Legacy By Design: Technopark Morocco's Lamiae Benmakhlouf On Leveraging The Country's World Cup 2030 Momentum To Build A Lasting Innovation Ecosystem

Editor's Note: This article is part of a special Inc. Arabia series examining how Morocco's business ecosystem is positioning itself ahead of the country co-hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2030. Check out the full series here.

Long before Morocco won its bid to co-host the FIFA World Cup 2030, Lamiae Benmakhlouf had already seen what the nation was capable of. As the Director General of Technopark Morocco, the country’s national innovation platform that has supported over 3,500 startups since 2001, Benmakhlouf says that Morocco’s potential was already visible to anyone paying enough attention; co-hosting the tournament will only serve to confirm it.

“Rather than revealing new potential, this moment confirmed a reality already in place: Morocco is fully part of the global innovation landscape,” Benmakhlouf tells Inc. Arabia. “As we regularly observe through international exchanges and missions, including in highly advanced markets, Moroccan entrepreneurs today operate at a level of maturity and sophistication comparable to many leading ecosystems, with solutions and talent that increasingly stand shoulder to shoulder on the global stage. This reinforced recognition has acted as a confidence accelerator for both entrepreneurs and investors, strengthening the conviction that Morocco already plays a credible and lasting role in the global entrepreneurial and innovation economy.”

Technopark Morocco currently operates as a multi-regional, proximity- based network with sites in Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Agadir, Essaouira, and Souss-Massa Innovation City, acting as both a hub for startups and SMEs and as an ecosystem connector through its work with investors, corporates, public institutions, and international partners. “Regionalization is a strategic pillar of our model: being close to entrepreneurs, local talent, and regional economic realities, while offering national and international scale opportunities,” Benmakhlouf explains. “We primarily support technology startups and digital SMEs across sectors such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, fintech, healthtech, agritech, industry 4.0, and green technologies.”

Technopark Morocco Director General Lamiae Benmakhlouf.

Meanwhile, Technopark Morocco is evolving into a national scaleup platform that combines strong regional proximity, reinforced on-the-ground support, improved access to markets and investment, and deeper international connectivity. The objective, as Benmakhlouf put it, is to remain close to startups while enabling them to scale sustainably from Morocco to global markets. A flagship initiative within this transformation is the Morocco Accelerator, developed in partnership with global innovation platform Plug and Play and subsidized by Morocco’s Ministry of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform, which is an equity-free program designed to connect Moroccan innovation with local and global opportunities. “Morocco Accelerator addresses a critical ecosystem gap: helping startups move from product to market, and more importantly, from pilot projects to scalable contracts, particularly with large organizations,” Benmakhlouf says. “It complements Technopark’s broader support offering by strengthening market access, investment readiness, and international exposure, while remaining deeply anchored in local territories through our regional network.”

According to Benmakhlouf, strong investor interest is currently being seen in sectors tied to long-term operational needs for Morocco, like smart infrastructure, mobility and logistics, cybersecurity and digital trust, payments and user experience, and sustainability and energy efficiency. When it comes to sectors with the strongest potential, Benmakhlouf identifies mobility, cybersecurity, fintech and SME digitization, energy and sustainability, and B2B software with operational use cases—all of which address recurring structural needs in Morocco. “Purely event-driven solutions are more likely to fade without a solid and repeatable business model,” she adds. “At Technopark, we differentiate opportunistic projects from structural ones based on clarity of the paying customer, scalability and deployment capacity, [and] alignment with lasting economic or institutional needs. This assessment guides how we prioritize and allocate support.”

While Morocco has made significant progress in fostering an innovation ecosystem, Benmakhlouf acknowledges that key challenges remain, including limited depth of growth-stage funding, insufficient access to large corporate and public markets, and a shortage of senior scale-up talent. Addressing these gaps, she says, will require more innovation-friendly public and private procurement, financing mechanisms adapted to scale-up phases, and stronger attraction and development of senior talent, including through the diaspora. Against this backdrop, Benmakhlouf says Technopark Morocco has deliberately focused on helping convert the country’s World Cup momentum into a lasting entrepreneurial legacy. “Consistent with its positioning, Technopark focuses on post-event value creation,” she explains. “The objective is not to support event-specific solutions, but to enable startups building replicable, scalable, and durable technologies that can be embedded into Morocco’s economic and institutional systems well beyond the tournaments.”

Pictured in the lead image is Technopark Morocco Director General Lamiae Benmakhlouf. All images courtesy Technopark Morocco.