Morocco and Belgium will hold a business meeting on green hydrogen in October
Élise Pacot
PHOTO/FILE – Banderas de Bélgica y Morocco
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PHOTO/FILE – Flags of Belgium and Morocco
22/JUL./23
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From 18 to 20 October, Belgian and Moroccan economic operators will be meeting in Tangiers for a business meeting on the theme of “Morocco on the road to green hydrogen”. For this seventh edition of the “Business Meeting” launched by the “Yes 4 Connecting People” agency, the founder Yesmina Hantout is seeking to promote socio-economic synergies around the theme of energies promoting sustainable development.
The programme includes three to four days of networking and discovering Morocco’s business world, topped off by a prestigious gala dinner. The event kicks off on Wednesday with a plenary session attended by the Presidents of the Tangier Region, the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services, the Regional Investment Centre, the Regional ourism Council, representatives of Tanger Med Zones, Hub Tangier, and Moroccan and Belgian business leaders.
Morocco ranks among the world leaders in green hydrogen production
This will be followed by a series of conferences on a variety of topics, including a presentation of the ecosystem in the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, investment conditions, growth sectors, business start-ups, tax benefits, financial incentives and recruitment. The CRM Group, Liège Metallurgy Research Centre, will be hosting a round-table discussion on the energy transition, green hydrogen, decarbonisation of industry, recycling metal waste, 3D printing and the circular economy. Lastly, Popular Bank of Morocco will be presenting “Green-Invest” and its solutions for all entrepreneurial initiatives.
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PHOTO/FILE – Tánger Med
PHOTO/FILE – Tanger Med
In addition to the conferences, this year’s programme includes visits to companies and economic institutions, as well as gastronomic andcultural discoveries. All in all, this annual event gives Belgian entrepreneurs an opportunity to invest in the fast-developing Moroccan market and serves as a forum for professional meetings and possible collaborations between Belgium and Morocco.
The Kingdom of Morocco has major ambitions for the production and export of green hydrogen, thanks to its wealth of phosphates (more than 70 % of the world’s reserves) and its advantageous geographical location (3,500 km of Atlantic and Mediterranean coastline). According to Yesmina Hantout, Morocco has been developing its hydrogen resources since 2021 and should, by 2030, “become an exporter of hydrogen and its derivatives (green ammonia and methanol)” and “could, in time, capture 2 to 4 % of the global hydrogen market, which is increasingly favoured by European countries as an environmentally-friendly energy source”.
PHOTO/FILE – Planta de hidrógeno verde
PHOTO/FILE – Green hydrogen plant
This is not the first meeting between Morocco ad Belgium on this subject. At the end of January, a Moroccan delegation made up of institutions, companies and organisations from the energy sector visited Belgium to explore the prospects for cooperation and investment in the field of green hydrogen. During the visit, Antwerp-Bruges Port Development Director Wim Dillen presented the recent merger between the two ports, which has now become Europe’s second largest port. His ambition is to make the port of Antwerp-Bruges “the most important European hub for importing green hydrogen, by trying to develop international partnerships to import green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol, particularly from Morocco”.
Brussels and Rabat therefore seem to share common and complementary ambitions, offering promising prospects for the Belgian-Moroccan partnership in energy transition. For Alykhan Kassam, Economic Diplomacy Counsellor at the Belgian Embassy in Morocco and a member of the Green H2 Cluster, this rapprochement also provides an opportunityto broaden bilateral cooperation through the exchange of expertise. Morocco has a crucial role to play in the energy partnership with Belgium and other European countries, said the Moroccan ambassador to Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which has been strengthened since the signing of the Green Partnership with the European Union.
