Benguerir’s forum crystallized a continental consensus: Africa’s smart city future hinges not on imported algorithms but on locally forged, socially anchored AI ecosystems steered by universities and territorial governance.
The third edition of the Smart Green City Benguerir-Africa Forum convened on Tuesday at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) campus, assembling diplomats, governors, tech executives, and academics from over a dozen countries to make the case that African cities must forge their own models of intelligent urbanism rather than import them wholesale from abroad.
The third edition of the Smart Green City Benguerir-Africa Forum convened on Tuesday at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) campus, assembling diplomats, governors, tech executives, and academics from over a dozen countries to make the case that African cities must forge their own models of intelligent urbanism rather than import them wholesale from abroad.
“The idea is to bring the dimension of technological tools closer to the citizen and allow them to have an improved daily life, more comfortable and more at their service,” Tarik Zoubdi, Director of UM6P’s School of Architecture, Planning & Design (SAP+D), told Morocco World News (MWN) on the sidelines of the event. “We are receiving officials, diplomats, and leading figures on the subject of smart cities to discuss the Benguerir Green Smart City 2026 project.”
Also speaking to MWN, Conference Chair Aawatif Hayar framed the forum’s overarching ambition in more structural terms. “We will discuss today how we can build an ecosystem led by the University Mohammed VI Polytechnique to deploy or draft a roadmap for a smart green city Benguerir,” she noted, adding that the initiative originated within the university and now benefits from active collaboration with the SADV and the Prefecture of Rehamna.
Co-organized by UM6P, the Province of Rehamna, and the Société d’Aménagement et de Développement de la Ville Verte de Benguerir (SADV), the daylong forum unfolded under the theme “Universities as Catalysts of Frugal, Sovereign, and Social AI for Smart and Inclusive Territories.” It is a deliberate pivot from the technocentric orthodoxical paradigms that have long dominated global smart city discourse.
Recentering the city on people
Zoubdi, delivering the welcome address, laid down the forum’s intellectual gauntlet with precision. “The debate on smart cities has long been dominated by a technocentric narrative – sensors, platforms, algorithms presented as universal tools,” he declared. “What Benguerir invites us to explore is another path, one where the starting question is not what technology to deploy, but what challenge to solve, for whom, and with whom.”
He called for an AI that is “frugal by lucidity, sovereign by design, and social by mission,” warning that any technology failing to reach the periphery or reduce inequality “misses its most fundamental purpose.”
Rehamna Governor Aziz Bouignane anchored the discussion in territorial governance. He described Benguerir’s transformation from a city historically defined by its mining heritage into “a space of innovation, knowledge, and sustainability.”
No smart city can succeed “without investment in the human element – knowledge, training, entrepreneurship, and the inclusion of youth,” the governor insisted, pointing to Benguerir’s recent recognition as a UNESCO Learning City as validation of this human-first philosophy.
Spain’s Minister-Counselor Alvaro Ortega, representing the embassy as one of two guest countries alongside Rwanda, cast the forum as emblematic of an evolving bilateral relationship.
He hailed the recent MOU between UM6P and two Spanish entities – the INTICO research institute linked to the University of Murcia and technology firm OdinS – as initiatives that “bring innovation but also create long-term trust, connectivity, and shared prosperity.” For him, the relationship between Spain and Morocco is “ready to advance in more technological and forward-looking forms of cooperation.”
Stacking the deck for a homegrown smart city
Rwanda’s Ambassador Shakilla K. Umutoni delivered the most substantive policy address of the morning, outlining her country’s trajectory as an early mover on AI governance in Africa. Rwanda adopted a national AI policy in 2022, she recalled, and now boasts over 96% 4G population coverage with more than 75% of government services accessible online.
She spotlighted the Kigali Innovation City project and the AI Scaling Hub for Africa – a Gates Foundation-backed initiative managed through Rwanda’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution – as concrete expressions of the continent’s capacity to produce, not merely consume, intelligent technologies.
SADV General Director Ali Chekroun brought the conversation back to Benguerir’s physical and strategic realities. The Green City spans 1,400 hectares – larger than Casablanca Finance City, Tamesna, or even La Défense in Paris – and now faces a pivotal inflection point with the 2030 FIFA World Cup driving a wave of infrastructure investment, including a TGV station and a high-speed rail link to Marrakech. “The critical mass is here,” Chekroun declared. “There is no reason we should not succeed.”
Mohamed Jouahri, General Director of Casablanca Events & Animation, announced that the 10th edition of Casablanca Smart City – scheduled for June 10-11 – will explore the concept of “Smart City Augmenté,” integrating AI, digital twins, and data into urban policymaking while remaining “profoundly connected to human creativity, culture, and the citizen experience.”
Honeywell’s Chief Commercial Officer for Africa and the Middle East, Fahmi Jabri, detailed the company’s MOU with UM6P to transform the campus into a connected living lab.
The partnership centers on Honeywell’s City Suite IoT platform and Forge enterprise management layer, with plans extending to a co-funded PhD program in generative AI and digital twin capabilities. “We don’t want students to read about smart cities from books,” Jabri declared. “We want them to test with their hands and develop modules for their cities.”
Pierre-Manuel Patry, Head of EMEA at Akila, reinforced the collaborative tenor via video message, describing the company’s AI-native digital twin work with UM6P as proof that “the future of smart cities in Africa will not be copied from elsewhere – it will be designed locally, tested on real territories, and built through strong partnerships.”
In her formal address, Hayar distilled the forum’s philosophical core into three imperatives: AI that is frugal because “innovation must remain accessible, energy-efficient, and locally rooted”; sovereign because “nations must develop their own capacities, data governance, and technological independence”; and social because it must “advance human dignity, inclusion, and equity.”
She situated these ambitions within Morocco’s broader national development model, anchored in the strengthening of the social state under the leadership of King Mohammed VI.
The forum’s three afternoon panels examined the Benguerir smart city showcase, technological sovereignty and frugal innovation, and the role of social AI in human and territorial development, with keynote sessions featuring academics from Delft University, the University of Houston, Johannes Kepler University Linz, and Avinashilingam University, among others.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Adil Faouzi
Dieser Artikel ist neu veröffentlicht von / This article is republished from: Morocco World News, 12.05.2026
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