Proof Point: Breega's Driss Ibenmansour On How Morocco's 2030 FIFA World Cup Validates Its Growth Trajectory
"Morocco has a window between now and 2030 to improve the underlying conditions, such as access to capital, regulatory clarity, and talent density. If that work happens in parallel, 2030 becomes a launchpad.”
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.
For Driss Ibenmansour, Partner at international venture capital (VC) firm Breega, Morocco’s FIFA World Cup 2030 is not a pivot, but rather a proof point for the country’s startup ecosystem. The Moroccan-born and raised investor, whose firm manages around US$700 million in assets and has backed founders across Nigeria, Morocco, Senegal, Kenya, and beyond, believes that the tournament’s most meaningful contribution to Morocco will not be the sectors it ignites, but the signal it sends.
“It confirms Morocco’s ambition and its capacity to execute at a global scale, which matters when we’re thinking about founder quality and market appetite,” Ibenmansour says. “It also puts Morocco on the map for a certain class of international limited partner (LP) and co-investor who may not have been tracking the country closely before. We are seeing more inbound curiosity from foreign capital and questions about what else is happening in the ecosystem beyond the World Cup itself. That’s a healthy sign, but it also means we have a responsibility to channel that interest toward fundamentals rather than hype.”
According to Ibenmansour, the impact of the World Cup is already beginning to take shape across several sectors in Morocco. “The most immediate attention is flowing toward hospitality, tourism infrastructure, and mobility,” he notes. “There’s a real and pressing need to move people efficiently across cities and between venues. We’re also seeing interest in payments and fintech, given the influx of international visitors who will expect seamless digital transactions. Construction tech and proptech are benefiting from the infrastructure buildout as well.”
But not all of that momentum will prove equally lasting, Ibenmansour says. “The sectors with durable upside are those where the World Cup accelerates adoption of something structurally needed,” he explains. “Fintech is the clearest example, as once you’ve pushed digital payments infrastructure to handle international tourists, you don’t roll it back. Edtech and healthtech have strong long-term tailwinds rooted in Morocco’s demographics, and logistics will benefit from the connectivity improvements being built right now. Proptech is another sector we’re particularly excited about, and the thesis predates 2030. Morocco processes close to 700,000 real estate transactions a year, yet 80 percent of listings remain offline and non-professionally intermediated.”
As for the sectors Ibenmansour believes may be less sustainable beyond the tournament, he points specifically to hospitality-driven businesses with models sized for a 2030 spike rather than steady demand. “The real risk is the one-cycle boom trap, and investors have a role to play in avoiding it: staying disciplined on valuations inflated by temporary tailwinds, and pushing portfolio companies to build regionally from day one,” he says. “If your business only makes sense during a construction boom, it probably won’t survive the hangover.”
Ibenmansour also points out that Morocco can do a lot more in terms of building an enabling environment for entrepreneurs. “A few gaps stand out,” he says. “The first is depth of early- stage capital, as Morocco still lacks a dense ecosystem of local angels and seed-stage funds willing to take risks on unproven founders, which means too many good ideas don’t survive long enough to find institutional backing. The second, and perhaps most consequential, is regulatory maturity around fintech and payments. The contrast with Egypt is stark. The Financial Regulatory Authority and the Central Bank of Egypt have done genuinely impressive work building progressive, founder- friendly frameworks, from payment service provider licensing to open banking, and a fintech sandbox that has given startups real room to experiment. That regulatory clarity has been a meaningful driver of Egypt’s fintech boom and has given investors confidence to deploy at scale. Morocco’s Central Bank is moving in the right direction, but the pace needs to accelerate to match what founders are actually building on the ground.”
Another structural constraint, Ibenmansour says, is the absence of clear exit infrastructure. “Without visible paths to liquidity, whether through active mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or more accessible capital markets, it’s harder to attract the kind of growth-stage capital that takes ecosystems to the next level,” he says. “Egypt and the Gulf are meaningfully ahead on this front.” So, what reforms would be required for the Moroccan ecosystem to keep pace with its peers? On the regulatory side, Ibenmansour believes the most impactful change would be simplifying the legal and fiscal framework for startups, making it easier to incorporate, issue stock options, and repatriate capital. “[Morocco Digital 2030] was an important signal, but awareness and implementation on the ground still need work,” he says. “On capital markets, creating more accessible pathways for growth-stage companies, whether through a dedicated SME board or incentives for domestic institutional investors to allocate to venture, would meaningfully change the funding landscape. Talent is perhaps the slowest but most important lever: expanding tech education, and creating incentives for diaspora return, would compound over time.”
Beyond strengthening its domestic ecosystem, Ibenmansour believes Morocco would do well to study the experiences of previous World Cup hosts. “South Africa is the cautionary tale,” he says. “Its 2010 World Cup generated real infrastructure investment, but it didn’t translate into durable ecosystem momentum. The energy dissipated because there was no deliberate strategy to convert global attention into sustained private sector development. Qatar is a different model, state-driven and hard to replicate, but the lesson there is what’s possible when political will and execution capacity are aligned. The most useful takeaway from both is that the tournament is a forcing function, not a strategy. It creates deadlines and international attention, but it doesn’t automatically build ecosystems. Morocco has a window between now and 2030 to improve the underlying conditions, such as access to capital, regulatory clarity, and talent density. If that work happens in parallel, 2030 becomes a launchpad.”
Pictured in the lead image is Breega Partner Driss Ibenmansour. Image courtesy Breega.
This article was originally published in the May - June 2026 edition of Inc. Arabia. Check out the issue in full on this link.
