Which prevents our campaigns from sowing jobs [INTÉGRAL]

In the aftermath of the elections, the government, carried by the momentum of electoral enthusiasm, had set itself an ambitious objective of 500,000 jobs. While this CAP appeared more and more difficult to cross, the executive revised its ambitions by announcing, last February, with great fanfare, a new roadmap providing this time the creation of 350,000 lasting positions by 2026. With an envelope of 15 billion dirhams (MMDH), this initiative aims to bring the rate of national unemployment to 9% and to create 1.45 million additional jobs by 2030, subject to a return to “normal” precipitation levels.
With this in mind, a billion dirhams was specifically allocated to supporting employment in rural areas. The government has designed an integration program based on active employment promotional systems, the implementation of which is scheduled for the coming year. Three aspects of action have been identified to promote the economic integration of young people into rural areas, whose vocational training, designated by Minister Younes Sekkouri as a fundamental lever of this policy.

The urgency to act

The acceleration of this project is no longer a luxury, especially since the rural environment has lost 3,000 jobs between the first quarter of 2024 and that of 2025, while the national economy won 282,000 over the same period. In question, a loss of 72,000 jobs in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector, contrasting with the performance of other sectors, carried by the momentum for the CAN and the World Cup. For the economist Omar Kettani, this persistence of rural unemployment is explained by repeated droughts and a development strategy centered too exclusively on agriculture. “In the absence of education, training, and a policy of economic diversification, rural populations, representing less than 40% of the national population, remain dependent on a vulnerable agricultural sector, and therefore increasingly exposed,” he observes. Indeed, according to the HCP, almost 60% of the active workers in rural areas (59.9%) still evolve in the agricultural sector, while underemployment affects nearly 592,000 people.
To meet this challenge, the new employment strategy emphasizes the preservation of decent agricultural jobs, in particular by the extension of cereal areas to 4 million hectares. The Ministry of Agriculture is however invited to submit an action program targeted in the areas most affected by drought, including a selection of job-creating projects and the implementation of a digital platform to coordinate the supply and demand for agricultural labor.

Fight rural depopulation

In this context and in the face of the growing precariousness of rural employment and the difficulties in maintaining a stable workforce, experts argue for a revitalization of rural areas. This diagnosis, as well as solutions tracks, has already been the subject of several reports from the High Commission for Plan (HCP). In its 2019 regional development report, the institution already underlined the need for local policies, calling for strengthening basic infrastructure – roads, drinking water, electricity – and diversifying economic activities, especially in crafts, rural tourism and renewable energies. “Targeted support for small farms, combined with incentives for the installation of young people in the agricultural trades, could also stabilize the rural population and slow down the exodus to cities,” according to economist El Mehdi Fakir.
In this same logic, the head of government has, during a recent meeting of the job strategy, insisted on the need to encourage young people to create agricultural startups. A particular emphasis is also placed on the fight against school loss, with the ambition of halving the number of students leaving the education system prematurely. This involves the strengthening of pioneering establishments, the expansion of the concept of the second chance school, and the implementation of incentives to promote the continuation of studies or access to vocational training. The idea would also be to promote the inclusion of women on the labor market, by raising the obstacles linked to child care, in particular by strengthening the daycare supply.