The Kingdom of Morocco plans to build a 500 megawatt data center powered by renewable energy. The initiative, announced by the Minister of Digital Transition, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, in an interview with Reuters, aims to strengthen the national cloud. It comes after a first installation launched at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, which has been offering accommodation services to public and private structures since January

The announcement comes a few months after the opening, in January, of a first datacenter at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. It already offers accommodation services to administrations and private companies. But with this new installation in Dakhla, Morocco is changing scale. The stated objective is twofold: to guarantee the local hosting of sensitive Moroccan data, under national jurisdiction, and to offer sufficient cloud capacity to support the digital transition of public services and strategic sectors

By developing a hybrid cloud, combining sovereign cloud and public cloud, the Moroccan government hopes to meet the growing needs for storage, security and data processing. This approach, promoted by the World Bank since 2022, makes it possible to combine efficiency, technological flexibility and risk management. In particular, it has enabled countries such as Singapore or Rwanda to maintain the continuity of public services and to develop advanced digital tools, even in crisis situations such as during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The choice of Dakhla to set up this center is not trivial. The region has a high potential in solar and wind energy, and is part of the major energy transition projects that Morocco has been carrying out for several years. This approach also reinforces Western Sahara's regional integration strategy, which the kingdom is developing through multiple infrastructures.