Maroc Telecom doubles down on digital sovereignty

• Maroc Telecom has highlighted digital sovereignty as a ‘major strategic focus’
• It aims to be at the heart of efforts to develop secure infrastructure and manage data flows within Africa’s borders

Maroc Telecom Group, the leading telco in Morocco and a major player in multiple other African markets, has pinpointed digital sovereignty as “a major strategic focus” for the group as it strives to build “a sovereign and resilient digital world that serves Africa’s economic development.”

The group’s chairman and CEO, Mohamed Benchaaboun, recently held discussions with Henna Virkkunen, head of digital sovereignty, security and democracy at the European Commission, during the recent Gitex Africa 2026 event that is being held in Marrakech this week, with the talks focused on securing critical digital infrastructure, data governance, cybersecurity and the conditions for sovereign and sustainable technological development, according to this Maroc Telecom announcement (in French).   

Maroc Telecom noted that as a major operator in Morocco and across Africa – it has more than 73 million mobile customers across 11 markets, with Morocco (19.2 million) and Côte d’Ivoire (13.4 million) the largest – it is “at the heart of the challenges related to securing telecommunications infrastructure, managing data flows, and developing a digital ecosystem rooted in the regions it serves.”

It added: “Continuous investments in next-generation networks, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity reflect this ambition to build a sovereign and resilient digital world that serves Africa’s economic development.”

The key aims are to secure digital infrastructure against growing cyber threats, guarantee the protection of citizens’ data, and to build “credible technological alternatives to the concentration of global digital players”.  

Benchaaboun stated: “Digital sovereignty is not an abstract concept. For Maroc Telecom, it is a concrete, daily responsibility. We are deploying critical infrastructure that connects tens of millions of people in Morocco and across Africa. Securing this infrastructure, controlling the data that flows through it, and ensuring the resilience of our networks against threats of all kinds: This is what digital sovereignty means to us. Our meeting with Ms. Virkkunen confirmed that on these issues, the European Union and Africa not only have converging interests but also a real capacity to build together solutions that meet the challenges.”

Maroc Telecom, in which Middle East giant e& holds a majority (53%) stake, ended 2025 with more than 73 million mobile and 1.74 million fixed broadband customers, with the majority of those broadband customers (1.42 million) in Morocco. It generated annual revenues of 36.68bn dirhams ($3.94bn) in 2025, roughly in line with the previous year, while its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dipped by 3.6% to 18.5bn dirhams (1.99bn). In 2025, its group capex (excluding spectrum licences and associated costs) totalled almost 9.4bn dirhams ($1bn), giving it a capex-to-revenues ratio of 25.6%. In 2026, the operator expects its revenues and EBITDA to grow and its capex/revenues ratio to remain at around 25% as it invests in its 5G network in Morocco. 

What Maroc Telecom doesn’t have currently is a meaningful portfolio of digital infrastructure assets beyond its communications networks. The operator has a datacentre facility in Casablanca that primarily offers services to Moroccan small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and is reportedly in the process of striking a datacentre hub partnership deal with Google Cloud. 

This report suggests that Maroc Telecom will start to shift more investment towards datacentre and sovereign cloud infrastructure to further the aims of Morocco’s government, which is a 22% stakeholder in the telco. It’s worth noting also that Benchaaboun, who has been at the helm of Maroc Telecom for just over a year, is a former top politician (finance minister) and was also (two decades ago) head of Morocco’s telecom regulatory body.

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV