Rabat – The Director General of Morocco’s Press Agency (MAP), Khalil Hachimi Idrissi, died on Saturday in Rabat at the age of 67 years after struggling with illness.
Born in Casablanca in August 1956, Hachimi was appointed in June 2011 by King Mohammed VI as Director General of MAP.
Hachimi comes from a family of veteran fighters who were part of Morocco’s fight for liberation from French colonialism.
He graduated high school with a degree in philosophy, went on to pursue his academic education in Paris, and graduated with a post-graduate degree in geography from Sorbonne, and another master’s degree in urban planning.
Following in the footsteps of his father, Hachimi embarked on a professional career in radio, where he was part of the movement that liberated Morocco’s airwaves.
Upon his return to Morocco, he became a columnist, reporter, and then editor-in-chief for many years of the weekly Maroc Hebdo International.
The MAP director was one of the pioneers of contemporary journalism in Morocco.
In the early 1990s, he became one of the first Moroccans to work with private media organizations in the country with the debut of Maroc-Hebdo.
In the 2000s, he would launch his own media organization, Aujourd’hui le Maroc, before he moved to the helm of Morocco’s Press Agency.
Under his leadership, MAP underwent substantial reforms to extend its reach among the Moroccan public.
In the wake of his death, MAP published a eulogy touching on his significant contributions, describing his journalism as “a penmanship that binds the thought.”
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