Which Language to Read (in) Morocco ?

Here is an article from Reuters on the controversial decision to teach subjects in French in public primary and high schools. Somehow other countries can teach and learn in Arabic, or atleast  produce truly bilingual people, but this seems challenging in Morocco.  The article leaves out the simulateous efforts to introduce Arabic dialect (as opposed to standard Fusha) into children's text books.
Perhaps there are political and not just economic reasons to want to distance youth from
Arabic?

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Image by Gareth Smail, .https://pulitzercenter.org/

Morocco looks to French as language of economic success
Ahmed Eljechtimi

With so many students dropping out of university because they don’t speak French, the government has proposed reintroducing it as the language for teaching science, maths and technical subjects such as computer science in high schools.

It also wants children to start learning French when they start school.

The country’s official languages are Arabic and Amazigh, or Berber. Most people speak Moroccan Arabic – a mixture of Arabic and Amazigh infused with French and Spanish influences.

In school, children are taught through Arabic although they don’t use it outside the classroom. When they get to university, lessons switch to French, the language of the urban elite and the country’s former colonial masters. Confused? Many are.

Two out of three people fail to complete their studies at public universities in Morocco, mainly because they don’t speak French. 

FULL ARTICLE 

Morocco' s new vocational high school degrees (baccalaureate)

Here is a piece from Magharebia on the new vocational baccalaureates launched in Morocco.
Its too bad, information science  or library science wasn't considered because there is definitely a need for it.
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Morocco launches vocational baccalaureate

By Siham Ali in Rabat for Magharebia – 23/07/2014

Beginning this September, Moroccan high school students will be able to choose a baccalaureate tailored to the job market.

Degrees will be offered in industrial maintenance, mechanical and industrial engineering, the aircraft industry and agricultural management.

The new school year will also see a bac in Spanish, and three schools in Rabat, Casablanca and Tangier will also offer accredited classes for a baccalaureate in English.

The new degrees are designed to deliver employment options and open up Morocco to the global economy, according to Education and Vocational Training Minister Rachid Belmokhtar.

The training aims to ease young peoples' transition from school to work, "especially as the business areas covered by the degrees are growth areas for Morocco", Belmokhtar said July 3rd at the programme's launch event in Rabat.

It will also ease future baccalaureate holders’ integration into the labour market, while still offering them the possibility of pursuing higher level studies, he told government officials and representatives from the General Confederation of Moroccan Businesses (CGEM).

The minister pointed out that the training was set up in response to a request by industries for candidates with a clearly defined set of skills, Belkmokhtar said.
FULL ARTICLE

Report on Moroccan Migrants: Skills, Destination Countries, Motivations

A new report has been released by the European Training Foundation (ETF) that sheds some light on the lives of Moroccan migrants. Here is an article about the report from the ENPI Information and Communication Support Project.
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Morocco: new report sheds light on link between skills and migration

26-02-2013

Forty-two per cent of Moroccans would like to emigrate, but only 9% have the proper information, documents and money to do so, according to the results of the largest study of migration in Morocco to date, released by the European Training Foundation (ETF) today.  Of those that did leave, 62% said they learnt a language or acquired other technical or professional skills while abroad, the survey found.

 

The study “Migration and skills” combined desk research with a survey of 2,600 potential emigrants and 1,400 labour migrants who returned to the country.

 

The purpose of the study is to contribute to the improvement of migration policies both in the EU and Morocco by providing high-quality data and analysis. The ETF has carried out similar studies in Albania, Egypt, Tunisia, Ukraine and Tajikistan (2006-08) and Armenia and Georgia (2011-12).

 

The report was released at a seminar in Rabat attended by key Moroccan institutions – Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, Ministry in charge of the Moroccans Living Abroad - as well as the representatives of the EU and researchers.

 

Morocco has a long history of labour migration to Europe dating back several decades. Currently there are some 3 million Moroccans who have left their country and live abroad, of whom four out of ten are women. 

 

Key facts and figures from the study: 

• 42% Moroccans declare intention to emigrate; regions where highest number of people declares intent to migrate are Agadir (52%) and Marrakesh (49%)
• Only 9% of the potential migrants has proper information, documents and money to emigrate
• The main destinations are France (32% of returnees), Spain (21%), and Italy (15%)
• Moroccans prefer long-term emigration: 53% of returnees stayed abroad more than 7 years
• Economic situation is the main declared reason for migration, but the level of economic well-being doesn’t influence the propensity to migration
• Most migrants work in hotels and restaurants, in construction and agriculture
• 60% of returnees worked at the time of the survey, while only 46% of potential migrants had a job, which suggest migration’s positive impact on employability
• 31% of returnees, mainly those with higher education, benefited from training while abroad
• 62% of migrants said they learnt a language or acquired other technical or professional skills, but only one third of migrants had their Moroccan qualifications officially recognised
• Some 45% migrants worked without contract abroad, which limited their entitlement to welfare or pension
• Migration doesn’t improve the standard of living of the returnees: 74% of them were poor
• Returnees are more entrepreneurial: 26% of returnees have their own business (compared to 20% among the rest) and 20% employ workers (compared with 7% among the rest)
• There is little awareness of the government’s programmes for migrants
• Moroccans return to their country mainly for family reasons (26%); only 5% come back to invest

 FULL ARTICLE 

A Global,Quality Education for Moroccans in Morocco?

Here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Eduction on a newish educational initiative, the International University of Rabat. The article came out a few months ago, but it seems more interesting than the recent coverage of events in Morocco.
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In Morocco, Visions of a Silicon Valley Campus
By Ursula Lindsey

Rabat, Morocco

Noureddine Mouaddib left Morocco to pursue his university studies in France over 30 years ago. He became a professor of computer science at the University of Nantes and a member of the French national council for higher education and research.

Yet Mr. Mouaddib's thoughts turned often to his native country, where, he says, emigration has remained unavoidable for those who want to pursue higher education. "In the global South, as soon as you graduate from high school, you wonder: Where will I go? Canada, France?" he says. "If you look at world rankings, there isn't a single internationally visible university in Africa, with the exception of South Africa."

Yet even as more and more young people in the region aspire to a good higher education, opportunities such as the ones he enjoyed have shrunk, he says. "Moroccan students and African students from modest backgrounds are no longer able to come to France or Europe to study. ... The door's been closed. With what they ask to get a visa—it's impossible."

It was those realizations that led him, in 2005, to envisage the creation of the first global research university in Morocco.

Mr. Mouaddib undertook a feasibility study and began talking with government officials, colleagues, and members of his country's diaspora about the need to create an internationally oriented, R&D-driven university in Morocco.

This September the International University of Rabat, here in the capital city, is set to welcome its first 200 students.

"Rather than young people traveling toward knowledge"—and finding their path littered with obstacles—Mr. Mouaddib says, "we'll move knowledge toward them."

The university is a public-private partnership. Mohammed VI, the Moroccan king, donated the 20 hectares—about 50 acres—in a new technology park on the outskirts of the city. Classes, which this fall are being held in temporary offices, will move there next year, and the campus should be completed by 2015. The university plans to have 280 faculty members and 5,000 students by 2020.

Two pension funds, one French-run, the other operated by the Moroccan government, are the two main investors, contributing over a third of the university's planned five-year budget of 1.12 billion Moroccan dirhams (about $130-million).
Moroccan Context

The curriculum has been conceived to complement government development plans and with emerging sectors in the Moroccan economy in mind.

The country is in a construction boom. In recent years, Moroccan authorities have begun major infrastructure developments focused on transportation, tourism and affordable housing. The government is also committed to developing local sources of alternative energy; plans are to have about 40 percent of the country's energy be wind- and solar-generated by 2020.

The new university has responded accordingly. "Many students can't find the degrees they want in Morocco," Mr. Mouaddib acknowledges. "We are focusing on disciplines that are new and that respond to national development needs."

In addition to business, political science, and information technology, Rabat will offer programs in renewable energy; railway, naval, automobile, and aerospace engineering (several airplane manufacturers have set up facilities in Morocco recently); and architecture and design.

Fifteen faculty members are in place for this fall, and the university plans to hire 20 more for next year, and to continue increasing the faculty ranks year by year.

The number of university students in Morocco has risen steadily over the past decade, to more than 300,000 today, and is projected to as much as double by 2015. Yet public universities here remain largely focused on humanities and social-science degrees that, critics say, give graduates no marketable skills. Morocco has only nine engineers per 10,000 people (compared with 40 in Jordan and 130 in France). The government has not yet met its goal of devoting 1 percent of gross domestic product to research and development.

Mr. Mouaddib says his standing in the academic community and decades-old network of contacts helped him get his project going quickly.

The university's faculty has been largely drawn from the Moroccan and North African diaspora. It was "something personal I wanted to do," says Mokhtar Ghambou, a professor of literature at Yale University, of his decision to help shape the Moroccan university's core humanities component. "At a certain point you feel nostalgia. You start to wonder, What can I do for my native country? To think about what you can contribute."

Many of the scholarly recruits have helped structure partnerships between Rabat and their own colleges, and have brought corporate research sponsors to the new university. Mr. Ghambou himself hopes to divide his time between Yale and Rabat.
International Orientation

In the new university's name, "the word 'international' is not rhetorical," says Mr. Ghambou. "This is a unique project. People are joining from all over the world."

Marcia C. Inhorn, a professor of anthropology and international affairs and chair of the Council of Middle East Studies at Yale, visited Rabat last year in a delegation led by Mr. Ghambou.

As part of its mission to promote understanding of the contemporary Middle East, she says via e-mail, the council is looking to collaborate with "promising partner institutions" in the Middle East and North Africa. Yale hopes to engage in student and faculty exchanges with the university in Rabat, she adds.

"Moroccan-American relations are being strengthened as well, and [the Council of Middle East Studies] wants to be a part of this hopeful moment," she writes. "Yale is currently in a major process of internationalization/globalization, and the Middle East is near the top of its lists of priority areas."

Most of Rabat's partnerships are with major French universities—not surprising, given Morocco's historic links to France. The goal is to "combine the French and U.S. systems, pick the good things from both," says Mohammed Cherkaoui, a professor of mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, who will lead the Moroccan university's engineering department.

Rabat hopes to offer dual degrees with many of its foreign academic partners. Students will be required to spend two semesters abroad, and instruction is to be in both French and English.

The new university's other defining characteristic is a focus on applied research.

Morocco's ministry of energy will finance a five-million-euro (about $6.5-million) project to increase the efficiency of solar cells, says Mr. Cherkaoui, who adds that the university will make research on renewable energy "part of its identity." Rabat's corporate research partners include the engineering giant Siemens AG, the media company Vivendi, and the aerospace company Thales Group.

Alongside government and corporate-backed research and development, says Mr. Mouaddib, the university will focus on "niche" research.

"We won't produce super-high-tech products," he explains. "We'll work on products that meet the needs of the local, of the African, market. In other words, inexpensive innovations."

The engineering department has already patented three alternative-energy devices. Designed to produce power for domestic use, they are a wind turbine that will function even with very weak breezes; a light panel that shuts off automatically when it detects other sources of light; and a solar-powered water heater.

There is demand for such devices in Morocco and other African countries, where many rural areas remain off the electrical grid, says Mr. Cherkaoui. In fact, Rabat is already negotiating their commercial mass production.
Regional Ambition

The university hopes that at least 20 percent of its student body will come from sub-Saharan Africa. And it wants to offer opportunities to deserving student of limited means. It will give academic scholarships, covering the approximately $7,500 yearly tuition, to a fifth of its students, as well as help them get bank loans to cover living expenses.

Dina El Khawaga, the Ford Foundation's program officer for higher education in the Middle East and North Africa, says the university has the potential to create a "more human and more egalitarian face to the internationalization of education in Africa."

But even South African universities—by far the best in the continent—haven't had an easy time attracting students from other African countries, she notes. Rabat's administrators will have to address a number of questions: "Will they offer remedial classes? Who says Morocco will facilitate visas for students? Will scholarships be available to non-Moroccan students? What kind of institutional partnerships will allow them to reach this 20 percent [target of sub-Saharan African students]? When you are in a Dar el-Salam high school [in Senegal], what will encourage you to get up and go to Morocco?"

"Theres a whole strategy that needs to be put into place," says Ms. El Khawaga, sounding a cautious but still optimistic note."I'm really dreaming that this will be a nice initiative by a non-oil country to make a research hub in the next decade. But we have to be patient. Our expectations have to be low."

Mr. Mouaddib's vision is nothing if not ambitious. He envisages his new university as a catalyst for national and regional development and innovation, the center of a North African Silicon Valley. "Morocco can be a regional leader." he says, "given its potential, its position, its stability."

Boarding School in Ain Leuh Provides Education to Girls in Rural Morocco

Here is the article from the AFP about a school in the mountains near Ifrane providing educational opportunities to needy girls from rural areas.
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Mountain boarding school gives hope to Moroccan girls

By Omar Brouksy (AFP) – 21 hours ago

AIN LEUH, Morocco — In the heart of the snowbound Atlas mountains in central Morocco, a boarding school takes in young girls from isolated villages in a bid to fight poverty and illiteracy.

There are more than 300 such schools in Morocco, with another 30 planned for construction next year. They are now both home and class to almost 16,700 girls, who are often living far from their families. More than 70 percent of them come from a rural background, according to official figures.

"The criteria for admission to the dormitory? They are simple and clear: poverty and remoteness. A committee studies requests and the girls are swiftly selected on the basis of these two criteria," said Souad Arkani, the headmistress of the establishment in the village of Ain Leuh.

The dormitory has taken in 35 young women, just a little way from the school they attend each day.

Despite landmark changes in the family code known as Mudawana, pushed through by King Mohammed VI in 2004 against tough opposition from religious conservatives, many women are still second-class citizens in the north African country. In conservative rural zones, only one out of every two girls finishes middle school and only two out of every 10 goes to high school.

The king promoted the boarding schools -- for both boys and girls -- soon after he took power, in 1999.

"My parents live a few dozen kilometres from here. But thanks to this home, I'm doing my studies in good conditions because I'm looked after and the school is just nearby," Khadija, 19, told AFP.

"They are taken in hand, with a precise programme from morning to evening: breakfast, going to the nearby school, lunch at 12:30 pm, studies and, finally, lights out at 10:00 pm," Arkani said.

The boarding school is financed and jointly run by the ministry of social development and a local non-governmental organisation, the Islamic Association of Charity (AIB).

Ain Leuh is located in the province of Ifrane, 300 kilometres (185 miles) east of the capital Rabat, at the heart of mountains covered with cedar trees where it often snows in winter.

"From November, it begins to get very cold because the region is mountainous. The girls stay in the home all week, but they can spend the weekend with their relatives or close family," Arkani said.

To see her parents, Khadija must first take a "big taxi" (a collective taxi) for several dozen kilometres. Then she needs to walk down a track for at least an hour to get home.

When he encouraged these boarding schools, the king stated that he wanted to make up for the lack of infrastructure in rural regions, but according to some of the staff at Ain Leuh, inaugurated by Mohammed VI in 2003, the means are limited and help from any quarter is welcome.

"Local communities, the ministry (of social development) and our association participate in the finance, but we have to struggle to balance our budget," said Mohamed Bouyamlal, vice-president of the AIB.

"We have to make choices which are sometimes difficult and choose the strict minimum, which is to say food," he added.

The headmistress only earns 1,200 dirhams a month (106 euros / 148 dollars), which is less than the national minimum wage of about 125 euros.

But in spite of the difficulties, the results are promising. The schools say their success rate in graduating girls runs between 80 and 100 percent, and more than half the boarders end up following university studies.

Overall, the rate of illiteracy among rural women has dropped from 64 percent in 2006 to 40 percent in 2011, according to official figures.

And the rate at which girls drop out of school in rural areas has fallen from 14 percent in 2006 to 10 percent in 2010, thanks to this programme. School is by law compulsory in Morocco until the age of 15.

Apart from the studies, Ain Leuh offers otherwise isolated girls a new social network, to exchange views and open their minds.

"When I arrived from my distant home in the country, I was very shy," said Souad, one of the students. "The home has broadened my horizons and I have realised I can be autonomous and independent."

"I have ambitions and I see my future differently," she added proudly. "I want to be a mathematics teacher."

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

Creating a Children's Refuge in Morocco's Slums

Here is a New York Times article about the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center that is reaching out to provide opportunities and life-saving rescources for poor children in Casablanca.
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Creating a Children's Refuge in Morocco's Worst Slums
By KRISTEN McTIGHE
Published: July 6, 2011

CASABLANCA — There are few places Yacine, 13, likes to be. Not his school on the outskirts of Casablanca, where he says his teacher comes to class drunk. Not his crumbling home in the city’s sprawling slums, where his mother hit him with an ax.

“She woke up in the middle of the night and found him standing with a knife in his hand by her feet, so she hit him in the head,” said Boubker Mazoz, a community organizer. “She told me she went out to buy acid to pour on him during his sleep. When she was on her way to the store, that’s when she thought of me and came to ask me to put him in an orphanage.”

But here at the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center, on the grounds of a former garbage dump in a neighborhood known for its extreme poverty, Mr. Mazoz has given Yacine a place he says he likes to be. “I told him to consider me his father and that he could tell me anything,” Mr. Mazoz said. “I had to stop this before something worse happened, before one of them killed the other.”

In a country where drug abuse, delinquency and extremism have compelled government officials to embark on what has been hailed as one of the Arab world’s most aggressive programs of slum eradication, the center is trying to lure marginalized children away from the troubled paths so often followed by those living in squalor.

Mr. Mazoz, a retired public affairs specialist for the U.S. State Department, founded the center in 2007 with private financing and the help of the town’s mayor. “I went into the slums and found that these kids were amazingly talented,” Mr. Mazoz said. “They were just never given a chance.”

The center is run by Idmaj, Arabic for “integration,” an association of youths who come from the impoverished neighborhoods they are serving. Mr. Mazoz believes that no one understands the needs of these youths more than their peers and that the children can lead by example.

The center has several classrooms, computers, an extensive library and a stage. Students join sports activities, learn French or English, attend conferences or gather to debate the issues they face. They recently began a journalism project, Words for Change, in which the children blog about their lives.

“My story is only the beginning. It is a point in a sea of interesting stories of the people in the Hofra,” wrote Leila Gouacih in “The Hofra Diaries,” where she blogs about her home in one of the country’s worst slums, Al Hofra, Arabic for “The Hole.”

“The stories here are about the tragedies that have happened to these people,” she wrote. “Through this blog I will be a voice for the people who don’t have a voice. A voice of hundreds of residents. Men. Women. And even children.”

Marisa Mazria-Katz, an American journalist who is helping to run the program, said that blogging had emboldened the children. “I was so impressed with their ambition, their drive, their tenacity, their love of telling the stories around them, and their deep respect for their subjects,” she said. “It gave them a lot of self-esteem.”

Bolstering self-esteem has been a goal of Mr. Mazoz and Idmaj. Where social advancement is made difficult for many because of the stigmatization and discrimination faced for being born in these parts, the center has empowered many.

“Before I was ashamed to say I was from Sidi Moumen, but now I am proud,” said Abdssamad Nifkiran, as he showed off a Sidi Moumen Cultural Center T-shirt that he said he wore around town.

Parents see Mr. Mazoz as a savior.

“What he is doing for these kids is amazing,” said Naima Wahid, whose children come to the center. “He is the best person I have ever known.”

Others say the center is an escape from the hardships of everyday life. “The kids have nothing to do and nowhere to go, they just hang around,” said Hassna Fatoumi, another mother, whose three children come to the center.

Many of the children endure horrid living conditions. Heaps of rotting garbage swelter in the heat and hundreds of people cram into makeshift rooms that serve as living quarters, sleeping quarters and kitchens rolled into one. Often there is no running water, no electricity and no windows for fresh air or light. Bathrooms are rare.

Poverty has led to high levels of school dropouts, illiteracy, drug use, delinquency and worse. Every one of the 12 suicide bombers who strapped explosives to their chests in central Casablanca in 2003 were products of the Sidi Moumen slums. That was the deadliest attack on Morocco to date. Those who detonated themselves in the city in 2007 also came from those slums.

In 2001, aware of the problems growing within the slums, King Mohammed VI made poverty eradication a priority, calling for a supreme jihad to eradicate the social conditions that had created the shantytowns. Then, after the attacks of 2003, he introduced “Cities Without Slums,” a program aiming to eliminate all slums from the country by 2012.

The program offers land to developers at cut-rate prices if they sell some floors of the apartments to families from the slums below market price. Loans are made easier and the families receive grants to help them pay. For a country with limited financial resources, the program has become a success story for the government.

“It was a priority of the nation because the slums were a black stain on Morocco,” said Ahmed Taoufiq Hejira, the housing minister. “The people of the slums are not people who don’t matter. They are not a separate category. The slums are an interest of all Moroccans.”

“It’s not easy, we’ve chosen a difficult problem,” he said.

But Mr. Hejira said Morocco was on track to meet its goal of a slum-free country by 2012 if all partners in the program continued to work together.

Driving through these neighborhoods, change is visible. New buildings are springing up. Children play on fields awaiting construction where slums have been cleared. During the past decade, Morocco has decreased poverty drastically and the slums are shrinking.

“As of May 2011, 43 cities have been declared Cities Without Slums,” said Fatna Chihab, director of social housing at the Housing and Urban Planning Ministry.

While impoverished residents once dismissed government promises as mere talk, today they are more optimistic. “These people are living in the slums, but they have it in their minds that one day they will be relocated,” Mrs. Chihab said. “They have hope.”

Still, some in extreme poverty say the housing is still out of reach.

“The program works, I’ve seen many leave. But I don’t have the money and can’t afford the loans,” said Fatna Helam, a single mother whose husband died in an accident while working in Libya, leaving her to raise her daughter alone. Her home, a two-square-meter, or 22-square-foot, room in Casablanca’s Al Menzah slums, is shared with her one daughter.

“I don’t have a son to work to help pay,” she said. “I don’t have an education to get a better job.”

Mrs. Chihab, however, says such cases are the exception. “There are some cases of people in extreme poverty and we must try and find adapted solutions for them,” she said.

Still, some say the new housing units are becoming cement ghettos because families with limited finances have to go in on apartments together, cramming many into a small space. “It’s just creating new slums,” Mr. Mazoz said.

For those who wait, the Sidi Moumen Cultural Center and its youth volunteers will continue to reach out to children like Yacine, who Mr. Mazoz recently took to a psychiatrist. He also found the boy a new living situation. “The mother came back two days ago with a big knife and started beating him, but the members of Idmaj were there to save the kid and call the police,” Mr. Mazoz said.

On a recent Sunday, parents gathered, music blared and a group of Sidi Moumen children took to the stage to present a play entitled “There Is Always Hope.” Mr. Mazoz stood up to thank the volunteers and encourage the children to continue. Before he could speak, the youths erupted in cheers and chants. “Father Mazoz, you love us and we love you!” they shouted, as Mr. Mazoz smiled.

Addressing Poverty in Morocco to Extinguish Protests

Here is a piece from Public Radio International's radio show The World about the struggles Moroccans face in trying to earn livelihoods and about some recent moves made the Monarchy that seem to begin to at least acknowledge the problems. Clink on the link to hear the radio story too if you'd like.
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Morocco's anti-poverty, anti-protests
From PRI's The World 09 March, 2011 02:31:00

The monarchy in Morocco is trying to tackle poverty in an attempt to hold back protests.
By Gerry Hadden

At an outdoor market an hour outside Morocco's capital Rabat, farmers sell produce and spices under makeshift awnings. In a far corner, some men wearing traditional jelabas take a break for tea.

The men say they're struggling.

"There's no hospital here," one man said. "My wife was sick and she went to the hospital in another village. We spent a lot of money to get there."

The closest thing these poor peasants have to healthcare is a traveling healer, seated nearby, with natural medicines spread out before him on a white sheet. "I can cure your hemorrhoids," the healer yelled into a megaphone, "with my powder made from goat horns."

It's poor areas like this -- both rural and urban -- that have the Moroccan government worried during these weeks of regional unrest.

During national marches in February, Morocco's poorest rioted in cities like al-Hoceima. Six people died there when a bank was looted and set ablaze. Mohammed Oboukidi of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights said he doesn't condone such actions, but he understands why they happened. "Young people, illiterate, no housing, no education -- how can you imagine that they'll march peacefully without showing hatred and anger against people who are depriving them of basic rights?" Oboukidi said.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who remains popular in the country, is trying to keep public anger at bay, but he faces a conundrum. Reducing poverty takes time, and revolutions move quickly.

To demonstrate that he's listening, the King has just named a special council to help enact urgent reforms and, above all, to find ways to create jobs -- right now.

On a recent afternoon in Rabat, hundreds of unemployed university graduates gathered in front of a labor union headquarters. They were trying to get their names on a new government jobs list. This initiative, announced earlier this month, will create 2,500 new jobs for people with college degrees. A man named Driss Jelai said he has a degree in geography. He's been looking for work for seven years.

"We need reforms, Jelai said, "social and economic reforms in order for us to find jobs. If I could, I'd start my own company, but in Morocco it's too complicated."

Finding work for Morocco's educated youth is seen as a key to stability here. What Morocco needs most are high-tech jobs in research and engineering. But it lacks the universities to provide the training.

The King is building a new university on the outskirts of Rabat, dedicated to research and development. About 200 students started last fall at the International University of Rabat.

Eventually some 5,000 students are expected to study here.

The idea is to educate, and to create and patent products that can be built and sold in Morocco. One example is a tiny windmill for generating household electricity.

"It will work in very light winds," said a young engineer named Mohammed Emeen Barmousy. "It can also withstand winds up to 50 miles an hour. And it will cost only about $600."

Morocco only has nine engineers per ten thousand citizens. France, by comparison, has 130. Moroccan economist Medhi Lalou said Morocco does need more highly skilled workers. But building a sparkling new university isn't enough, Lalou said. Morocco must fix its crumbling elementary schools. Only about half of Moroccan adults can read and write. And for education reform to work, Lalou said, an even deeper problem needs stamping out: corruption.

"We know that the situation of corruption in Morocco is getting worse year after year," Lalou said. "And we know that without a free justice system we cannot lead a successful fight against corruption."

Many Moroccans complain bitterly about corruption and nepotism, especially in the public sector. Last week, dozens of foreign ministry workers protested outside their offices in Rabat. One man, who wouldn't give his name, said their boss never gives anyone a raise or promotion. He just hires his friends and family as a way to cover up the disappearance of public funds.

Protestor organizers hope to persuade people like these employees to put aside their individual complaints and join the larger call for reform.

How Morocco Deals with the Challenges of Science Literacy

Here is an article from Afronline about efforts to increase science literacy in Morocco.
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How Morocco faces the challenge of science literacy
Feb26

Moroccans are receptive to science, but the country needs a much stronger communication and scientific literacy effort, says Aziz Bensalah.

Engaging the public with science probably means something different in Morocco than it does in more developed countries.

Initiatives aiming to interest people in science are often aligned with notions of ‘scientific culture‘, ’science for all’, or even ’science for citizenship’. To design them appropriately in Morocco, characteristic features of Moroccan society must be taken into account.

A mixed audience

As in many developing countries, the Moroccan population is not a uniform audience. There are several groups whose different needs depend on their level of literacy, age, wealth, or whether they live in urban or rural parts of the country. The languages used in daily life vary within the population, as do the languages used in the education system.

Moroccan people have a high appreciation for dramatic advances in technology. This creates a positive image of science.

But high unemployment among science graduates one of the difficulties facing the scientific community in Morocco cancels out this benefit.

Science cannot compete with other activities and entertainment, especially for young people’s attention. So to engage the public with science in Morocco, we need a long-term strategy that is carefully designed and strongly supported by decisive stakeholders, including national authorities, the media, municipalities, and private companies.

Missing from the media

The Moroccan government, the media and other stakeholders have little or no involvement with activities designed to engage the public with science.

And the state has yet to acknowledge, in any form whatsoever, the link between the level of scientific culture in the Moroccan population and socioeconomic development. As far as I am aware, not a single report or study into the issue has been produced by the Moroccan parliament.

Although professional journalists write about scientific events in Morocco, they are not formally trained as science journalists. Popular science is missing from the media, and a few interviews with Moroccan scientists will not change things much.

So what does the landscape look like for organisations involved in the diffusion of scientific culture in Morocco?

Public institutions in charge of scientific policy and training do engage with science communication, but they are too few to make a significant impact. The Hassan II Academy for Science and Technology organises an annual Youth and Science event throughout the country. And every year the Department of Higher Education organises National Science Week events in universities.

But despite this, there is a diverse group of voluntary organisations aiming to promote sciente dissemination. Indeed, this movement took the lion’s share of funding in the latest round of project proposals under a programme set up in 2004 by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs to promote scientific and technical culture in ten countries of the South.

Forging links

At Morocco’s National Center for Scientific and Technical Research, we have taken on the role of forging links between associations housed in universities.

In 2008 we invited isolated but recognized academics, mainly those who had taken part in the French-sponsored projects, to form a national network of university clubs (known as RNCST) to promote and diffuse scientific and technical culture.

RNCST has several well-defined objectives, including to increase the number of university clubs so they represent the entire country and several scientific disciplines, and to offer financial and technical support to projects designed to improve the scientific and technical knowledge of Moroccos citizens.

It also aims to strengthen the skills of stakeholders, facilitate exchanges between them, and create partnerships on a regional or national scale.

And it hopes to raise awareness among decision-makers of the need for a national policy designed to raise the level of scientific and technical culture in the population, so the country can meet the challenges of economic and social development.

Focus on literacy

In our activities ‘on the ground’, we use various communication strategies, often working through a translator in rural parts of the country to tailor our science communication to local problems.

For example, we have used a filtering experiment to show that water which appears safe to drink is, in fact, unsafe.In some non-coastal areas we demonstrated the difference in iodine content between free local salt and salt sold in grocery stores — a difference that explains the prevalence of goiter in those parts of the country.

Based on our experience, particularly in rural areas or with underprivileged people in urban areas, ’scientific literacy‘ appears to be the most relevant way to engage the public in Morocco.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that Morocco is facing an ongoing crisis with the role of science in society. In addition to putting in place a long-term strategy towards a scientific culture, the country needs to adopt an emergency ’scientific literacy’ plan for people with little or no education.

By Aziz Bensalah - SciDev.Net

Aziz Bensalah is head of the public engagement department of the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research (CNRST) in Rabat, Morocco. He also coordinates the National Network for the promotion and diffusion of Scientific and Technical Culture.

Moroccans Excel in Mathematics

Here is an article from the GlobalPost about the teaching of Mathematics in Morocco.
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Morocco excels in mathematics
By Aida Alami- Special to Globalpost
October 7, 2010 11:19 ET

CASABLANCA, Morocco — Moroccans pride themselves on a tradition of excellence in teaching mathematics.

Indeed, for decades, the North African country has chalked up high achievement in math — a discipline that does not require lots of material means and relies instead on the students' mental abilities to deal with abstract concepts.

“An ambition to succeed came with the independence [from France in 1956]. Mathematics because they were so difficult and theoretical, fascinated people,” explained Abdelghani Zrikem, a retired math professor. “People can study maths anywhere and anytime. It doesn’t require any mean or actual conception.”

Thousands of Moroccan students — mostly males — are pursuing a scientific education in some of the most prestigious schools in the world.

For instance, Ali Aouad, 20, started his second year at the world famous Ecole Polythechnique de Paris, reputed for recruiting the finest students in the world and for its extremely difficult admission process. Morocco's academic curriculums are very similar to the ones in France, because Morocco was under a French protectorate from 1912 to 1956.

Morocco is the second nationality most represented in the Grandes Ecoles (name given to the elite schools in France) after China, according to the most recent statistics released by the SCEI, an organization that keeps track of admissions in engineering schools in France. At the University Les Mines — another prestigious engineering school — five times more Moroccan students are admitted than their Tunisian neighbors.

Getting into these schools is extremely competitive. After two years in preparatory schools that provide an intensive training for a nationwide test, tens of thousands of students compete for only a few hundred spots at the top schools.

Karim Arji is an engineer based in Marrakesh. He first went to high school in the French school of Marrakesh before attending a Moroccan preparatory school that allowed him to be admitted at L’ESTP in Paris in 1996. The abrupt switch from the French to the Moroccan system meant that Arji was in faster paced courses and was surrounded by students more advanced in mathematics.

“The students from the Moroccan high schools had a particular easiness with maths. There are concepts in maths that are completely abstract and impossible to explain but they had this ability to instantaneously solve a problem,” said Arji. “They had studied chapters in high school that were already very advanced.

However, he also noted that Moroccan students were still somewhat behind in other areas such as languages and social sciences, which lowered their chances to succeed in university.

But the golden age of mathematics in Morocco has long ended, according to Zrikem. For half a century, generations of Moroccans were trained under the Bourbaki influence, a collective of mathematicians in France that revolutionized the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s. But Zrikem insists that Morocco no longer provides the necessary means for the new generations to prosper and he said that a great deal of potential is wasted.

“One of the main problems started when the Moroccan school system went back to teaching everything in Arabic. The students no longer have access to great works in French or English and the professors were not given the means to write books in Arabic that the students can work with,” he said. “The books they now use are badly written and the quality of the teaching has also degraded.”

He also argued that the excellence in math is often of no use in the country and that those who are particularly gifted have the choice to either study abroad or to seek a career in engineering.

“In Morocco, there is no research financed. A lot of great talents do not pursue careers in mathematics but rather use their skills to practically apply them in other fields,” explained Zrikem.

Aouad is the vice president of the AMGE-Caravanne (Association des Marocains aux Grandes Ecoles), an association of Moroccan students who attends the elite schools in France. One of their goals is to meet with students in Morocco in order to stimulate their ambition and help them make wise choices.

“A professor in Paris once told me that although the Moroccan students had a particular ease in maths, they were not so much interested in the beauty of the knowledge, but seeing it more as a mean to be admitted into a school,” Aouad said.

Zrikem is pretty pessimistic about the possibilities for great mathematicians to grow in the country.

“Our level is very low because we have been failing at stimulating the students,” he said. “These days, students go to class, work on their math books, get out of class and throw them away because they’re not interested much in it.”

A Billion Euros to Improve Universities in Morocco

Here is a article from Global Arab Network about "emergency" measures being taken to improve the quality Moroccan universities. Let us pray that someone is also working on making jobs for all the graduates too. Ameen.

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Education Reform in Morocco: €1.1bn to improve universities

Thursday, 03 December 2009 12:48

As part of a four-year "emergency plan" to overhaul the education sector, the Moroccan government has signed DH12.6bn (€1.1bn) in new agreements to improve the quality of its universities. This extra investment comes as the country seeks to meet its UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

At the beginning of October, HM King Mohamed IV oversaw the signing of 17 agreements between the government and universities to improve the higher education sector, ranging from hiring additional lecturers and raising teaching credentials to expanding general infrastructure. The moves come as the number of students in the science and engineering fields is expected to double by 2012, along with the number of those passing the baccalaureate exam after high school.

Enhancing the research reputation of Moroccan universities is another goal of the higher education reforms. "These contracts will commit the universities to taking the necessary steps to improve performance, promote high-quality teaching and develop scientific research, with a view to enabling Moroccan universities take their rightful place on the international stage," local press reported Mohamed Marzak, the president of Cadi Ayyad University, as saying. The government has targeted accrediting 92% of its universities as research institutions by 2012, compared to 69% in 2008.

These agreements are part of the National Education Emergency Support Programme 2009-12, launched in March 2009 to address the short-term needs of the education sector. This emergency plan raised the age of compulsory primary education to 15 with an eye to eventually increase it to 18. Over the next two years, 15,300 schools will be upgraded, while 300 existing boarding schools will receive water and electricity. "The goal [of the emergency plan] is to make schools more attractive, in order to restore people's confidence in Moroccan schools and help them fulfil their purpose," the minister of education, Ahmed Akhchichine, told OBG.

The four-year DH31bn (€2.7bn) emergency programme is being partially financed by a number of grants and loans from international organisations. In November, Morocco received a combined €13m in loans from the French Development Agency, the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, the European Commission and the Moroccan Ministry of Education.

While spending on education has hitherto been relatively high (5% of GDP and 24% of government expenditures in recent years), change has been slow in coming. A royally designated "decade of education" was kicked off in Morocco in 1999 with the publishing of the National Charter for Education and Training, a road map to sector reform. As a result, literacy for men aged 15-24 has risen from 84% in 1990 to 87% in 2008, according the World Bank, while the percentage of all students completing primary school rose from 82% to 87% over the same period.

However, the system has faltered in other areas, with only 15% of students passing the baccalaureate exam to enter university. In its 2007 Middle East and North Africa development report, the World Bank gave the Moroccan education system low marks. "Morocco needs to speed up its reform effort, with a special focus on reducing adult literacy and improving access to post-compulsory education," wrote the World Bank. Gender parity also remains a challenge, with a 1:0.87 male-to-female ratio in tertiary education in 2004 and 60% of the adult female population illiterate, one of the highest rates in the Arab world. Local press has reported that only 16.5% of girls in rural areas attend school, compared to 60% nationwide.

The emergency programme should help Morocco make significant headway towards meeting some of its UN Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015. In its 2007 progress report, the UN indicated that for Morocco the goal of universal primary education was "possible to achieve if some changes are made." The Ministry of Education believes that the emergency programme should help boost overall enrolment from 6.3m students to 6.5m within two years.

Unlike the National Charter, which lacked funding and coordination, the emergency programme appears to be a well-financed, focused plan to reform the education sector. The programme's budget reflects an impressive 23% increase in education spending from 2008, indicating that tangible results may soon be seen.

Global Arab Network

This article is published in partnership with Oxford Business Group

Overeducated and Underemployed in Morocco

Anyone familiar with Morocco , has heard stories such as those in this BBC article entitled, "Moroccan Graduates Face Bleak Prospects" about the epidemic problem of highly educated but unemployed people whose lives seem to have been put on hold.

Moroccan graduates face bleak prospects

By James Copnall BBC News, Rabat Morocco has an unusual problem - the more educated you are, the harder it seems to be to get a job. The overall unemployment rate is officially less than 10% - but the rate for graduates soars above this, and has sometimes been double. Every day frustrated and highly educated young people gather outside parliament in the capital Rabat to shout out their frustration. "I'm 35, I have a PhD in physics, and I can't get a job," complains Ali. "I'm very old, I'm not married, I don't have my own house, I don't have anything. "I'm thinking of leaving this country, because here I am nothing." Entrepreneurs Sometimes the protestors are chased away by riot police wielding truncheons. The government is worried about the problem, and has set up a number of schemes to help graduates to find work. Life in Morocco is very hard. There is no light here, no light Ali, physics graduate One of them, known as moukawalati, aims to give government-backed loans to budding young entrepreneurs. There are success stories. Merieme, a 25-year-old woman, is the owner of a printing business. Several gleaming new machines hum in the background as she explains how the scheme helped her to develop her business plan and convinced the bank to lend her money. But Merieme's experience is far from universal. Initially the target was to help 30,000 business people, and create 90,000 jobs. Yet so far only 1,400 loans have been given out, and the government has had to scale back its targets. Mistakes The head of the state body that runs the scheme, Kamal Hafid, admitted to the BBC mistakes had been made. But he said one of the main problems - with consequences stretching far beyond moukawalati - is that Morocco's school system is out of sync with today's job market. Kamal Hafid says Morocco's schools are out of sync with the job market "The educational system must get better - that's obvious to everyone today," he said. "But it will take time, there is a lot of work to be done. "And we need to develop entrepreneurial spirit here in Morocco too." Many of the unemployed graduates marching up and down outside parliament have turned down work in the private sector. They want the security of a state job. But as Mr Hafid points out, the state can only hope to create 15,000 new jobs a year, while in good times the private sector can produce up to 300,000. Illegal migration Nevertheless, the private sector often feels Moroccan graduates are poorly suited to the modern economy. There are fears too about how the international financial crisis may affect Morocco. There is a serious concern that young people here are an easy prey for extremists Professor Lahcen Haddad All this is having serious effects. "There is a concern about illegal migration among young people, and about drugs," says university professor Lahcen Haddad. "There is also a very serious concern about a lot of people being easy prey for extremists." In 2003 11 young men blew themselves up in the economic capital Casablanca, killing themselves and 34 others. Moroccans were also among those who carried out the Madrid bombings, and hundreds have fought in Iraq. Typically these people have less formal education than the graduates demonstrating outside parliament. Double-edged sword Roughly half of Moroccans are illiterate - a shocking state of affairs in a country that is one of the most developed in Africa. Morocco has a demographic problem too. It is estimated that more than a quarter of a million young people will come onto the job market every year - and there is little chance all of them will find work. "It is a double-edged sword," according to Mr Haddad. Ali, 35, has a PhD in physics yet can't get a job "Either Morocco can tap into that, use it as an opportunity and then the Moroccan economy will take off, because you are using that human capital to be more productive. "Or it can be socially very costly, because here you have all these people of working age, but many of them are unemployed, with all the social consequences this brings." The government is certainly aware of the potential risks, and says it is doing all it can. But the unemployed graduates protesting outside parliament see this as just one more empty promise. "I'm a pessimist now," says Ali. "Life in Morocco is very hard. There is no light here, no light."