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Rabat – Chinese automobile manufacturer Chery has set its sights on Morocco for the company’s expansion into the African market.
With over 20 years of experience in developing and manufacturing passenger cars in China and abroad, Chery is hoping to establish and build a thorough automotive ecosystem in Morocco, a company representative told Morocco World News.
The Chinese company plans to enter the Moroccan market on all fronts, bringing with them traditional fuel-powered vehicles, neighbourhood electric vehicles (NEV), hybrid models, as well their most recent self-driving cars.
For Cherry, Morocco is the “most important market” for its African strategy, particularly considering the country’s position as the continent’s biggest automobile market.
“Morocco is one of our strategic markets,” said a high-ranking official from the company, adding that they hope to “take root in the Morocco market for a long time and provide high-quality products and services for consumers.”
The same official stressed that they will not only import Completely Built Units (CBUs) but are also happy to cooperate with the Moroccan government’s call to promote local assembly of Completely Knocked Down (CBK) vehicles.
Chery also has a strong hold on research and development, with four R&D centres employing approximately 5,500 R&D engineers worldwide. At the moment, they export to more than 80 countries and have established 10 overseas Knock-down kit assembly plants.
From Asia to Africa
Chery is the latest of many increasingly prominent Chinese companies that have put their sights on the African market, and on Morocco in particular. For example, both Huawei and Xiaomi have established themselves as household names in Morocco and in Africa at large in the telecommunications sector.
“Huawei is a uniquely positioned partner for Africa,” a researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs Cobus van Staden told Bloomberg in 2020. Staden highlighted that the Chinese tech company sells reliable products that range from undersea cabling to mobile phones, all while being able to offer beneficial financing backed by the Chinese state itself.
“I don’t see another partner being able to bring all of this to the table,” the researcher added.
Furthermore, Huawei’s ability to provide 5G infrastructure is only going to further strengthen the Chinese state-owned company’s foothold, and by extension, grow trust in other Chinese looking to invest in the African – and Moroccan – market.
There are also growing ties between various Chinese companies and African governments in the fields of innovation, technology, and economy. One such example is the Mohammed VI Tangier Tech City, where Morocco is partnering up with several Chinese state-owned enterprises to build Morocco’s very first “smart city.”
The Tangier smart city, projected to be built on a 2000-hectare site, is designed to be the peak of technological innovation to host a variety of local and foreign tech companies. Approximately 200 Chinese companies coming from the automotive, aerospace, electronics, and machine tool industries have made plans to set up in what some observers have described as the city of the future. Set to be complete by 2027, the project will also help create up to 100,000 jobs.
Read also: China’s Two Sessions Meeting, What Does It Mean For Africa?
Exports from China to Morocco reached $4.47 billion (MAD 39.51 billion) worth of goods in 2019, most of it being broadcasting equipment worth about $278 million (MAD 2.5 billion), according to OEC. Compared to 1995, when China’s exports to Morocco were $153 million (MAD 1.4 billion), the figures have grown at an annual rate of 15.1%.
Morocco’s exports to China reached $485 million (MAD 4.3 billion) in 2019, mostly consisting of raw copper, at $50.8 million (MAD 449 million), Calcium Phosphates, which reached $43.3 million (MAD 384 million), and zinc ore worth $41.3 million (MAD 365 million), according to the same source.
The sizable trade deficit between the two countries suggests that there is still space for Moroccan companies to establish themselves and benefit more from the rapidly growing China-Morocco exchanges.
China’s expanding middle-class may prove to be an opportune market for Moroccan companies to balance the economic exchange between the two partners. Similarly, the growing number of Chinese tourists in Morocco, which increased from 100,000 Chinese visitors in 2017, to 200,000 visitors in 2018, might prove to be another untapped market.
Meanwhile, developments and bilateral trade between the two countries in the last decade have been especially forward-looking, with much talk and business concerning the tech sectors specifically.
China’s relationship with Morocco has “always been permeated by mutual respect and non-interference in the internal affairs of others, but especially by the need for complementarity of economies between Morocco and China,” Dr. Nasser Bouchiba, professor and sinologist, recently told Morocco World News.
