25 Jul Interview with Reda Bakkali, INEOS, Morocco
The Moroccan economy ended 2023 on a positive note, with growth accelerating to 4.1% in the last quarter, compared with just 0.7% the previous year. Can you tell us about the importance of the digital transition that is taking place in Morocco and its importance in supporting the rest of the country’s economic growth?
Morocco has embarked on a multidimensional digital transformation strategy aimed at improving its socio-economic landscape through enhanced digital services. This initiative spans multiple sectors, including public services, telecommunications and SMEs. Like all other nations after COVID-19, Morocco has seen a significant increase in awareness of technology and digitalization in general.
The digital transition in Morocco is crucial for the country’s economic growth, supported by substantial government investments and strategic initiatives. The Moroccan government, with a €611 million loan from the World Bank and a $1 billion investment from the 1st telecom operator in infrastructure, underscores its commitment to digital transformation. This robust support aims to boost various economic sectors, including the strategic offshoring sector, which, as of 2023, contributes significantly to the economy, representing about 1.5% of the global market and generating $1.4 billion export revenue.
Telecom infrastructure in Morocco has seen significant growth, with 32.6 million internet subscribers by March 2022, marking a 6.4% annual increase and 93% of these being mobile internet users. This expansion supports the rising e-commerce sector, which recorded revenues of $1 billion in 2020, a 62.7% increase from the previous year. Legislative and economic reforms, including Law No. 121-12, aim to enhance transparency and competition in ICT, while fiscal reforms support economic development through initiatives like the Mohamed VI investment fund. Recognized as the most technologically advanced country in Africa, Morocco has led early adoption of technologies such as 3G. The post-pandemic period has seen a significant reduction in cash usage, with a shift towards digital payments and e-commerce.
The strategic plan “Digital Morocco 2030” aims to further enhance Morocco’s digital capabilities, positioning the country as a digital hub in Africa by 2025. This includes upgrading digital infrastructure to support widespread internet access and 5G networks, expanding digital education programs to develop a tech-savvy workforce and digitizing all governmental operations to improve efficiency and transparency. Supporting tech startups and SMEs, fostering innovation through incentives and enhancing international competitiveness are also key components of this plan.
SMEs, which make up over 90% of Moroccan enterprises, play a crucial role in the economy, contributing more than 20% to GDP, 30% of exports and employing 21.6% of the workforce. Government initiatives, including those by ANPME since 2002, aim to modernize and enhance SME competitiveness. Collaborations with the Ministry of Industry and significant foreign direct investment inflows, which reached $2.1 billion in 2022, have significantly boosted the SME sector. The government prioritizes SMEs in its long-term economic strategy, focusing on infrastructure improvements and capacity-building workshops to address corruption and enhance integrity.
See the Corporate Video – INEOS MOROCCO
INEOS has become a benchmark IT company in digitalization for the public and private sectors. Could you give our readers an overview of your company and the capabilities and services it has developed? What competitive advantages does INEOS Cyberforces offer its customers?
INEOS was co-founded in 2015 and Cyberforces in 2018, setting up today INEOS Cyberforces as a reference group for technology integration, supporting Moroccan and African institutions in their digital transformation initiatives. We are focused on providing “solutions” instead of just “hardware”. Our strategy from day one has been to set up professional dedicated structures. Each structure is specialized in a particular field of activity. Cyberforces, for example, specializes in cybersecurity. We have professionals working to secure banks, telecoms and utilities operators across the whole private and public sectors. Cyberforces has a comprehensive ecosystem of technological partners and experts to provide the best-of-breed in terms of solutions and services. This enables the customer to benefit from local expertise as well as international know-how to address its cybersecurity issues.
For INEOS, we were the first to build a national sovereign cloud, on behalf of a major national telecom operator. Moreover, one of our recent milestones is the successful implementation of the secured network and IT platform for the World Bank and IMF annual congress in Marrakech in 2023, for which INEOS has received many national and international awards, such as the certificate of technical excellence delivered by the World Bank. Thanks to this significant project, INEOS has earned trust from major international and national institutions.
Our group is focused on managing clients’ data: INEOS’ core business is storing and transporting data for its customers, while Cyberforces secures this data. Today, we have more than 100 professionals on the field. Our group ended 2023 with more than $50 million in terms of revenue and we’re on a two-digit growth trajectory. However, it is vital for us to maintain a startup spirit characterized by agility and flexibility despite being a major company.
On the partnership side, we mainly work with American companies, among whom are Dell Technologies, Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto and Dynatrace. With these technology partners, we’re either #1 or #2 in the Moroccan market for several years in a row.
Our market differentiation relies on our customer centric approach, our flexibility and design-to-cost methodology. We’re very focused on the specific answers we provide to offer turnkey solutions and a custom-tailored approach to our clients’ challenges. By 2026, our ambition is to be among the top 3 of Moroccan and regional digital services companies in terms of revenue. Our strategic vision is to be positioned as the reference technology partner in unlocking digital potential for clients.
You’ve been chosen as a Titanium partner of Dell, reinforcing your leading position in cutting-edge technologies. What does that partnership mean for you and to what extent are you working to further strengthen your partnerships with American companies in particular?
Being a Titanium partner of Dell Technologies involves, from a regulatory standpoint, obtaining several technical certifications by our teams, deploying technological projects, providing high value-added services and generating a certain amount of revenue for Dell Technologies in Morocco. This highly exclusive status in Morocco makes us even prouder because we achieved it through the implementation of complex infrastructure projects rather than merely selling hardware.
The benefits of this partnership are primarily based on mutual trust established between our technology partner and us, as well as with our clients. This demonstrates that INEOS is now an essential player on both national and continental scales in the services we offer. It is also a great responsibility: being the ambassador of a global technology leader while maintaining impeccable service quality for our clients.
There aren’t many Titanium partners in Morocco, even in the region. It’s the result of a collaboration that began 10 years ago and is now bearing fruit with a number of references from strategic customers, including banks, telecom operators and public administration. For us the partnership is symbolic of close relations, at both technological and commercial levels. We have business plans that we draw up with our partners. We have training commitments that have to be coordinated and we make visits to Dell’s headquarters in Austin with customers so that they can take ownership of these types of solutions. Furthermore, we are deeply honored and proud to have been designated in 2024 as the best integrator partner of Dell Technologies in North Africa, a distinction that highlights INEOS at a continental level. This recognition places our company among the top digital service providers in Africa, particularly in the segment of integrating complex technological infrastructures.
Thanks to these efforts, INEOS teams have been able to successfully carry out high value-added projects, ranging from simple technical architecture exercises to the deployment of turnkey data centers for critical operators within the Kingdom. This recognition primarily confirms the reputation and credibility of INEOS with its clients and it validates our strategy of specialization in this technology, offering our clients a guarantee of our “capacity to deliver.” This supports them in unlocking their digital potential through the storage and security of their data.
What we do with Dell, we also do with Cisco and Fortinet. We take our partnership relationships very seriously. We have few partners, but we manage to cover all our customers’ needs and expectations. This enables us to provide a highly specialized technical response. That’s what today’s customers are looking for: they are looking for expertise, not general engineers. Of course, we are keen on enlarging our partnerships with American technology providers as long as this serves our mutual interests and our clients’ needs
You want to reach the top 3 by 2026. Beyond your presence in the Moroccan market, could you tell us a little about your regional or international expansion plans?
We carried out a strategic mission last year which gave us two markets to target. We’re going to target the French-speaking market, from Casablanca. We’re also in the process of forging partnerships with companies in France and Belgium. For West-African French speaking countries a landing point in Côte d’Ivoire for 2026 is under study. As the dynamics in Africa are different from those in Europe, we are in the process of seeing how the market and its stability is evolving. For the European market, we’ve already started, we’ve already established contacts. Today, we believe that our expertise is recognized worldwide. Our experts have internationally recognized certifications and know-how. This will enable us to respond professionally to demand, initially in Europe. We’re seeing significant demand in France and Belgium, to name just these two. So, this will be our priority for the next two years. As far as Africa is concerned, we are already working on transactional projects with the aim of potentially setting up in one of the two countries I mentioned by 2026.
How significant is the threat of cyber-attacks for Moroccan businesses? How does the acceleration of digitalization in the country make the need to defend against these attacks more imperative?
Morocco is increasingly facing growing cybersecurity threats, evidenced by a series of significant attacks and a rise in reported incidents. In 2022, the country was the most affected in Africa by banking Trojans and stealer malware, with 18,827 attacks recorded. Financial institutions, including several major national banks, have suffered phishing attacks, the latest resulting in the theft of millions of Moroccan dirhams. In 2023, news operators were victims of attacks, disrupting their services. Additionally, the total number of reported cybersecurity incidents doubled between 2019 and 2022, reaching 2,484 incidents.
In response to these growing threats, the Moroccan cybersecurity market is booming, with forecasts reaching $131.20 million in 2024 and an annual compound growth rate of 12% between 2024 and 2029. These figures highlight the urgent need to strengthen the country’s cyber defenses. What we have noticed is that the level of expertise involved in these attacks has evolved recently, for the simple reason that attack techniques have become very sophisticated, some of them starting to be powered by AI.
Nevertheless, Morocco is fortunate to have a strong regulatory framework that enables us to have a much more enlightened vision of all the measures taken by the State. We have a General Directorate for Information Systems Security, which imposes a certain number of security mechanisms, especially for vital interest operators. This enables us, as cybersecurity players, to provide services to companies that need them and are subject to regulations. Moreover, the Kingdom, thanks to its globalized economy, has access to the best-of-breed technology solutions that enables its institutions to protect their attack surface. We must also keep in mind that upcoming international events hosted by Morocco, such as the Africa Cup of Nations in 2025 or the FIFA World Cup in 2030, significantly increase the country’s exposure, as is currently observed with France hosting the 2024 Olympic Games.
Regarding Cyberforces, our added value focuses on enhancing and controlling client cyber-risks. It is based on the development of customized technical and governance solutions that consider essential contextual parameters for creating a robust and efficient IT infrastructure. Our offering includes three areas of intervention addressing security issues, capable of placing each information security management system in a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. First, there is the analysis and the structure aspect, which involves assessing the current risk exposure and establishing an appropriate cybersecurity strategy. Next is the protection aspect, which involves implementing technical solutions to secure information systems with a high level of contextualization. Thanks to our technological ecosystem and strategic partnerships, we can provide what’s best for our clients in terms of solutions. Finally, there is the maintenance, detection and supervision aspect, aimed at ensuring the operational and security conditions of the security mechanisms and monitoring the clients’ environments.
This is the framework within which we operate with a strong relationship with the education sector in the field of cybersecurity, since we also have partners and engineering schools to whom we offer end-of-study or cybersecurity projects. We have also set up a research and development program with a government institution to define and implement new defense and attack techniques. To defend ourselves, we also need to understand how we can attack.
CR: Morocco currently produces between 15,000 and 20,000 digital graduates per year. How would you assess the current level of talent in the ICT, digital and tech sectors in Morocco?
The quality of the training we have in Morocco is excellent. The quality is really there – what we lack is volume. Now, like all countries that are close to Europe or speak some foreign languages, we have brain drain. In the technology sector, we lose between 15% and 20% of new or existing graduates every year, who leave for Europe or, increasingly, for their own reasons, for Canada and the USA. As a result, we’re facing a salary crisis, because the quality of Moroccan engineers today is in demand internationally. The scarcity of resources has led to a slight inflation in the salaries of these engineers, which of course has an impact on projects.
It is vital to accelerate the pace of digital talent production using certain essential levers. These include the establishment of public-private partnerships, or the creation of an observatory for digital professions, allowing for a more agile alignment between the country’s needs and education programs. These programs must also be adapted in terms of their pathways to keep pace with the rapid evolution of the technologies they teach.
Internally, we have set up an academy for all our professions, since a lot of our engineers have a theoretical background, but they might not be ready to be operational, because they don’t have the necessary practical experience. Also, people who already have a few years’ experience on their CV are required to take at least two training courses a year to keep up to date. We do the same for our sales team and project managers. As we work with multinationals, we also try to adapt to their modus operandi, we have online training courses, in class trainings that are exchanged by external practitioners. And we also have exchanges between seniors and juniors that help to transfer skills. Our partnership levels with technology providers force us to stay continuously up to date in terms of know-how, which leads to multiple certification courses and exams that are operated every year on all our business lines.
What is your vision for the ICT sector in Morocco over the next 5 to 10 years? And what are your immediate priorities as CEO of these IT companies?
Morocco has embarked on an ambitious digital transformation strategy regarding its digital services, infrastructure and policies. The government’s efforts are structured around several national strategies, starting with “Morocco Numeric 2013,” followed by “Digital Morocco 2025,” and plans for “Digital Morocco 2030.” These strategies are designed to digitize the economy and public sectors, fostering growth and innovation. Therefore, our vision is simple: to support Morocco’s digital journey. Today, we’re not trying to be ahead or behind. We’re simply trying to be in line with the national vision.
One of the most significant achievements of Morocco’s digital transformation is the remarkable increase in internet penetration. As of 2024, internet penetration reached 90.7%, supported by extensive investments in 4G, LTE and fiber optics infrastructure. This expansion has not only improved connectivity but also laid the groundwork for various digital services and innovations across the country.
In terms of e-government enhancements, Morocco has made substantial progress in digitizing government services, which has significantly improved efficiency and accessibility for citizens. The introduction of e-services such as tax filing, social security benefits management and digital registration for businesses has made government interactions more accessible and efficient. Moreover, smart government initiatives have been developed, allowing for the digital handling of administrative procedures, which reduces the need for physical paperwork and speeds up processing times. Additionally, the launch of mobile applications delivering services directly to citizens’ smartphones, such as health services and public transportation updates, represents a major step forward in making public services more user-friendly.
The focus on integrating SMEs into the digital economy is another critical component of Morocco’s digital transformation. By 2025, the government aims to cover 75% of businesses with digital solutions, thereby enhancing their competitiveness and operational efficiency. This integration is essential for fostering innovation and ensuring that SMEs can thrive in the digital age. The startup ecosystem in Morocco is vibrant, particularly in tech-driven sectors. However, challenges such as securing adequate funding and navigating a complex regulatory environment persist. Addressing these issues is crucial for fostering a more supportive environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.
The adoption of cloud services is on the rise in Morocco, with organizations increasingly emphasizing strategic security measures to safeguard their data and operations. This shift to cloud-based solutions is essential for modernizing IT infrastructures and improving scalability and efficiency.
Despite these achievements, Morocco faces several challenges in its digital transformation journey. Access to high-speed internet remains limited in rural areas, hindering inclusive digital growth. There is also a significant gap in skilled IT professionals, which is necessary to drive and sustain digital transformation efforts. Funding limitations continue to be a major barrier, impacting the scale and effectiveness of transformation initiatives. Additionally, the high number of cyberattacks highlights ongoing vulnerabilities and the need for robust security protocols. While cloud adoption is growing, issues like data breaches and misconfigurations present significant risks. Balancing global technology integration with national data sovereignty presents both opportunities and challenges for policy and regulation.
As Morocco is preparing for the 2030 World Cup, a number of structuring projects will be coming on stream and we need to be ready to support these initiatives locally. As a service company, our raw material is human resources and so the second pillar of our strategy is to strengthen and develop our in-house skills to enable these visions to become reality. The third point of our strategy is to open up internationally, either to become part of an international group, or to make acquisitions in Europe or Africa, which is what we plan to do. It’s a sector that, for those who know how to seize opportunities, will see double-digit growth. It’s also a sector that will see the emergence of new professions, in particular artificial intelligence, which is also being talked about in Morocco today. As a services company, we need to be forward-thinking and sufficiently educated to enable our consultants to provide answers to the major issues facing our customers, whether in customer relations, digital transformation or cyber security.