Thanks to digital technologies, Morocco was able to better manage the health crisis related to the Covid-19 pandemic, says the London-based business intelligence firm "Oxford Business Group" (OBG).

In a report dedicated to digital transformation in Morocco in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Oxford Business Group analyzes the impact of technology on Moroccan society and economy, showing how the use of these technologies has enabled the Kingdom to best weather the crisis, offering avenues for future development through accelerated digital transformation.

According to the report, the Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated the need for increased digitization, but Morocco did not wait until 2020 to begin its digital transformation. This transformation, which started a decade ago, has been accelerated by major government initiatives, including "Horizon 2020", launched in 2017, and "Horizon 2025", which have set ambitious targets for e-government and training young people in new technologies.

According to OBG, these efforts had already borne fruit in early 2020, when Morocco was ranked fourth among the MENA countries in the European Center for Digital Competitiveness.

For the authors of the report, while Morocco already enjoyed relatively high internet and mobile penetration rates, the Covid-19 pandemic has spurred technological innovation in many sectors, whether in finance, agriculture, or education, noting that confinement has boosted e-commerce and that the habit of contactless payment now seems to be well established among the population.

As a result, online payments grew 31.3% in the first half of 2020, compared to the same period last year, according to the report.

In response to the pandemic, OBG adds, the public and private sectors put in place a series of measures that maintained productivity while respecting social distance.

source: mapnews