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When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s in southeastern Morocco, transportation was a rare and unpredictable thing. To reach the town where my middle school was located, I and other students had to walk several kilometers from our oasis village to the national road. Before we reached the road and the faded roadside sign where we would wait and hope for a passing ride, we had to hike up a narrow, stony path that snaked through a mountain wash—a trail carved by time and hooves rather than design. I walked alongside someone from the village leading our mule—its panniers heavy with food, clean clothes, and other provisions for the week or month ahead. We and the mule had to negotiate every bend and loose rock carefully, the animal straining under its load. Each step was a small act of balance and faith; one slip could send our week’s provisions tumbling down the slope. My middle school was nearly fifty kilometers away, and the person guiding the mule would not return home until he was sure that we had found a ride into town.
Sometimes, there was no ride to be found. Every truck, bus, and grand taxi was packed, and we—along with the mule and our bundles—had to turn back to the village, only to try again the next day, hoping to reach school by Monday. It was not unusual to miss the morning classes on Mondays, stranded by something as basic as the absence of a seat.
Gradually, things began to change. Where the state’s transportation system fell short, self-motivated rural entrepreneurs stepped in—men driving old Peugeots, battered vans, or converted trucks that rattled through dust and heat, horns blaring, engines coughing, carrying life itself across Morocco’s forgotten interior. They ferried students like me to school, farmers to markets, patients to hospitals, and families to administrative offices. In the local parlance, they were called al-khattafa—“those who snatch riders”—because they picked up passengers swiftly and sped off with urgency, often vanishing down backroads before the rural police could catch them. Unlicensed but indispensable, they became the improvised arteries of movement that kept the countryside connected when the state could not.
Each trip carried the risk of being stopped, fined, or shaken down for a bribe. The gendarmes—the rural police—hounded these drivers for operating outside the law. I still remember how one-hour journeys stretched into two or three, as drivers waited by the roadside to avoid patrols or detoured onto rough, dusty tracks to save what little remained of their daily earnings. Those memories—sometimes frustrating, sometimes comical—have stayed with me ever since. They taught me a simple truth: where the state falls short, people invent.
Though dismissed as illegal, their improvised system sustained entire communities. In truth, they were among Morocco’s first innovators of mobility—entrepreneurs long before the term citizen entrepreneur became fashionable. From this spirit of improvisation emerged al-naql al-mouzdaouij—literally “dual transport.” This informal system became a vital lifeline for rural Morocco. Drivers carried both passengers and goods—sacks of grain, crates of vegetables, livestock, and building materials—along routes shaped by local needs rather than fixed schedules. For many families, it was the only affordable and reliable way to reach schools, hospitals, government agencies, and markets.
Though often crowded and precarious, al-naql al-mouzdaouij did more than move people; it connected them. Each ride became a small social world—a space of exchange and endurance—where farmers, traders, students, and laborers shared not just rides but stories, laughter, and resilience.
Years later, when I watched the rise of Uber after the 2008 financial crisis, I was struck by a sense of déjà vu. Silicon Valley’s investors hailed it as a technological revolution—a triumph of entrepreneurship and digital efficiency that promised to “disrupt” mobility. Yet in Morocco, the essence of that innovation—flexible, community-driven transport—had existed for decades. Long before algorithms and venture capital, rural drivers had built their own grassroots networks of shared movement, governed not by code but by trust, reciprocity, and necessity.
Those men, operating without apps, investors, or regulatory blessing, were already practicing the logic of the “sharing economy.” Their vehicles were more than modes of transport; they were lifelines of survival, connection, and dignity. Uber may have turned that model into profit, but al-naql al-mouzdaouij turned it into solidarity—a grassroots system of movement that carried both people and possibility across Morocco’s forgotten roads.
Morocco today stands at a similar crossroads. The same creativity and hunger that once animated grassroots rural transport could now fuel a new model of youth entrepreneurship—if only the system of rentier privilege that governs the taxi and transport sectors could be undone. A reimagined mobility economy could give Morocco’s Gen Z a platform to drive its own future rather than waiting for permits—or jobs—that never come
Rent as Rule: The Making and Costs of Morocco’s Rentier Economy
The problem, however, runs deeper than the taxi sector—it lies in the very structure of Morocco’s political economy. In Morocco, power and wealth are inseparable. To understand the economy is to trace the architecture of governance itself.
The late economist Driss Benali was among the first to name this reality for what it is: a rentier state—a system in which political authority controls access to wealth, and dependency becomes the foundation of social order. For Benali, rent was not simply corruption or inefficiency; it was the operating logic of the state. Morocco’s economy, he argued, revolves less around production than reproduction—the continuous recycling of privilege through networks of proximity to power. What sustains this system is not innovation but controlled dependency that keeps wealth circulating among those already close to the state (Al Massaa, n.1996, 23/24/2013).
Benali challenged the very notion of Morocco as a “developing” economy. True development, he wrote, requires sustained high growth, effective governance, and social equity—none of which Morocco has achieved. Growth hovers around four percent, governance remains opaque, and inequality continues to suppress the rise of a middle class. The result is what he called a façade of development: modern in appearance, stagnant in essence.
Economically, rent means any transfer of wealth disconnected from value creation. Those who benefit from it without producing anything—what Benali called les parasites—form a class of consumers of privilege rather than creators of prosperity. Morocco thus operates as a neo-traditional system, where modern institutions coexist with archaic patronage and power reproduces itself through favors instead of fair rules.
This rentier economy did not emerge by accident—it was built through decades of political engineering and historical continuity. Benali described it as both “a product of history and an instrument of strategy.” Its origins lie in the sultanic order of bay‘a—the oath of allegiance—through which material gifts reinforced political loyalty and spiritual legitimacy between ruler and subject. The Sultan’s generosity, expressed through al-mouna and al-ʿâttaya—the distribution of grain, goods, or money—cemented a moral economy of dependence.
After independence, these precolonial practices were not abolished; they were bureaucratized. The modern Moroccan state inherited the centralized apparatus of the colonial administration and redeployed it to manage loyalty through the distribution of privilege. What had once been royal largesse became institutionalized as the machinery of governance.
The 1970s marked a decisive turn. After surviving two attempted coups in 1971 and 1972, King Hassan II sought to stabilize his rule by converting access into wealth. “Enrichissez-vous,” he reportedly told his generals—“enrich yourselves.” The phrase, half cynical and half pragmatic, crystallized a new political economy of loyalty. The state would buy stability through selective enrichment (Al Massaa, n.1996, 23/24/2013).
Policy soon followed this logic. The 1973 Marocanisation Law, ostensibly aimed at creating a national business class, instead concentrated ownership in the hands of insiders with political connections. The 1984 agricultural tax exemption, justified as drought relief, became a permanent loophole shielding large landowners while doing little for small farmers. By the late 1980s, corruption had ceased to be taboo; it had become a technique of rule.
What began as selective privilege evolved into a comprehensive system of patronage extending from senior administrators to rural notables. Public institutions and state contracts became woven into a web of loyalty and discretion. By the end of the decade, what Benali termed the “privatization of the state” was complete: public office had become a gateway to private gain.
Over time, the logic of rent seeped downward and became a cultural reflex. Those excluded from formal privilege created their own informal rents—smuggling, tax evasion, and electoral clientelism became normalized strategies of survival. Corruption was no longer imposed from above; it had become a shared grammar of adaptation.
Attempts to purge corruption—such as the 1996 “clean-up campaign”—inevitably failed. These efforts turned into spectacles of selective justice, used to settle political scores rather than dismantle the structural logic of rentierism. What remained intact was the deep cultural acceptance of corruption as a mode of existence.
A state that governs through rent cannot punish it without undermining itself. The economic toll is staggering. Analysts estimate that rentierism drains 1.5 to 2 percent of GDP annually. Quarry exploitation alone costs the state 5.5 billion dirhams in lost revenue each year, while tax exemptions add another 3.8 billion. Seventy percent of transport permits—mostly taxi licenses—are rented by their holders, producing vast untaxed income. Some quarry owners reportedly earn 200,000 dirhams a day while contributing nothing to the treasury. In effect, the state subsidizes its own inequality.
The deeper cost, however, is social. The rentier economy divides Morocco into two classes: one that benefits from privilege and another that labors under it. It erases the middle ground—the aspirational space where social mobility might take root. The result is a society in which the rules of advancement are opaque, and al-hogra—the quiet ache of injustice—becomes a national sentiment, producing two different worlds within one country: Al-Maghrib and Morocco. Al-Maghrib is the poorer, marginalized realm—rural, peripheral, and forgotten—while Morocco stands for privilege, prosperity, and access, the space where opportunity still moves at full speed.
This structural inequality is no longer invisible. In his Throne Day speech marking twenty-six years since his accession, King Mohammed VI directly confronted Morocco’s regional disparities and vowed that the country must eliminate socioeconomic gaps to ensure that development benefits reach all citizens. Rejecting the entrenched logic of privilege and exclusion, the King declared: “There is no place today or tomorrow for a Morocco moving at two speeds.” It was an acknowledgment that the rentier divide has not only distorted Morocco’s economic development but fractured its social fabric—a call to rebuild a nation moving forward at one pace, together.
The Casablanca Taxi Agrément
Nowhere is this rentier logic more visible than in Casablanca, Morocco’s restless economic capital. The city’s taxi industry—its daily choreography of movement and negotiation—is a miniature of the national political economy. What plays out on its streets reflects the broader patterns of privilege and dependence that structure the country.
With around 14,000 vehicles and 70,000 licensed drivers, the sector operates under a dual system: a permis de confiance (driver qualification) and an agrément (license to operate). The former is earned through examination; the latter is granted through discretion. Thousands hold the permis, but only a select few possess the agréments, distributed through opaque channels of favoritism.
Most license holders are not drivers but retired officers, civil servants, or politically connected families. They lease their agréments to drivers through intermediaries (semsara) who collect commissions or hlawa (“sweetness” in Moroccan Arabic). Each transaction reproduces the national hierarchy in miniature—labor below, privilege above.
For drivers, each day begins with a payment—120 dirhams for a morning shift, 220 for a full day, or 2,500 dirhams a month for long-term rental. After fuel and maintenance, many earn less than 100 dirhams a day. They drive endlessly but advance little.
Meanwhile, the agrémentaires—some holding dozens of licenses—collect a steady, tax-free income without turning a wheel. The taxi system functions as both public service and private tribute. Always in motion yet never progressing, it mirrors the country’s rentier state itself. The driver’s struggle to keep his meter running mirrors the citizen’s struggle to stay afloat in an economy of privilege.
From Rent to Enterprise: Youth, Technology, and the Future of Mobility
If reform seems abstract, the taxi system provides a concrete place to begin. Morocco’s transport sector—long a microcosm of rentier privilege—could become a testing ground for transformation.
When the global financial crisis struck in 2008, millions lost their jobs in the United States. Yet out of that wreckage emerged Uber, founded in 2009. By 2016, it had provided a billion rides and enrolled 1.5 million drivers worldwide. Uber promised autonomy—“be your own boss”—but delivered algorithmic dependency: drivers bore all costs while corporations captured the surplus. Its rise shows how technology can both empower and exploit.
For Morocco, the lesson is not to reject technology but to govern it differently—to harness digital tools in ways that empower labor rather than extract from it. Instead of agréments inherited through patronage, Morocco could launch a Mobility Entrepreneurship Program, where youth cooperatives and small enterprises operate taxis under transparent, time-limited concessions. These would replace lifetime licenses with renewable ones based on performance and public service standards.
Such a shift would turn drivers into owners, dependence into dignity, and rent into revenue. It would also modernize fleets, digitize payments, formalize earnings, and expand the tax base—creating a model that could extend to other sectors trapped in rentier capture.
Reform must avoid reproducing old inequalities or importing new ones. A fair mobility sector requires clear safeguards: antitrust caps to prevent monopolies, transparent digital systems to eliminate middlemen, driver data rights and due process, and an independent regulator to enforce fair pay and compliance. These guardrails would prevent a new “Uberization” while ensuring that technology serves inclusion rather than exploitation.
Why This Moment Matters: GenZ212 and the Imperative of Reform
Morocco’s youth are sending a clear message: time is running out. Just as Uber was born from the turmoil of America’s Great Recession, Morocco now faces its own moment of reckoning—driven by post-COVID strain, recurring droughts, inflation and the cost of living, tightening migration barriers, and rising youth unemployment. Yet unlike the United States, Morocco still has the chance to set the rules before the app writes them.
In 2009, U.S. regulators allowed technology to shape the law—and workers paid the price. In 2025, Morocco can reverse that equation: it can shape the law first, then let technology scale fair opportunity. A young, tech-literate generation can turn what was once a rentier relic into a platform for digital entrepreneurship and social justice.
The challenges are enormous. Youth unemployment, underemployment, and the inefficiency of the education system together form what Central Bank Governor Abdellatif Jouahri once called “the dark spot in an otherwise promising economy.” The youth-led Gen Z 212 protests against corruption, privilege, and joblessness have made visible what the rentier economy long suppressed: a generation demanding dignity, fairness, and decent employment.
The statistics tell a stark story. Youth unemployment among those aged 15–24 has climbed from 33.6% to 36.1%, and among 25–34-year-olds from 19.8% to 21.4%. Nearly one in five university graduates is unemployed, costing the economy an estimated $12 billion annually. Underemployment affects another million people, many of them women. Despite an education budget exceeding $7.7 billion, Morocco’s schools and universities continue to produce graduates for jobs that do not exist.
Over 300,000 young people drop out of school every year—most of them in rural areas—reproducing the same cycle of exclusion I witnessed decades ago. The International Labour Organization warns that youth denied good education and employment “find it difficult to secure good jobs, limiting their chances of achieving a prosperous future.” The government’s 2025 plan to create 250,000 new jobs is a step forward, but unless structural reforms confront the rentier system that throttles opportunity, Morocco risks losing a generation whose talents—and frustrations—are already reshaping its streets and its politics.
The demand of Gen Z 212 is not merely for work; it is for worth—a new social contract that links education, entrepreneurship, and equity.
Uber’s story offers both inspiration and warning. Its rise after the financial crash proved that when traditional systems fail to create jobs, technology can generate new markets almost overnight. It showed how digital platforms can connect idle labor and latent demand, transforming unemployment into enterprise. Yet it also exposed the dangers of unregulated innovation—how precarity, exploitation, and data asymmetry can reproduce inequality in digital form.
Gen Z 212, Morocco’s most connected generation, stands at this threshold. They can take the lesson of Uber’s disruptive power without inheriting its exploitative model. With clear rules, transparent regulation, and shared-ownership structures—such as cooperatives and local start-ups—Morocco’s youth could build homegrown mobility platforms that keep profits, data, and dignity within national hands. In doing so, they could transform what was once a rentier system of privilege into a participatory digital commons—where work, fairness, and innovation reinforce rather than undermine one another.
If Morocco can harness this energy—through technology, fair regulation, and decentralized opportunity—it could transform its rentier economy into a network of citizen-entrepreneurs, where mobility becomes a metaphor for possibility. The challenge is not simply to move people from village to city, but to move an entire nation from dependency to dignity.
Toward a One-Speed Morocco
The transportation system is only one mirror of Morocco’s rentier reality, but the same pattern runs through almost every corner of the economy where privilege blocks merit and connections outweigh creativity. Breaking this cycle is not just about fairness—it is about unleashing a generation’s potential. Reform could turn stagnation into movement, rent into reward, and dependence into dignity.
Morocco’s true leap forward will come when it transforms from a rentier order into a start-up economy—one powered by the same ingenuity that once drove rural transportation innovators to fill the gaps the state ignored. Those men who risked fines and dusty detours to get students to school, mothers to markets, and the sick to town were, in their way, the country’s first entrepreneurs of mobility. Their spirit—resourceful, resilient, and self-taught—remains Morocco’s untapped capital.
If that energy were recognized, formalized, and empowered rather than punished, it could once again drive the country forward. That spirit of self-reliance and invention, long dismissed as informal, could yet become the engine of Morocco’s renewal—where the nation, at last, begins to move itself forward.
The same logic that could transform the transportation sector should extend to other rentier domains—such as the sea and the land—where licenses, concessions, and privileges have long enriched the few while excluding the many. Unlocking these sectors through transparent governance and shared ownership could open vast avenues of employment and entrepreneurship for Morocco’s unemployed youth. In doing so, the country could convert its most underused resource—its young people—into the true engine of national renewal.
Such a transformation would give substance to the vision expressed by King Mohammed VI in his Throne Day address—a Morocco that moves at one pace, not two; a nation where progress is no longer confined to the privileged lanes of opportunity while others remain stalled at the margins. It would mean ensuring that growth advances hand in hand with equity, and that every citizen, not just the well-connected, participates in the country’s forward motion. Only then can Morocco turn its vast reserves of youthful ingenuity into the driving force of a more just, cohesive, and dynamic future.
