, which constituted legal ties between the Mauritanian entity…and the territory of Western Sahara. On the other hand…the materials and information presented…do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity. Thus, the Court has not found legal ties of such nature as might affect the application of resolution 1514 (XV) in the decolonization of Western Sahara and, in particular, of the principle of self-determination through the free and genuine expression of the will of the peoples of the Territory (Zoubir, 1996, p. 176).

The following month, under the Madrid Accords, Spain agreed to withdraw from Western Sahara by the end of February 1976. Moroccan and Mauritanian troops subsequently took control of the major settlements as the process began. In secret agreements, Spain received fishing rights off the coast of Western Sahara for 20 years and the right to establish joint venture companies with Morocco to explore and extract minerals in the territory. At the same time, Morocco agreed to freeze its claims to Ceuta and Melilla until Spain recovered Gibraltar (Hodges, 1983, p. 224). Morocco also sent more than 350,000 unarmed volunteer civilians into Western Sahara on what is known as the “Green March,” a move that had the support of the Palestine Liberation Organization and many Arab governments (Pennell, 2000, p. 339). ¹⁰ When the SADR was declared by the Polisario Front in February 1976, Algeria recognized the new state shortly afterward, but Moroccan military actions caused about 30,000 Sahrawis to seek refuge in Tindouf province in southwestern Algeria (Pennell, 2003, p. 173). As of June 2020, the number of refugees had increased to 173,600 in five camps (ACAPS, 2020).

After regrouping, Polisario forces, equipped with Soviet weapons and financial assistance from Algeria and Libya (Damis, 1983, pp. 109–110), were able to launch effective guerrilla operations not only in Western Sahara but also inside the pre-1976 boundaries of Morocco and Mauritania, forcing the Moroccans to abandon some inland posts; the Mauritanians’ much smaller army had great difficulties, and the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. Despite Moroccan military assistance and financial aid from Saudi Arabia, France, and Morocco, a military coup in July 1978 placed in power a junta in Mauritania that accepted an offer of a cease-fire from the Polisario. In August 1979, Mauritania signed a peace treaty with the Polisario in Algiers (Damis, 1983, pp. 84–89) as Moroccan forces moved south into the territory that Mauritania formerly occupied. Despite the financial costs of the war and strikes and riots in cities in Morocco, political parties across the spectrum supported the effort (Pennell, 2003, pp. 173–175), while Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, provided financial assistance (Damis, 1983, pp. 115–116, 122). France was the principal supplier of arms to Morocco, followed by the USA, although the latter had restrictions that the weapons could only be used for internal security (Damis, 1983, pp. 116, 121–127).

Beginning in 1980 and over the next 7 years, Morocco constructed a 1,700-mile (2,700 km) sand and stone barrier, which was 6.5 feet (2 m) high, known as the Berm with barbed wire, mines, and radar financed by Saudi Arabia and encompassing the major settlements and the important Bou Craa phosphate mine, some 80% of Western Sahara’s territory (Helton, 2020; Pennell, 2003, pp. 179–180). This structure “precipitously diminished the Polisario insurgency” on Morocco’s western side (Rubin, 2015), while Algeria faced economic problems due to a slump in oil prices and was later engaged in a civil war during the period from 1991–2002. Libya promised to quit aiding the Polisario in return for Morocco ignoring its military intervention in Chad, which lasted until 1987 (Pennell, 2000, pp. 367–368). This enabled Morocco to procrastinate over the years following the adoption of Resolution 690 in April 1991 by the UN Security Council, creating the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). A cease-fire took hold later in the year in September. Algeria’s weakened position also allowed for the establishment in 1989 of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), an economic group, including not only Morocco and neighboring Algeria but also Libya, Mauritania, and Tunisia, with SADR being left out.

Earlier, as of 1983, 54 countries, 27 in Africa, had recognized SADR (Hodges, 1983, p. 308, Table 28.1). ¹¹ Some 18 countries joined Morocco a year earlier in walking out of a meeting of the OAU when SADR became a member of that group. Those African states were Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Upper Volta—now known as Burkina Faso—and Zaire—now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Morocco quit the OAU in 1984 but never gave up on Africa. Its bilateral relations with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa between the 1970s and 1990s will be discussed subsequently. It should be noted that as its greatest volume of external trade is with Europe, Morocco applied to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in July 1987 but was rejected. However, in 1996, Morocco signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU), the successor to the EEC, which entered into effect in March 2000. Indeed, in 2015, Morocco’s trade with the EU accounted for 56.7% of its total, while that of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was 15.3% and Sub-Saharan Africa was 3.4% (Berahab, 2017, p. 1). Earlier, in 2004, Morocco signed an FTA with the USA that came into effect in 2006.

As for Africa, Morocco concluded preferential trade agreements with Senegal in 1987; with Chad and Guinea in 1997; and with Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, the CAR, the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Mali, Niger, and Sudan in 1998 (Daher, 2018, p. 4). Most of these countries had supported Morocco in the Western Sahara dispute or had withdrawn their recognition of SADR before concluding a trade agreement, while Morocco was attempting to sway the others or just expand beneficial economic ties. Like Zaire, Gabon, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, and Sudan never recognized SADR. Indeed, Morocco always had very cordial ties with Senegal, Gabon, and Guinea over many decades (Messari, 2018, p. 2). Equatorial Guinea withdrew recognition in 1980—a year after Morocco gave military support to Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who overthrew the brutal regime of his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema (Meredith, 2005, p. 242) ¹² and is still in power—while Burkina Faso and the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) did so in 1996, Benin took that action the following year.

Morocco has also been active in UN peacekeeping missions, including United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM I), United Task Force (UNITAF) and UNSOM II (1992–1995) in Somalia, United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM II) (1991–1996) in Angola; the former country never recognized SADR, while the latter, as is the case with almost every state in Southern Africa, continues to recognize that entity (Daher, 2018, p. 4). Morocco also participated in MUNOC (renamed MUNUSCO in 2010) beginning in 1999 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a peacekeeping group that is still in operation.

King Muhammad VI and the Revitalized Interest in African Affairs

Between 1999 when Muhammad VI acceded to the throne, and 2016 trade in goods and services between Morocco and Sub-Saharan Africa increased 15% annually (Daher 2018, p. 6), while FDI increased more than 40% between 2003 and 2013 (Pham & Larémont, 2014, p. 3), emphasizing the commitment that the monarch has had to expand ties on the continent. Indeed, in Muhammad VI’s speech to the AU in January 2017, when Morocco was admitted into that organization, with 39 out of 54 members voting in favor (African Union, 2017, p. 38; Liste des Initiatives, 2020, p. 32), he stated the following:

It was necessary to withdraw from the OAU; it has enabled Morocco’s action to be refocused in Africa to show how indispensable Africa is to Morocco and how indispensable Morocco is to Africa…. [W]e have decided to join our family again. A family we have never really left! In fact, despite having been absent from the AU institutions for so many years, our links, which have never been severed, have remained strong and African sister nations have always been able to rely on us (Morocco World News, 2017).

The King further emphasized in his speech that between 1956 and 1999, 515 agreements were signed, while, since 2000, there were 949, and that during this latter period, “I, personally, was keen to give fresh impetus to this action, by making more visits to various African sub-regions,” some 46 visits to 25 African countries. Muhammad VI continued:

My vision of South-South cooperation is clear and constant: my country shares what it has, without ostentation. Within the framework of clear-sighted collaboration, Morocco – which is an economic major player in Africa – will become a catalyst for shared expansion (Morocco World News, 2017).

One knowledgeable observer points out that Morocco has been able to provide humanitarian and technical assistance in “order to maintain its influence and signal its solidarity and commitment to the African continent’s causes,” despite its “limited financial resources and position as a major recipient of international aid” (El-Katiri, 2015, p. 6).

This has been carried out through the Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation (AMCI, known by its French initials), established in 1986 as a division of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and now operates in 46 African countries and 111 countries worldwide. Its projects include technical and management training and cultural programs, infrastructural development and humanitarian assistance like setting up hospitals and providing food and medical aid in times of natural disasters (Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation). ¹³ Morocco has engaged in expanding electrification in Chad, Gambia, Libya, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone and in providing facilities for drinking water in Cameroon and Mauritania, among other things (Moroccan American Center for Policy, 2017). In 2016, there were 16,000 students from the rest of Africa enrolled in Moroccan universities, 90% on scholarship (Moroccan American Center for Policy, 2017).

In addition, Morocco’s Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs and later the Muhammad VI Foundation of African Ulema, established in 2015, have been training Muslim Imams and preachers (Muhammad VI Foundation of African Ulema) from such countries as Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. It seeks, according to Royal Decree No. 1.15.75 “to coordinate African Muslim scholars’ efforts to generate and disseminate ideas of tolerance on the basis of Islamic values, revitalize the common Islamic cultural heritage, undertake scientific research in Islamic studies and organize events” and in the process counteract religious “radicalism” (El-Katiri, 2015, pp. 24–25). Morocco has strong religious ties to West Africa through the Tijaniyyah Sufi order, founded by Ahmad al-Tijani (1737–1815), who died in Fez where there is a mausoleum for annual pilgrimages; some consider the brotherhood, which has followers from Senegal in the west to Cameroon in the east, as a “secret weapon of Morocco’s soft power” (Louw-Vaudran, 2018, pp. 4–5).

King Muhammad VI’s travels throughout Africa had an important impact. While he visited mostly traditional allies in West and Central Africa between 2013 and 2015—Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Senegal in March 2013; Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, and Mali in March 2014; and Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal in May–June 2015—numerous bilateral agreements were signed on trade, agriculture, vocational training, water, energy, and sustainable economic development (Moroccan American Center for Policy, 2017). In 2015, Côte d’Ivoire raised US$222 million in bonds, mostly financed by Morocco (Rawhani, 2018, p. 15). In October and November 2016, King Muhammad VI traveled beyond those regions, first to Rwanda and Tanzania, where he signed bilateral agreements regarding agriculture, investments, banking, renewable energy, security cooperation, and air transport and later to Madagascar—where he performed Friday prayer in a mosque in Antananarivo and later handed out thousands of Qur’ans (Temagami, 2016)—and to Ethiopia, where Morocco concluded a US$3.7 billion deal to construct a fertilizer plant that would make Ethiopia self-sufficient (Shiferaw, 2019, p. 10). ¹⁴

Then in December 2016, King Muhammad VI visited Nigeria, another key African investor on the continent (Abderrahim & Aggad, 2018, p. 9), and signed agreements in agriculture, renewable energy, and banking, but the most important was the announcement of plans to construct a gas pipeline from Nigeria to Morocco (Moroccan American Center for Policy, 2017). Also, during 2016, Morocco opened new embassies in Benin, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda (Rawhani, 2018, p. 15; Tobi, 2019). These travels by the King and other Moroccan officials facilitated Morocco’s entry into the AU in January 2017. One must also consider that given its economic power, it was apparent to other African countries that Morocco would be in a position to provide increased funding for the AU, especially as Libya had been unable to do so since the Arab Spring. A publication from the South African Institute of International Affairs admits that Morocco, through various means of diplomacy, achieved an important accomplishment in African politics: “regional powerhouses such as South Africa and Algeria…were politically outmaneuvered. South Africa could not even ensure the allegiance of the countries in its immediate region: Swaziland [now known as Eswatini] did not support its position [against Morocco’s bid]” (Rawhani, 2018, p. 16).

Indeed, Morocco and South Africa have had complicated relations. South Africa opened an interest office in Rabat in September 1991, while Morocco did the same in Pretoria in April 1992; both were subsequently upgraded to embassies (Republic of South Africa, DIRCO, n.d.). Although Nelson Mandela visited Morocco in January 1992 and thanked King Hassan II for “unfailing solidarity with the South African people” (Embassy of Morocco in South Africa, n.d.), ¹⁵ when he was elected President 2 years later and wanted to establish relations with SADR, he was persuaded to wait by France and the USA, which assured him that “a referendum would happen soon” (Carroll, 2004). In September 2004, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki (1999–2008), who had succeeded Mandela, ran out of patience and recognized SADR. In retaliation, Morocco withdrew its ambassador from South Africa. It was bad news for South African firms, which “had an eye on…[Morocco’s] opening economy” and for Morocco as few of the countries that recognized SADR carried “the weight of South Africa, a respected, middle-ranking player” (Carroll, 2004).

It was not until November 2017 that King Muhammad VI and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma (2009–2018) meeting at the sidelines of an AU-EU summit agreed to restore full diplomatic relations. Before then, in June 2017, South Africa seized a Moroccan ship in the port of Cape Town carrying a shipment of 5,000 tons of phosphate from Western Sahara valued at US$5 million; in March 2018, the cargo was handed over to the Polisario (Huddleston, 2019; Woelf, 2017). In March the following year, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a 16-country regional economic community, in which South Africa is the most influential member, convened a solidarity conference with SADR; also, in attendance were representatives from Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and São Tomé and Príncipe, among others (SADC, 2019).

In 2019, despite the aforementioned conference and accompanying declaration, 35 out of 54 African states did not recognize SADR, and 20 countries worldwide had withdrawn recognition since the late 1990s, with Malawi, a member of SADC, doing so in May 2017 (Bassist, 2019). Indeed, following Morocco’s joining the AU, King Muhammad VI embarked on another diplomatic trip in February 2017, visiting South Sudan, signing agreements concerning agriculture and mining, among other things, and to Zambia, doing more of the same regarding agriculture, banking, insurance, education, tourism, mining, and renewable energy. The following month, he traveled to Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Guinea, signing some 50 agreements concerning agriculture, electricity, insurance, banking, tourism, mining, and renewable energy (Moroccan American Center for Policy, 2017).

Many of these deals directly help the Moroccan crown as most big companies are either partially or entirely state-owned (Louw-Vaudran, 2018). Indeed, Forbes magazine noted in 2015 that King Muhammad VI was the fifth richest person in Africa; he had a net worth of US$5.7 billion and had inherited from his father a 35% stake in Société Nationale d’Investissement (SNI), a holding company with shares in several publicly traded companies, including the country’s largest bank Attijariwafa, mining company Managem Group, sugar producer Cosumar, and the dairy farm Centrale Danone (Forbes, 2015). SNI also acts as an investment fund for developing companies in several sectors: banking, mining, construction, agriculture, tourism, and renewable energy (Pham & Larémont, 2014, p. 5). In 2015, 31% of Morocco’s FDI in Sub-Saharan Africa was in the banking sector, 21% in telecommunications, 12% in industry, 11% in real estate, 10% in holdings, 9% in other services, 5% in commerce, and 1% in insurance (Berahab, 2017, p. 7, Figure 8), and Moroccan companies accounted for 10% of the business conducted in Africa (Moroccan American Center for Policy, 2017). There are three Moroccan banks operating in about half the countries in Africa: Attijariwafa (mentioned earlier), Banque Marocaine du Commerce Extérieur (BMCE), and Banque Populaire. Maroc Telecom, Morocco’s largest telecommunications company, is the leading provider of mobile telephone service in Francophone Africa (Pham & Larémont, 2014, pp. 3–5).

Despite these achievements, and while Morocco has regional or bilateral trade and tariff agreements with at least 60% of the countries in Africa, it is not a member of any active economic group on the continent as the AMU has been inactive for more than a decade. Therefore, it is seeking membership in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an organization of 15 countries in which Nigeria is the most influential member. Morocco was accepted “in principle” in 2017, but its membership application has stalled since then. There is a fear in Nigeria and some other ECOWAS states that given Morocco’s FTAs with the EU and the USA, Western goods coming from Morocco would be able to avoid tariffs that generate much revenue. Also, Morocco has not been amenable to the free flow of people between ECOWAS states as it has had to deal with the problems of Africans seeking to travel illegally to Europe (Jebril, 2020; Munshi, 2019). ¹⁶ In 2019, Morocco had become a host country of some 80,000–100,000 legal and illegal immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (Tobi, 2019). The largest numbers of those are from Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some have been transported hundreds of miles south as part of Morocco’s deal with the EU to curb immigration, while others have been allowed to work legally or even receive residence permits. Most, however, still rely on the informal economy to make a living, at times involving drug trafficking and sex work (El Ghazouani, 2019).

Meanwhile, Morocco was elected to a 2-year seat to the AU’s Peace and Security Council in 2018 and held its rotating chair in 2019. Over the years, it has continued to serve in UN peacekeeping missions—United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) in Côte d’Ivoire (2004–2017) and United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) in the CAR (2014 to the present)—and has offered training and financial support to the French-backed G5 Sahel joint force, including soldiers from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger fighting jihadi groups in the region (Dworkin, 2020, pp. 7–8; France, Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, n.d.).

Conclusion

On August 20, 2016, King Muhammad VI, in a televised speech to the nation on the 63rd anniversary of an attempt by French authorities in Morocco to remove his grandfather Muhammad V permanently from the throne, ¹⁷ a development which hastened the Moroccan independence movement, stated: “Africa is a natural extension of Morocco and the embodiment of the country’s strategic depth,” and that his country’s “responses to many complex regional and international issues – such as development, migration and the fight against terrorism – are in line with a firm commitment to serve African peoples.” The Moroccan king drew parallels with the efforts of his grandfather and father as advocates for the liberation of the African continent from colonial rule (Kingdom of Morocco, 2016). These arguments may have been received at face value by Morocco’s African allies. Indeed, earlier in the year at an AU summit, 28 countries had submitted a motion to suspend SADR’s membership in that organization as “it did not represent a real state and was not accepted in other inter-governmental bodies like the UN” (Fabricus, 2016). However, a minority of states in Africa feel that Western Sahara is the last colonial territory left on the continent. They may never be assuaged, but some are very willing to cooperate in mutually beneficial projects. At the same time, Morocco is in a much stronger position politically and economically than it was in 1982 when SADR was accepted into the AU. While the Western Sahara dispute has obviously affected Morocco’s relations with other African countries, these ever-expanding ties can also be viewed as an important accomplishment of the Moroccan kings, ministers, and other officials, especially with regard to West and Central Africa and, in more recent years, other regions.