Country Report

I. Demographics of Morocco

Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is situated on the northwestern corner of Africa. It is the 39th largest country in the world with a population of 34,377,611, as estimated on December 31st, 2015. In 2015, the natural growth was positive, and we could forecast that Morocco’s population growth will continue at around 1.05% annual rate, reaching about 36.4 million by 2020 (Worldometers, 2015). Morocco is a demographically young country with 27% of its population under the age of 15, 18% between the ages of 15 and 24, 42% between 25 and 54 years old, 7% between the ages of 55 and 64, and just 6% of its population over 65 years. This large share of young population provides great opportunities for Morocco to develop its emerging industries by using advanced technology and skills (World Population Review, 2015).

While the rise of a new business has been happening in Morocco, the population living below the poverty line remains high at 12%. It means that four million out of Morocco's 33 million people live below the poverty line, and almost three million of them in rural areas. As Figure 1 shows, Morocco has the highest Gini Index, 40.9, among the North African countries. The household income of the poor people accounts for only 2.7% of the country’s wealth, while the rich people have 33.2% of the country’s wealth (Central Intelligence Agency, 2007). The distribution of wealth in Morocco is manifested through the obvious gap between the upper and lower class. The sex ratio of the total population was 0.976 (976 males per 1000 females), which means genders are distributed equally in Morocco (World Bank, 2014). However, the female-to-male ratio of wage for similar work is around 0.52 (Wrold Economic Forum, 2015). It is clear that Morocco’s workplace gender gap exists, so all businesses in Morocco should fight against gender discrimination. If women cannot be financially independent and control their own lives, Morocco will not...