Policy Center for the New South

This article examines graduate employability challenges in the tourism and hospitality sector of Marrakech, a major tourism destination and strategic regional labour market in Morocco, characterised by strong seasonality, high labour turnover, and persistent education–employment mismatches. Rather than focusing exclusively on technology, the study analyses employability as a multidimensional and context-dependent process, in which digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) constitute one influencing factor among others. The research adopts a qualitative, purposive design based on semi-structured interviews conducted between August and October 2025 with 20 stakeholders directly involved in recruitment, training, or early career integration. These include five-star hotel general managers and HR officers, riad managers, travel agencies, recruitment intermediaries, representatives of Morocco’s public employment service (ANAPEC—National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Skills) and private, regional tourism authorities, academics and young tourism graduates. Interview transcripts were thematically analysed using NVivo to identify recurrent patterns in recruitment practices, skill expectations, and the impact of AI in employability. The results, reflecting stakeholders’ perceptions within this local labour market, show that employability is shaped by six interrelated dimensions: (1) the structure and functioning of the tourism labour market (segmentation, turnover, mobility); (2) partial misalignment between training provision and operational service realities; (3) recruitment standards that prioritise behavioural and relational competences alongside formal qualifications, particularly for frontline positions; (4) language proficiency, especially English and French, as a baseline employability condition; (5) growing expectations regarding digital literacy linked to tourism operations (property management systems, reservation platforms, online reputation management); and (6) the perceived impact of AI-enabled tools (automation of routine tasks, decision-support systems, chatbots), which is seen less as a source of job destruction than as a driver of task reconfiguration and skill upgrading. By situating employer and graduate perceptions within the broader Moroccan employment and training context, the study contributes a place-based understanding of employability in tourism. It highlights the shared responsibility of individuals, employers, and education and training institutions in supporting skill development. The article concludes by discussing policy and practice-oriented levers to strengthen graduate employability, including co-designed curricula, structured internships and mentoring schemes, employer-supported upskilling in tourism-specific digital and AI-related competences, and reinforced labour-market intermediation through ANAPEC and regional governance actors.

This article investigates the economic, social, and administrative implications of Morocco’s co-hosting of the 2030 FIFA World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal. While the tournament presents opportunities for economic transformation, such as increased tourism, foreign direct investment, and global visibility, it also entails substantial financial commitments that must be weighed against pressing national priorities. Using a scenario-based cost-benefit analysis, the paper evaluates potential outcomes under optimistic, baseline, and pessimistic assumptions, incorporating a 3% discount rate. Findings show that while benefits may outweigh costs under favorable conditions, fiscal risks are significant in pessimistic scenarios, especially if costs overrun or expected gains fall short. The analysis also contrasts World Cup expenditures with the country’s medium-term commitments to healthcare generalization, social protection, and post-earthquake reconstruction. Drawing on international comparisons, the study highlights the need for strategic planning, public-private partnerships, and a legacy-focused approach to ensure the tournament contributes to Morocco’s long-term development goals.

ABSTRACT This study presents a comprehensive longitudinal assessment of water poverty in Morocco, a severely water-stressed nation, using the multidimensional Water Poverty Index (WPI) for the period 2010–2022 at a national scale. Unlike previous cross-sectional analyses, a time-series approach has been employed to dynamically track changes, addressing a critical gap in WPI literature. Utilizing 16 variables across five WPI components, the analysis reveals significant fluctuations in overall water poverty, with the WPI notably ranging from a low of 43.90 in 2011 to a high of 57.91 in 2021. The Resource and Use components emerged as the primary drivers of these variations, highlighting the profound impact of increasing water scarcity due to climate change and escalating agricultural demand, which accounts for nearly 85% of total water consumption. Based on these findings, the study provides data-driven policy recommendations for enhanced governance, conservation strategies, and agricultural sector transformation. The implications underscore the urgent need for targeted interventions to improve water use efficiency and resilience in Morocco. This research demonstrates the WPI's utility as a robust, transparent, and dynamic monitoring tool, offering valuable, replicable insights for sustainable water management in other water-stressed developing economies globally.

ABSTRACT Youth’s life paths have become increasingly challenging, especially for those classified as ‘Not in Education, Employment, or Training’ (NEET), who comprise 31.2% of North Africa’s youth population. This paper contributes to the growing discourse on the NEET phenomenon by exploring its structural and psychosocial dimensions in North Africa, with a specific focus on gender. Using a rich micro-level dataset of 7,815 individuals aged 15 to 29 from Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, the study applies a binary Logit model to assess the influence of household structure, subjective perceptions, and political trust on NEET status. While gender does not appear to significantly influence NEET outcomes, urban residence is associated with a lower probability of being NEET. Surprisingly, higher educational attainment does not consistently protect against NEET status in the cases of Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia. Household characteristics, particularly the presence of employed and educated family members, are found to be key protective factors. The analysis also highlights significant correlations between NEET status and subjective factors such as self-esteem, institutional trust, and perceived family support. Although causality cannot be definitively claimed due to potential endogeneity, the findings offer valuable insights for policymakers seeking to address youth disengagement and promote more inclusive pathways to education and employment.

Abstract In this chapter, we explore the visions of agricultural reform in our four case studies. We present a brief background to the country’s contexts and their agricultural sectors, as well as an exploration of the visions of the national leadership and their specific envisioned reforms for the agricultural sector. The chapter shows that leaders in all four countries, at least for some periods, have had visions to transform the agricultural sectors. However, the nature, content, and stability of these visions have varied across the case studies.

The labor market can be a daunting place for young graduates; this paper aims to shed light on how they navigate it. By examining the ways in which they enter the workforce and the impact of individual and socioeconomic factors on their career paths, we gain a deeper understanding of the challenges they face. We use a two-stage approach to study this issue: first, we create a typology of graduates’ integration paths and then estimate the likelihood of following a specific trajectory through multinomial logit analysis. Our findings reveal a diverse range of professional journeys, with graduates from open-access institutions facing higher rates of unemployment and continuing their studies, and women experiencing more precarious situations. This study stands out in the literature in several ways. Unlike previous research on the topic, we develop an index of soft skills that incorporates multiple dimensions. Additionally, we use individual data from a regional survey conducted by ANAPEC, making this the first study of its kind for Morocco. The results of our study can inform our understanding of the importance of soft skills for youth employability and the need for training policies in a rapidly changing job market. In terms of employment policy, our findings on the intertwining of first-time and long-term unemployment among higher education graduates suggest the need for a comprehensive strategy that focuses on the organization of the initial integration phase. To achieve this, the efforts of Career Centers must be broadened, consolidated, and evaluated.

O trabalho aborda algumas consequências duráveis da pandemia sobre as economias, ou seja, impactos da crise pandêmica com desdobramentos no futuro em economias nacionais em todo o mundo. Para além de perdas permanentes de produto e de um legado em termos de dívidas públicas mais elevadas, a pandemia deixará cicatrizes no mercado de trabalho, com efeitos sobre os estoques futuros de capital humano. A crise pandêmica também reforçou tendências prévias de remodelação da globalização, assim como acelerou a transformação digital. O trabalho destaca uma contradição em movimento entre, por um lado, o reforço da reorientação para dentro dos países e, por outro, a necessidade de coordenação política entre os países em muitas áreas. Lidar com futuras pandemias, mudanças climáticas, ciber-segurança, terrorismo, tendências migratórias e outras exigirá mais multilateralismo e não menos.

This paper aims at evaluating the virtual water content in trade in an intra-country perspective and discussing potential tradeoffs between the use of natural resources and value added creation. We develop a trade-based index that reveals the relative water use intensities associated with specific interregional and international trade flows. The index is calculated considering the measures of water and value added embedded in trade flows associated with each regional origin-destination pair using an interregional input-output matrix for Morocco together with information on sectorial water use. We add to the literature on virtual water by encompassing the subnational perspective in a country that shows a clear ‘climate divide’. Furthermore, we contribute to the literature by proposing an index that may be applied to different economies to evaluate multidimensional trade-offs associated with the pressure of specific economic flows to the use of natural resources relative to its economic relevance.