Moroccan-Dutch partnership for the creation of a center of excellence in Agadir and its operationalization
The Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is taking part, on Saturday December 10, 2022 in Agadir, alongside the Minister of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests, in the official inauguration of the Center for Horticultural Excellence, the result of very close cooperation between the governments of the Netherlands and Morocco, and the strong mobilization of various Dutch and Moroccan private players.
The inauguration marks the transition of the Center of Excellence in Horticulture to the operationalization phase. This will allow the expression of potential as a federating institution of stakeholders from different backgrounds, allowing to aggregate ideas and energies for a sustainable and integrated development of the horticultural sector in Morocco. Several Dutch institutions (Embassy, Ministry of Agriculture, research institutions and private companies, etc.) will contribute, alongside their Moroccan counterparts (Ministry of Agriculture, Hassan II Agronomic and Veterinary Institute, Agadir Horticultural Complex, etc.) , to the achievement of this important objective which converges with the objectives of the Generation Green 2030 strategy. The Center of Excellence and the projects linked to it, offer great opportunities to exchange the experiences of the two countries and to strengthen the synergies and complementarities between the production sectors in Morocco and the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, horticulture has succeeded in setting up clusters focused on knowledge and innovation and involving close and continuous cooperation between government actors, academic institutions and the private sector. This so-called triple helix model is the quintessence of the development strategy of different sectors of the Dutch economy. The development of a similar ecosystem around the Center of Excellence will strengthen the achievements of the Moroccan horticultural sector and its international dimension. The objective of this Moroccan-Dutch cooperation is also to make the Souss-Massa region a pilot region in terms of the Water-Agriculture-Energy Nexus application as an integrated approach to achieving the sustainable development objectives and to share this experience with other countries. other regions of Morocco.
