His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco chaired on May 15 the signing ceremony of agreements related to the Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline project and the Moroccan-Nigerian cooperation in the field of fertilizers, said the message from Morocco’s embassy in Azerbaijan.
The starting phase of these important projects took place at the Royal Palace in Rabat in the presence of Moroccan officials, representatives from many African countries, international experts as well as representatives of sovereign funds and major international energy companies.
This important event received wide international media coverage. King Mohammed VI is personally involved in the implementation of this projects which will considerably contribute to the development of a dozen African transit countries.
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic SOCAR was represented in this event.
The Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline is a gigantic project, about 5000 km long, a dozen countries crossed and tens of thousands of jobs created and important new economic opportunities that will positively transform the life of 300 million people.
The pipeline will be designed with the aim of speeding up electrification projects in the whole West African region, serving as a basis to set up a competitive regional market for electricity, to develop integrated industrial hubs in the sub-region in sectors as industry, food-processing and fertilizers and to improve local transformation of natural resources available for national and international markets.
Morocco will provide Nigeria with more than two million tons of fertilizers under the strategic partnership established between the Moroccan "OCP Group” and Nigerian "Dangote", which aims at building a large fertilizer plant and a phosphoric acid unit.
Benefiting from Moroccan expertise and know-how in this field, this partnership will cover the entire agricultural value chain in Nigeria, and will put in place fertilizing solutions at lower cost and adapted to the nature of the soil, the climate, the environment as well as the cultures of the whole region. This agreement also includes accompanying measures to local farmers.
The fertilizer plant will not only meet the high demand of Nigerian domestic market, but also will allow exportation of fertilizers to other parts of Africa.
By concluding these agreements, only few months after the visit of King Mohammed VI to Nigeria, Morocco once again reaffirms its commitment to the development of Africa, by setting up concrete projects in productive sectors, stimulating economic growth, job creation and achieving sustainable food security impacting directly the lives of citizens and establishing lasting stability in the continent.