On Monday March 9, 2020, the Minister of Tourism, Handicrafts, Air Transport and Social Economy presided over the headquarters of the Ministry, the launch of the first edition of the National Prize Initiative for the best idea of development of a women's cooperative project “Lalla al Moutaaouina” under the slogan “Cooperatives, a lever for the economic empowerment of women”.

14 winning female cooperatives bringing together 357 women members were crowned on 384 project ideas submitted by female cooperatives as part of the request for expressions of interest launched for this purpose by the Cooperation Development Office. The cooperatives winning this national prize, which amounts to 50,000 dirhams, operate throughout the Kingdom, in the sectors of crafts, agriculture, sea fishing and foodstuffs. A set of partners have contributed to the funding of this prize, these are the Fondation du Complexe Cherif du Phosphate, COSUMAR Group, the COPAG agricultural cooperative, the Moroccan Bank for Foreign Trade for Africa and the Crédit Agricole Group of Morocco.

This ceremony, organized on the occasion of the celebration of International Women's Day, is part of the efforts made by the Ministry and the Cooperation Development Office to strengthen the role of women's cooperatives as businesses. which contribute par excellence to the economic empowerment of women and to encourage them to social innovation to improve the socio-economic and educational conditions of their members.

In her speech, the Minister of Tourism, Crafts, Air Transport and Social Economy, Ms. Nadia Fettah, said that women's cooperatives in Morocco have experienced remarkable development in recent years, they have 4,524 cooperatives comprising more than 35,000 women members, which represents 16.6% of the total of cooperatives in Morocco. She added that the last four years following the promulgation of Law 12-112 on cooperatives have seen the creation of 3,360 new female cooperatives, with an annual average of 840 female cooperatives.

Ms. Fettah stressed that the Kingdom attached great importance to the economic empowerment of women in the various sectoral programs that were launched. The encouragement of the creation of women's cooperatives is due to their role as independent social enterprises contributing directly to the economic and social empowerment of women.

She added that the current and new dynamic conditions that Morocco is experiencing are favorable for the encouragement of female cooperatives and the achievement of economic empowerment of women, and more particularly after the launch of the Royal initiative concerning the integrated program of support and financing for businesses, which can benefit women producers in the context of cooperatives or businesses.

The Minister underlined the important role of cooperatives in the engagement of all citizens in development without discrimination, regardless of their backgrounds and abilities, and the possibility for women to develop and to pool their efforts as democratic institutions based on economic means to achieve social objectives.

For his part, the director general of the Cooperation Development Office, Youssef HOSNI, during a presentation on the occasion, underlined the great development of the cooperative sector in Morocco, declaring that the number of cooperatives active in this day is 27,262 cooperatives with 563,776 members, 35% of whom are women.

On the other hand, he underlined that many constraints hinder the development of women's cooperatives and their evolution, in particular the low level of education of female cooperative members, limited skills in the field of project management, difficulty in access to markets, lack of necessary certificates, difficulty in accessing funding sources to develop projects. limited networking of cooperatives and lack of health and social coverage for cooperative members.

He underlined that the Ministry in charge works in cooperation with the Cooperation Development Office, the actors concerned and the support institutions to establish multiple programs aiming to support cooperatives in order to overcome these obstacles through innovative engineering. which aims for convergence between all the stakeholders concerned to achieve the expected efficiency.