From Marrakesh to Nairobi: Africa – A Force for the World Trading System: From the Past Twenty Years to the Next Twenty Years

Morocco’s membership of the GATT and WTO has been part of an overall strategy of the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco, at the instigation of the late King Hassan II, to introduce a package of institutional and socio-economic reforms, which sought mainly to modify and diversify the structure of the national economy, optimize the allocation of its resources and ensure its integration into the world economy. Being a Member of the Multilateral Trading System is also an expression of the government’s wish to integrate more fully into the world economy by anchoring its reforms in the legal primacy of an international agreement, rather than just in domestic legislation, as reaffirmed by the Constitution adopted in 2011. In doing so, Morocco made opening up its economy a firm and irreversible commitment.