About Morocco

Morocco (المغرب‎, al-Maġrib), officially the Kingdom of Morocco (المملكة المغربية, al-Mamlakah al-Maġribiyya)), is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of nearly 33 million and an area of 710,850 km². It is a part of the Maghreb region, besides Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania and Libya, with whom it shares cultural, historical, and linguistic ties. Morocco is a Constitutional Monarchy with an elected parliament.

The political capital is Rabat, and the largest city is Casablanca; other large cities include Marrakesh, Tetouan, Tangier, Fes, Agadir, Meknes and Oujda.

The population is a mix of Arabs and Berbers speaking a dialect of Maghrebi Arabic with many regional dialects. Berber-speaking Moroccans can be divided in Two main dialectal groups: the Riffians, and The Moroccan Atlas Berbers inhabitants.

Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Spain to the north (a water border through the Strait and land borders with three small Spanish-controlled exclaves, Ceuta Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera), Algeria to the East, and Mauritania to the south.

Since 2008, a national agricultural development plan, the "Plan Maroc Vert" has been launched and implemented by the Minister of Agriculture with the funding of the Hassan II Fund for social and economic development. This "Plan Maroc Vert" aims at eradicating poverty in rural areas (40% of the population), revitalizing the agricultural sector (15% of the country's GDP) and ensuring sustainable food security at national level. The OCP Group, the Global Food Security initiator, also supports this program through the development of a detailed set of soil fertility maps for Moroccan farmers and the recent creation of an OCP-sponsored investment fund to support agricultural innovation in Morocco.