Dakhla Hosts Moroccan-French Economic Forum to Enhance Partnership and Joint Investment
Economic players from Morocco and France are gathering in the city of Dakhla for a high-level economic forum organized by the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM) and its French counterpart, MEDEF. This initiative marks a new step in consolidating the bilateral partnership within a framework of joint investment and innovation.
Scheduled for October 9, 2025, the forum extends the state visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Morocco at the invitation of His Majesty King Mohammed VI. During this visit, the French president emphasized that “the present and future of the Sahara are within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty,” a statement considered a significant diplomatic milestone in the relations between Rabat and Paris.
This meeting, organized by the France-Morocco Business Leaders Club, aims to strengthen economic and political ties between the two countries, building a partnership based on mutual investment and the exchange of expertise.
Dakhla: Morocco’s Growth Front
The choice of Dakhla as the forum’s host carries strong symbolism, as it exemplifies Morocco’s regional development policy. The city has become a strategic platform for exchanges between Europe and Africa, thanks to its modern infrastructure, free zone, and major economic projects.
For French investors, Dakhla represents a promising market combining stability, African openness, and economic attractiveness. For Morocco, it provides an opportunity to showcase the success of its strategy in integrating the southern regions into the national development trajectory.
New Cooperation Horizons
The forum is expected to open new avenues for collaboration across various fields, notably renewable energy, energy transition, infrastructure, transport and logistics, sustainable tourism, hospitality, as well as agriculture and food security. Innovation, digital transformation, and skills development are also key themes in the forum’s agenda.
The organizers aim to enhance the presence of French companies in Morocco within a framework of joint investment, knowledge transfer, and mutual development.
A Growing Partnership
This forum continues a path of collaboration that gained momentum over the past two years. The Moroccan-French Business Forum in April 2024 in Rabat saw the participation of over 300 entrepreneurs and culminated in the issuance of a “white paper” outlining the priorities of economic partnership between the two countries. Approximately 20 new agreements were signed during the second session in October of the same year, attended by President Macron.
The 2025 session in Dakhla seeks to add a regional and strategic dimension to this dynamic by connecting it to the ambitious development projects ongoing in the southern regions of the Kingdom.
