Ministerial meeting on the initiative of the King of Morocco for the access of the Sahel to the Atlantic Ocean
As part of an innovative and integrated approach to promote stability and security in the region, King Mohammed VI's international initiative to promote access by Sahelian countries to the Atlantic seaboard offers unprecedented potential to provide appropriate solutions, strengthen regional integration and cooperation, achieve structural transformation of the economies of these sister countries and improve the living conditions of the Sahelian population.
Meeting in Marrakech
The foreign ministers of the Sahel countries will participate in the ministerial meeting, which will be organised this Saturday in Marrakech at the invitation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccans Residing Abroad, Nasser Bourita, to coordinate the royal initiative.
Aware of the difficulties facing the Sahel States, King Mohammed VI stressed, in his speech commemorating the Green March, the need to find solutions based on a common cooperation and development approach, in which Morocco is fully prepared to participate.
The royal message of the last 6 November 2023 stressed that "Atlantic Africa has everything to be a zone of peace, stability and prosperity". This is why Morocco has not hesitated to take the initiative of creating an institutional framework to bring together the 23 states that share the common challenges of the region.
"We propose the launch of an initiative at the international level," said the monarch, specifying that "in order to resolve the difficulties and problems faced by the Sahel's sister states, the remedy is not limited to military or security measures, but must be based on an approach of cooperation and common development".
Despite the quality of its human resources and the abundance of its natural wealth, Atlantic Africa still suffers from a major infrastructure and investment deficit, which makes the strategic Morocco-Nigeria gas pipeline project a lever for regional integration aimed at creating the conditions for a common economic take-off.
In order to set in motion a dynamic favourable to the development of the Atlantic strip of the African continent, the Moroccan sovereign said he was convinced that this initiative would substantially transform the economy of the entire region, assuring that Morocco "is ready to make its road, port and rail infrastructures available to them".
It should be noted that the initiative of the Alaouite King opens the way for landlocked Sahelian countries to access the Kingdom's road and port infrastructures. This opening is part of the regional and international framework of the royal initiative to promote access by Sahelian countries to the Atlantic Ocean.