Morocco ranked 66th globally in the 2024 Global Innovation Index, performing notably well in creativity and exceeding expectations for lower-middle-income countries. The report also highlighted Morocco's rapid rise in the rankings over the past decade and its inclusion among Africa's top scientific clusters, though challenges remain in business development and patenting. Morocco ranked 66th globally out of 133 countries, with a score of 28.8 out of 100, in the Global Innovation Index (GII) for 2024, issued by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in collaboration with Cornell University and INSEAD. The GII assesses global innovation trends and ranks the innovation ecosystems of economies worldwide, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in innovation metrics. Now in its 17th edition, the GII serves as a global benchmark for tracking innovation trends, guiding policymakers, business leaders, and others in leveraging human creativity to improve lives and address common challenges like climate change. This year, the report also focuses on «social entrepreneurship», which utilizes private sector practices to drive positive social change. In terms of sub-indicators, Morocco ranked 70th in knowledge and technology outputs, 37th in creative outputs, 78th in institutions, 81st in human capital and research, 88th in infrastructure, 82nd in market sophistication, and 125th in business sophistication. Morocco shows strong progress over the decade The report noted, «China, India, Iran, Morocco, the Philippines and Türkiye the highest risers over the past 10 years». It added that Morocco's performance has exceeded expectations for lower-middle-income countries, and highlighted that «China, Türkiye, India, Viet Nam, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Morocco are the middle-income economies that have climbed the fastest in the GII ranking since 2013». The GII 2024 also identified the top scientific and technological clusters in Africa outside the global top 100, noting that Egypt leads with 11 clusters, followed by South Africa (8), Morocco (5), Nigeria (4), Tunisia (4), Ethiopia (2), Ghana (2), and Kenya (1). The report explained, «these clusters are strong in scientific publications but weaker in international patenting, thus they continue to be more science rather than full-blown S&T clusters». In the Arab world, the United Arab Emirates ranked first (32nd globally), followed by Saudi Arabia (47th), Qatar (49th), and Morocco (66th). In the Maghreb, Morocco led, followed by Tunisia (81st), Algeria (115th), and Mauritania (126th), while Libya was not included in the report. Globally, Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Singapore, and the United Kingdom topped the GII 2024 rankings. China, Turkey, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines have shown the most progress over the past decade. The 2024 edition also highlighted a significant decline in leading indicators of future innovation activity. The boom in innovation investment seen between 2020 and 2022 has slowed, with venture capital funding falling by nearly 40% in 2023, reduced growth in R&D spending, and a decline in international patent applications and scientific publications.
