Article 4 of the African Electricity History Series

Morocco occupies the north-western corner of Africa, where the continent meets both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Because it has no significant domestic oil or gas reserves, Morocco has depended heavily on imported energy for much of the past century. That dependence shaped its energy policy, creating early vulnerabilities and eventually driving its transformation into one of Africa’s most advanced renewable energy deployers.

Electricity in the Service of Extraction

In the early colonial period, France established a Protectorate over Morocco, and its electricity policy was explicitly designed to serve extraction.

This means that the main purpose for early electricity infrastructure was to power phosphate mining operations, improve mine productivity, and electrify the railways transporting phosphates to coastal ports for export. French administrators openly described the policy as electrifying ‘useful Morocco’, i.e. the productive, infrastructure-served coastal and mining zones. Rural Morocco, and Moroccan-populated areas generally, were not the intended beneficiaries of the grid being built around them at the time.

Private sector participation in the electricity sector began quite early as two private French companies held electricity concessions during this period. In 1914, the Société marocaine de distribution d’eau, de gaz et d’électricité (SMD), held the initial concession. In 1924, it was replaced by Énergie Électrique du Maroc (EEM), and this shift was not a nationalisation but a change of private concessionaire.

Morocco gained independence on 2 March 1956, under King Mohammed V. The institutional continuity of the monarchy gave post-independence Morocco a significant advantage: there was no administrative vacuum at independence, and the new state could move relatively quickly to assert control over economic sectors including the electricity sector. This advantage, however, did not translate immediately into energy sovereignty.

Taking Control and Building the System

Although Morocco became independent in 1956, its electricity sector remained under French private management for seven years. The Office National de l’Électricité (ONE) was created in 1963 and would shape Moroccan electricity for the next half-century. Its mandate was to meet electricity demand as a public service, and its structure as a public commercial and industrial establishment gave it operational flexibility while keeping it under state direction. The seven-year delay between independence and effective state control shows that political sovereignty and economic sovereignty are not the same thing: the latter often requires deliberate institution-building.

Through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, ONE expanded generation capacity progressively, drawing on hydroelectric resources in the Atlas mountain systems, oil-fired thermal plants, and later coal. By 2008, hydro already accounted for approximately 24% of installed capacity, reflecting decades of sustained investment in the Atlas river systems.

Yet Morocco’s fundamental vulnerability remained unchanged: the country had no domestic oil or gas reserves. In the 1990s, oil still constituted approximately 73% of electricity generation, making Morocco acutely exposed to international fuel price volatility.  Like every other import-dependent economy, the 1973 and 1979 oil price shocks hit Morocco really hard.

Reform and the IPP Breakthrough: Private Capital Enters the Sector

By the early 1990s, Morocco faced a genuine electricity supply crisis. Rapid economic growth had pushed demand beyond what ONE could reliably meet. ONE experienced severe power shortfalls in 1993 and 1994, and the government’s post-adjustment fiscal position made large-scale public financing of new capacity impossible. The response was a landmark policy decision: Morocco became the first country in North Africa to introduce Independent Power Producers (IPPs).

Legislative Decree No. 94-503 of 1994 ended ONE’s monopoly over electricity production and opened generation to private investors for the first time. What followed was not a wholesale privatisation but a carefully structured opening: the state retained control of transmission and distribution through ONE, while competitive tenders attracted private capital into generation.

Three IPP projects, developed between 1994 and 2005, defined this era and have been studied extensively as African policy precedents. The first, the Jorf Lasfar Energy Company (JLEC), signed in 1996, transferred two existing 330 MW coal-fired units on the Atlantic coast to a US-Swiss consortium and required construction of two additional 350 MW units. By 2001, its total capacity reached 1,400 MW, making JLEC Africa’s largest independent power producer, a status it held for years. The deal placed approximately two-thirds of Morocco’s electricity production in private hands.

The second project, the Compagnie Éolienne du Détroit (CED), was a wind farm near the Strait of Gibraltar, documented as the first wind farm in Africa to be entirely privately financed, a milestone in the continent’s renewable energy history. The third, Énergie Électrique de Tahaddart (EET), commissioned in 2005, introduced Morocco’s first combined-cycle gas plant, fuelled by Algerian gas flowing through the Maghreb-Europe pipeline.

With the IPP model, ONE (later ONEE) remained as the off-taker under long-term power purchase agreements, providing the revenue certainty that made private financing viable. The state retained regulatory and transmission control. This hybrid structure (i.e. private generation, public off-take, regulated network) attracted international capital while preserving state influence over the sector’s strategic direction.

It became a model that other African countries would study and attempt to replicate. The lesson it carries, however, is double-edged. The 1996 Jorf Lasfar contract delivered urgently needed capacity but locked Morocco into coal dependence that still accounts for approximately 60% of actual electricity generation as at 2024. Private capital follows the contractual signals the state sets, and the consequences of those signals can extend for decades.

The Almost 100% Rural Electrification Drive

Running in parallel with the IPP programme was one of Africa’s most ambitious rural electrification efforts. In 1996, ONE launched the Programme d’Électrification Rurale Global (PERG) with the goal of bringing electricity to the approximately 82% of Moroccan rural communities that had none.

Where most African countries at the time, under World Bank guidance, were building independent rural electrification agencies and experimenting with market-based approaches, Morocco chose to retain its national utility as the implementing vehicle and drove electrification through PERG as a public service mission.

The results documented show that rural electrification rose from 18% in 1995 to 97.4% by 2011, and reached 99.89% by mid-2024. Total programme investment reached approximately 25.3 billion dirhams (approximately $2.5 billion). PERG connected 41,922 villages, electrified 2.16 million households, and from 2003 onward deployed individual solar PV home systems in isolated communities where grid extension was not feasible, electrifying approximately 51,599 households through this method.

Since 2012, PERG has specifically targeted public services, connecting 5,110 schools, 2,521 mosques, and 412 health centres. PERG stands as evidence that a utility-led electrification model, with clear mandate, sustained political backing, and ring-fenced financing, can deliver at scale in Africa.

The Renewable Energy Transformation

The 2009 National Energy Strategy was the turning point in Morocco’s modern energy history and the economic motivation was that Morocco’s 90% energy import dependency imposed enormous fiscal costs and strategic vulnerability. Reducing that dependency through domestic renewable deployment was framed as a national economic security imperative, not primarily a climate commitment.

To implement the solar component of the strategy, the government created the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), a public-private partnership vehicle that would work alongside ONEE. MASEN’s approach was to use concessional financing from multilateral development banks such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, and European Investment Bank to reduce the cost of capital for pioneering solar projects.

This blended finance model, bringing together public development bank lending at below-market rates with private operator expertise, became MASEN’s signature. A 2025 assessment found that this structure reduced project costs by up to 25%, a figure that demonstrates why institutional design matters in renewable energy deployment as much as the solar resource itself.

The centrepiece of the programme was the Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex, developed near Ouarzazate in the southern pre-Saharan region. It provides electricity to more than 1.1 million people and offsets approximately 690,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually. Morocco’s 2010 Integrated Wind Energy Programme simultaneously developed the country’s strong Atlantic and northern wind resources; the Tarfaya wind farm, at 301 MW, became one of Africa’s largest.

In addition, Renewable Energy Law No. 13-09, passed in 2010, provided the regulatory basis for private renewable production and grid access, and fuel subsidies were phased out in 2014-15, reducing the distortions that had made fossil fuels artificially cheap for decades.

With these efforts, by the end of 2024, Morocco had approximately 12,016 MW of total installed electricity capacity, of which 45.3% was from renewable sources. By mid-2025, that share had risen to 45.5%, and the IEA’s photovoltaic programme assessment noted that the 52% target is now achievable as early as 2028, two years ahead of the 2030 deadline.

Morocco committed to carbon neutrality by 2050 at COP28 and to phasing out coal by 2040 in its NDC 3.0 submission. The transformation from a country generating 73% of its electricity from imported oil in the early 1990s to one with 45% renewable installed capacity in 2024 is a significant shift.

One distinction is important to state clearly, however. Installed capacity and actual electricity generation are different measures, and in Morocco in 2024 they tell materially different stories. While 45.3% of installed capacity was renewable, coal still accounted for approximately 60% of actual electricity generation that year, with renewables contributing approximately 27% of actual output. This gap reflects coal’s higher and more consistent capacity factor compared to variable solar and wind, and the system flexibility constraints that limit how much renewable generation the grid can absorb at any given moment.

Morocco’s next phase of energy investment  including hybrid solar-plus-storage projects like Noor Midelt II and III and grid modernisation is precisely aimed at closing this gap between the renewable capacity installed and renewable electricity actually generated.

Morocco’s ambitions now extend beyond domestic supply. Its proximity to Europe, established grid interconnections with Spain and Algeria, and growing renewable capacity have made it a serious candidate to become a renewable electricity exporter.

The most advanced proposal in this regard is the Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, a 11.5 GW of solar and wind generation in southern Morocco, combined with 22.5 GWh of battery storage and a 3.6 GW high-voltage direct current undersea cable running approximately 4,000 kilometres to the United Kingdom. Based on available sources, Xlinks remains at a planning and financing stage and has not reached a final investment decision.

Reflections and Lessons

  • Morocco’s renewable energy transformation happened because of durable institutions with clear mandates. E.g MASEN for solar, ONEE for grid and rural access, PERG for rural electrification. These institutions were backed by consistent royal political support and genuine fiscal commitment through multilateral co-financing. This shows that targets without institutional machinery to implement them rarely produce the results Morocco has achieved.
  • The PERG rural electrification programme is one of Africa’s most insightful policy successes. Moving from 18% to 99.89% rural electrification in under 30 years, through a utility-led model that the World Bank of the 1990s largely advised against, is a direct counter-example to the assumption that market fragmentation and independent rural agencies are the only viable path to universal access.

It worked because ONE had a clear mandate, financing was ring-fenced, and the monarchy provided unconditional political backing. It also incorporated solar PV from 2003 for off-grid communities, not as a last resort but as a planned technology choice, years before off-grid solar became a continental trend.

  • The gap between Morocco’s 45% renewable installed capacity and its 60% coal generation share is a transition challenge that every country faces when integrating variable renewables at scale. Grid flexibility, storage, and interconnection are the next frontier, and Morocco is investing in them through hybrid solar-storage projects and grid modernisation.
  • The lesson for other African countries is that achieving a high renewable capacity share is the beginning of the transition, not its end. The harder work of making variable renewables reliably dispatchable is still ahead.

Key References

Africa Energy Portal (2024) ‘Morocco’. Available at: https://africa-energy-portal.org/aep/country/morocco (Accessed: July 2026).

Atalayar (2024) ‘Rural electrification in Morocco reaches 99.89%’, 17 November. Available at: https://www.atalayar.com/en/articulo/economy-and-business/rural-electrification-in-morocco-reaches-9989/20241117080000207645.html (Accessed: July 2026).

Climate Investment Funds (CIF) (n.d.) ‘Morocco: A shining example of going solar’. Available at: https://www.cif.org/news/morocco-shining-example-going-solar (Accessed: July 2026).

Enzi Ijayo Africa Initiative and Africa Climate Insights (2025) ‘NOOR Is a Success Story in Africa’s Energy Transition’, reported in Morocco World News, 12 September. Available at: https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/09/259073/report-moroccos-noor-is-a-success-story-in-africas-energy-transition/ (Accessed: July 2026).

Energypedia (2024) ‘Morocco energy situation’. Available at: https://energypedia.info/wiki/Morocco_Energy_Situation (Accessed: July 2026).

Eberhard, A. and Gratwick, K. (2008) ‘Moroccan independent power producers — African pioneers’, Journal of North African Studies, 13(1), pp. 1–22. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13629380701642662 (Accessed: July 2026).

Global Energy Monitor (2024) ‘Power Sector Transition in Morocco’. Available at: https://www.gem.wiki/Power_Sector_Transition_in_Morocco (Accessed: July 2026).

This article is part of an independent historical research and writing series examining the development of electricity and power systems across African countries. It is compiled for educational purposes, to help readers understand where these energy sectors began, how they evolved, and what lessons might be drawn for the future. The content draws on publicly available sources. This article does not constitute professional, legal, financial, or investment advice. Readers are encouraged to verify figures independently and to consult primary sources and qualified professionals for any decision-making purposes.