Morocco Claims the Crown as Africa’s Most Industrialised Economy

In a monumental shift for the continent's economic landscape, Morocco has officially overtaken South Africa to become the top industrial economy in Africa. For over a decade, the African Development Bank Group's Africa Industrialisation Index consistently reported the same narrative, with South Africa holding the top position, followed closely by a North African contingent of Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia.

However, the newly released 2025 Africa Industrialisation Index, unveiled at the bank's annual meetings in Brazzaville, reveals that the Kingdom of Morocco has secured the crown. In this latest assessment, Morocco achieved a score of 0.8415 points, narrowly edging out South Africa, which fell to second place with 0.8396 points.

According to the African Development Bank, Morocco’s rise to the pinnacle of African industry is the direct result of a highly disciplined execution of strategic public policies. Decades of targeted state planning, consistent industrial modernisation, and aggressive export diversification have allowed Morocco to transition away from raw material reliance and step into high-value manufacturing. The bank credits Morocco’s sustained upgrades in sophisticated sectors—such as automotive manufacturing, aerospace, renewable energy, and advanced industrial infrastructure—as the driver of this historic achievement.

While South Africa remains a massive continental powerhouse, the bank notes that it has experienced a gradual, long-term decline in industrial competitiveness, with its score dropping from 0.8819 in 2010 to its current level, paving the way for Morocco's ascendancy.

The bank also launched its inaugural Africa Industrial Investment Barometer, developed in partnership with WITBA Invest SA and Trendeo, which evaluates continental industrialisation through three key pillars: industrial diversification, investment attractiveness, and productive anchoring, the latter measuring how deeply investments are embedded into local supply chains. North Africa ranked highest across all three categories, driven primarily by the strong industrial performance of Morocco and Egypt. Propelled by this momentum, the North African region managed to attract a staggering 56 per cent of all cumulative industrial investment on the continent between 2020 and 2025.

The African Development Bank highlights Morocco as a premier blueprint for what it describes as a silent but irreversible industrial transition taking place across parts of the continent. While 41 out of 54 African countries improved their overall industrialisation scores between 2010 and 2024, the bank emphasises that progress across Africa remains slow and uneven. On a global scale, the continent still accounts for less than 2 per cent of worldwide manufacturing output and only 1.4 per cent of manufacturing exports, with manufacturing value-added per capita remaining below its 2014 peak.

To bridge these continental gaps, the African Development Bank underscores the critical importance of moving beyond basic tariff reductions toward functional regional economic corridors under the African Continental Free Trade Area. The report notes that Morocco's success stems from its ability to build complete local supplier networks and deep vertical integration, a stark contrast to regions like Southern Africa, where high-value automotive plants still rely heavily on assembling imported kits rather than sourcing locally.

By shifting the continental focus from integration for trade to integration for production-aligning industrial policies, cross-border infrastructure, and long-term local currency financing-the bank projects that effective trade area implementation could boost African incomes by 7 per cent by 2035 and generate up to $450 billion in additional value. In the meantime, Morocco stands at the absolute forefront, utilising its stable business environment, tax incentives, and deep industrial ecosystems to position itself as the dominant manufacturing hub linking Africa to global markets.