The French Development Agency (AFD) will invest €150 million in Morocco’s southern provinces in Western Sahara.
The announcement came during AFD Director General Remy Rioux’s visit to the area, which has been the center of a dispute between Morocco and Algeria, with the latter long supporting the Polisario Front’s push for Western Sahara’s independence. The United Nations has had the former Spanish colony listed as “a non-self-governing territory” since 1963.
“The AFD Group will now invest in the southern regions by bringing in investments and financing,” Rioux said at a press conference, adding that these investments bode well for youth employment in the region, Morocco World News reported.
Last summer, Paris announced its support for Rabat’s own autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara. In the early 2000s, Morocco first presented this plan to give the indigenous Sahrawi people self-governance in the form of its own elected legislature, courts, and day-to-day governance. The territory would, however, remain under Moroccan rule in terms of foreign affairs and military defense.
Then in October, as noted by Le Figaro, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would “support the development of these territories through investments and sustainable and supportive initiatives for the benefit of local populations.” At the time, Engie, MGH Energy, and other French companies were on the ground to sign agreements to produce green energy and e-fuels from this disputed territory.
Meanwhile, Le Monde reports that French FM Jean-Noël Barrot has said that relations between France and Algeria remain “totally frozen” since both countries expelled each other’s diplomats. Barrot placed the blame squarely on Algiers, saying that it was the Algerian authorities who first “abruptly decided to expel twelve of our agents.”
Barrot was on the ground to commemorate the May 8, 1945, Sétif and Guelma massacre by French police when Algeria was still a colony of France. Many say this event sparked the war that would eventually lead to Algeria’s independence in 1962.
Regarding further sanctions against Algeria, after having already restricted entry to France back in February for certain Algerian officials, the French foreign minister said: “I am not ruling myself out of taking [new] measures. I won’t necessarily say when I will take them, or when I won’t. That’s how diplomacy works.”
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