Conclusions

To conclude, Morocco has evolved a lot in term of scientific
research. Moroccan leaders understood the huge importance of this
matter, and made effective actions and reforms over more than ten years.
Obviously, many lacks still exist, but many efforts are made over
both public and private sectors. Today, Universities are allowed to make
their proper research according to their own policies. The government
works in parallel to link universities with private sector and companies as
potential investors. Moreover, Morocco has a particular vision in two
ways: In one hand attract external investors through projects as
“Programme Emergence”, and in a second hand develop local projects.
Morocco is planning its future through technological innovations and
local development. However, few unanswered questions are still
remaining. If political leaders are aware, what about students? Because
some of them represent future generation of leaders, I thought that it was
essential to know about this issue. Indeed, I conducted a survey with 30
AUI students. The results are the following:






These results reveal that students, who have in addition, research centers
at disposition (I mean Al Akhawayn University), do not really care about
scientific research in Morocco and do not have necessary knowledge
about this issue. In this study that I have conducted during a whole
academic semester, I found many solutions possible. First, make students
sensitive about scientific research and its opportunities, then encourage
them to pursue their studies through PhD promotion. For me, the best
key to promote scientific research is to develop it at the source, which
means university. Of course, many of them have already done a good
job by creating centers of development and making partnerships with
many institutions like AUI, but there are so many things to do and the
most important in my mind would be the promotion of the field.

The futur of Morocco´s scientific research

The infrastructures seem to be set up, but are there any real projects?
Through my study, I observed that Morocco is planning the future of its
scientific research over many plans. One of the most interesting could be
“Le Programme Emergence”. Off shoring, Cars, Aeronautic, Electronics,
but also Agro alimentary, Sea products, Textile and Craft Industry
constitute the development of eight main fields that are considered to be
the most essential for Morocco. Another interesting project could be “Le
Plan d´ Urgence pour l´ Education et la formation” which has as a main
objective to reduce poverty through scientific research. Also, Morocco
is looking up for 2020 with a program of new technologies development
through MASCIR (Moroccan Association for Scientific and Innovative
Research) in cooperation with the CDG, MEDZ, and universities such as
AUI. 564 Million dirham have been invested in this project, in order to
develop nanotechnologies and biotechnologies.

My results 2010

Today, scientific research in Morocco has definitely changed.
Obviously, there are still many lacks, but the difference is that this
domain is much more organized and is following a guideline.
First of all, a strategy has been implemented between 2006 and 2010 by
“Le Ministere de l´Education Nationale, de l´Enseignement Supérieur, de
la formation des cadres” through three main ways: upgrade of the
national research system policy; reinforcement of human ressources and
financial management of research activities. These following axis of
improvement are organized through four main structures : CNRST
(Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique),
R&D Maroc (Moroccan Association for Research and Development),
ANPME (Agence Nationale pour la Promotion de la Petite et Moyenne
Entreprise) and of course public Universities (Ex: Université Hassan II
des Sciences et Techniques). Why these structures? To attract external
investments, create enough Infrastructures for scientific research, link the
private companies with the Universities that are making these researches,
and have a weight over Moroccan government. The following table
shows how these infrastructures work together.




This table below shows the strategies that these different institutions are
making in in order to achieve their goals, inspired by the interview given
by Ahmed Driouchi (Board of the Institute of Economic Analysis and
Prospective Studies, at AUI).

My results 2000 - 2009

Once I collected all this data, I was first able to make many
interesting observations over the evolution of scientific research till
today. The following tables shows us the numbers of people who work in
scientific research in Morocco.








In the last ten years, scientific research finances in Morocco evolved a
lot. It was first the international cooperation’s who were taken it in
charge, like in 1972 when French researchers (Ex: Jean Francois Troin)
came to Morocco in order to study and work on Morocco’s map.
The table8 below taken from the OMPIC (Office Marocain de la Proprieté
Intellectuelle et Commerciale) shows us an interesting point about the
bad evolution of patents.




Indeed, we observe that 2/3 of patents are not Moroccans. So, the patents
which are essential to keep the legal right of an invention are also
deficient. Many other lacks are noticed, as a decrease in scientific
production, investments are not well distributed, bad teamwork between
research units, no motivation or the age of the researchers that keeps
increasing. Moreover, the absence of research evaluation is a strong
barrier to the quality of research improvement. Aware of their important
quantity of deficits, Morocco started many reforms toward 2010.

Method

The method that would be the most useful to conduct this study, is
to follow a time line research plan. First, make observations about the
way that scientific research in universities has evolved in a period of ten
years. Then, state an inventory of fixtures for the current period. Finally,
make understandable the way that future projects are expected to be led.
In order to succeed and find accurate data, I used many relevant sources
such as books, newspapers, a magazine article, an editorial, online
sources, and many journal articles. I made also a survey for AUI
students in order to measure their interest and knowledge about an
important issue for their country’s development. I found interesting to
meet people who are deeply involved such as school deans and university
researchers and report it as interviews.

Introduction

Today, Morocco is facing a strong concurrence from Asia (China;
India), but also challenges and opportunities ensued from the future
implementation of a free trade area with United States of America and
European Union. Even though Morocco is expecting to be one of
globalization economic actor, only 6 Million Dollars are invested in
scientific research. Compared to the 21.1 Billion Dollars invested
by United States in scientific research, Morocco has an extremely huge
gap that must be reduced. If Morocco opens its economic barriers to
high competitive countries such as United States or European Union
without giving importance to its local development through innovation
and technology, the impact could be critical. In fact, Morocco could be
assimilated to an underdeveloped country because of its extremely low
grade in Human Development Index (126th over 177 countries), a high
lever of illiteracy (48%) and an infamous educational system (11th over
14 in the Middle East and North Africa region). Fortunately, the
Moroccan political leaders realized the extreme importance of scientific
research as an essential tool to improve the socio-economic development
of the country, as said Moroccan Prime Minister, his excellence Mr.
Abbas El Fassi in the daily newspaper “Le Matin”: “The promotion of
scientific research is essential to a long-term oriented development of
prior sectors.” He adds that “The best strategy to adopt is to give a total
independence to the universities in order to improve scientific research
and help them to make their own policies and be the most efficient
possible”. The idea that Mr. Abbas El Fassi highlights is an essential
point that must be developed to understand Morocco’s position over
this fundamental step to development.

Relevant Information : Association Of American Universities

During my SSK1213 class, i found a very intersting website concerning research centers in America : www.aau.edu (Association Of American Universities official website).