Rabat – Morocco’s BMCE Bank announced its decision to contribute to the financing and development of Tangier’s Tech City, a business hub designed to create job opportunities in the region.
BMCE’s president and CEO Othman Benjelloun told Reuters that the city aims to create 100,000 jobs and “house 300,000 people.”
He added that the first development phase “has already been achieved with industrial investors expected to receive the first plots this year.”
BMCE is financing and developing the project called Tanger Tech Mohammed VI in collaboration with state-owned China Communication Construction Co and its subsidiary China Road and Bridge Corp.
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The development of the project is part of Morocco’s strategy to strengthen cooperation with China to foster business development in the North African country, as well as the development of the entire continent.
The project fell in the framework of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Morocco and China in April.
King Mohammed VI launched the tech city Mohammed VI Tangier Tech City, in March 2017.
The project is the largest Chinese investment project in North Africa.
It aims to contribute to the rapid development of the economic activities in Tangier and the northern region of Morocco.
The project will lay at more than 2,000 hectares connected to the railway and motorway networks.
China’s collaboration with Morocco’s BMCE aims to deliver the $11 billion project in ten years.
“Chinese public funding will be mobilized as part of the One Belt, One Road Initiative,” said Benjelloun.
China announced its Belt and Road global development strategy in 2013. The strategy established the Maritime Silk Road, a trade sea route connecting China to Europe through Africa.
In February, Minister of Energy Aziz Rabbah said that Morocco is becoming a partnership hub as a link between China and the rest of Africa due to major reforms and partnerships under Morocco’s Africa policy.
