• Morocco to launch D4SD Hub for Arab-African digital growth

• Talks held with Meta, UN to boost AI, skills, cooperation

• Initiative aims to drive public services, tackle development gaps

Morocco is slated to launch its Morocco Digital for Sustainable Development (D4SD) Hub this Friday, Sept. 26, establishing a center for digital transformation that will serve Africa and the Arab world.

In the days leading up to the launch, Minister of Digital Transition Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni held meetings in New York on Wednesday, Sept. 24, with officials from U.S. technology giant Meta and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC).

With Meta, the minister explored opportunities for high-impact projects across the African and Arab continents. According to a ministry statement on Facebook, the two parties also discussed working together on training and skills development and on research and innovation in Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically to address the needs of Africa and the Middle East.

In a separate discussion with UNOSSC Executive Director Dima Al-Khatib, the focus was on how to integrate digital transformation and AI into South-South cooperation programs. The objective is to strengthen the ability of Arab and African nations to tackle shared development challenges, particularly in education, health, and food security.

The D4SD Hub itself stems from a memorandum of understanding signed in July between the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and Morocco during the country’s National AI Conference.This new Arab-African center of excellence is designed to support countries in several key areas: enhancing public digital services, promoting the responsible use of AI, and establishing favorable regulatory and institutional frameworks for digital transformation and sustainable development across both regions.

The UNDP noted that the collaboration builds on Morocco’s strong foundation in digital governance, AI, and data science. Morocco is ranked 90th globally and 4th in Africa on the U.N.’s 2024 E-Government Development Index (EGDI), boasting a score of 0.6841 out of 1, which surpasses both the African and global averages. Furthermore, Morocco launched its "Digital Morocco 2030" strategy in September 2023, seeking to solidify its digital achievements and accelerate socio-economic growth toward a 2030 goal of having the digital sector contribute 100 billion dirhams (approximately $11 billion) to the GDP.

Despite the ambition, it's important to stress that the D4SD initiative remains at the discussion stage; no formal agreements have been signed or announced yet. The actual impact on digital and socio-economic development can only be measured once these collaborations are executed and tangible projects are implemented. Looking at the broader potential, a joint study by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Google projects Africa's digital economy will be worth at least $712 billion by 2050, representing 8.5% of the continent’s GDP.

However, the UNDP warns that African nations continue to grapple with systemic obstacles, including fragmented infrastructure, limited access to AI capabilities, underinvestment in digital innovation, and poorly coordinated regulatory frameworks.

Isaac K. Kassouwi