Date: 12 to 14 June 2020

Young Moroccan entrepreneurs and innovators came together 12 to 14 June 2020, through a series of Innovation & Youth Virtual Meetings, where they explored —together with experts from Morocco, Denmark and the United Nations— means to speed up implementation of start-ups that they had initiated prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, with a focus on accelerating job creation for youth in Morocco. The meetings particularly examined two solutions including an ecological pesticide that depends on nettles for local farmers and a virtual visit tour application to support Moroccan tourism, returning after COVID-19.

The meetings are hosted under the Danish-Arab partnership program operated by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Moroccan Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program.

The meetings came in follow-up to the Youth Innovation Summit (YIS), which took place in Morocco in October 2019. The YIS brought together more than 100 talents from Morocco and the region to support youth entrepreneurship and the employment of young people –promoting the importance of youth engagement in the pursuit of the sustainable development plans in Morocco and across the region.

Since then, teams of talented youth have developed innovative start-ups focused on addressing challenges in key development challenges in Morocco, in the fields of climate change, renewable energies, tourism, agribusiness and food production. However, the COVID-19 outbreak and lock down measures that were necessary to curb it have slowed down their progress. Meanwhile, the economic impacts of the pandemic rendered such innovative solutions more crucial than ever to accelerate Morocco's economic recovery after COVID-19.

The Innovation & Youth Virtual Meetings are predicated on the premise that youth have the greatest potential and motivation to overcome the most pressing challenges that our world faces today – a premise closely aligned with the acknowledgement of the Sustainable Development Goals of young people as “essential agents of change.” In Morocco, His Majesty King Mohammed VI has consistently stressed that youth are the most important asset of the country and that it is essential to include them in the political process and in development efforts.

The Moroccan Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Othman El Ferdaous inaugurated the Innovation & Youth Virtual Meetings, together with the Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jeppe Kofod, and UNDP’s Deputy Assistant Administrator and Deputy Regional Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States, Sarah Poole. The meetings were concluded with a live closing session during which young innovators presented their solutions and their plans for how to take them to the market. Learn more about the Virtual Innovation Summit through this link.

You can watch the Official Opening ceremony, dialogue forum and pitching & closing ceremony