Is Africa’s US$2.3 billion bullet train service from Tangiers to Casablanca money well spent?
Morocco views the project as a sign of progress, but critics say the funds should have gone on education, writes Harrison Jacobs, who tries out the new service
People often visit Morocco for a glimpse of the past.
There are snake charmers and monkey tamers putting on a show for tourists in the central square of Marrakech and winding labyrinths of the country’s old medinas.
There are remote mountain villages that make you feel like the first foreigner to have ever stepped inside and golden, timeless seas of sand.
However, one thing most people don’t visit Morocco for is a glimpse of the future.
The Moroccan government and its king, Mohammed VI, are hoping that will soon change with the introduction of a high-speed rail system.
Opened in November after over a decade in development, the Al Boraq is Africa’s first high-speed train.
Morocco is hoping that foreign investors and Moroccans will look at the project as evidence that the country is on the fast-track to progress. Whether that is actually the case or not is up for debate.
“In French, it's called ‘les grands chantiers’, the closest translation of which is ‘grand design’,” Zouhair Ait Benhamou, a PhD candidate at Paris Nanterre University who studies big- ticket projects like Morocco’s high-speed rail, told one newspaper last month.
For some Moroccans, the train is an expensive folly, which used up funds that would have been better spent on overcrowded schools or the overtaxed medical system.
For others, the belief is that the benefits of having futuristic infrastructure will “trickle down” to the rest of Morocco. Only time will tell.