Germany’s development agency GIZ and the Moroccan leadership network We4She launched the INEFF initiative — Inclusion économique des femmes dans les secteurs du futur — on the sidelines of the recently concluded GITEX Africa 2026 in Marrakech, introducing a targeted call for expressions of interest from Moroccan companies willing to embed gender equality into their core operating practices. The program addresses one of Morocco’s most persistent structural weaknesses: a female labor force participation rate that remains among the lowest in the world, despite a decade of committed public policy.
Companies selected under the program will receive a three-part support package. The first element is a detailed diagnostic of current gender practices within the organization. The second is bespoke operational coaching to design and implement concrete actions adapted to the company’s sector and scale. The third, and most tangible, is financial support of up to 250,000 dirhams to fund the implementation of those actions — a range that encompasses everything from targeted skills training programs to the establishment of on-site childcare facilities.
The sectors in focus are those identified as the economy’s growth engines over the coming decade: renewable energy, information technology, agri-food processing and logistics. GIZ’s broader gender and employment program in Morocco, which operates in close partnership with the Ministry of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment and Skills, has consistently found that these high-growth sectors are also among those with the sharpest gender access barriers, whether structural, cultural or regulatory.
We4She — a leadership network founded by nine Moroccan businesswomen as an offshoot of the panAfrican Women Working for Change movement — brings the private sector credibility and executive network that GIZ’s institutional framework cannot replicate alone. The combination of German development finance, rigorous program design and Moroccan private-sector advocacy gives INEFF a stronger implementation architecture than many previous gender inclusion initiatives that struggled to convert government commitments into firm-level change.
The launch at GITEX was symbolically well-chosen: placing a gender inclusion initiative within Africa’s largest technology and innovation forum signals that the question of who participates in Morocco’s digital economy is inseparable from the question of how that economy develops. The program’s ambition is not simply to place more women in existing roles, but to reshape the internal culture and practices of Moroccan companies so that inclusion becomes self-reinforcing rather than policy-dependent.
