Es-Semara opened its doors on Saturday to an international conference on « Royal Initiatives for Africa: From Historical Continuity to Tomorrow’s Horizons, » a gathering timed to coincide with celebrations marking the first anniversary of Unity Day.
The event drew an unusually broad mix of voices for a provincial capital in southern Morocco: former African ministers, geopolitical analysts, civil society representatives from Morocco and across the continent, and a roster of local elected officials. That diversity was by design. Organizers framed the conference less as a ceremonial gathering and more as a working platform for academic reflection and policy dialogue on Africa’s next decade.
Two themes anchored the morning’s discussions. The first was the Royal Initiative to give Sahel countries direct access to the Atlantic Ocean, pitched by speakers as a decisive tool for regional interconnectivity. The second was the Amgala Trans-Saharan Corridor, a road project designed to ease the movement of people and goods while opening up new trade routes across the region.
Es-Semara’s governor, Brahim Boutoumilate, used his remarks to place the province squarely at the center of these ambitions. He described the Atlantic Initiative as an effort to turn West Africa’s coastline into a bridge toward the Americas and Europe, and argued that Es-Semara itself, straddling the Atlantic seaboard and the Sahelo-Saharan hinterland, is emerging as an unavoidable civilizational crossroads.
Local officials echoed that framing. Mohamed Salem Labihi, head of the province’s provincial council, and his counterparts from the communal councils pointed to ongoing efforts to rehabilitate urban infrastructure and attract sustainable investment, with the explicit goal of turning the province into a logistics and trade hub rather than a peripheral outpost.
The gathering is expected to produce what organizers are calling the Es-Semara Declaration, a set of recommendations meant to carry the conference’s themes forward and establish a lasting platform for dialogue among African stakeholders. For a city often associated primarily with its role in the Sahara file, Saturday’s conference offered a different narrative, one centered on logistics corridors, continental partnerships, and a bid to become a reference point for how Africa’s development debates get framed.
