Casablanca- Casablanca, Morocco’s economic capital and melting pot city, has recently figured among Africa’s top three largest cities with the greatest potential for inclusive growth, according to the 2014 African Cities Growth Index (ACGI).
According to the website L’agence Ecofin, the ACGI ranked Casablanca as the second African city with greatest potential for inclusive growth. Casablanca, the only representative Maghreb city, ranked right after Accra (capital of Ghana), and ahead of Freetown (capital of Sierra Leone).
Accra is the only African city that was classified in the high-potential section. Casablanca and Freetown figured in the medium-high section, according to the same source.
Casablanca also ranked 22nd in the 2014 Emerging Cities Outlook (ECO), and 3rd best weather place according to the March-April issue of the American Magazine Weatherwise.
The 2014 ACGO featured two other large Moroccan cities: Rabat, the administrative capital, ranking 15th, and Fez, the kingdom’s spiritual capital, ranking 17th.
The 2014 ACGI studied 74 African cities, which were classified into three categories according to their population size: large (more than one million), medium (between 500,000 and one million) and small (less than 500,000). After their classification, the cities were placed in one of four sections describing their potential for inclusive growth: high, medium-high, medium-low and low.
“Inclusive growth occurs when the benefits of an expanding economy are widely shared with the population,” said Dr. Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, co-author and Chief Economist at the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, as quoted by South African IT website Business Tech.
“We believe that inclusive urbanization is a prerequisite for inclusive growth, and so the ACGI is a lens through which African cities can be assessed as future investment destinations,” added Dr. Yuwa.