Vocational Training Cities
746,500 Trainees. The State Builds the Demand. You Operate the Asset.

The Royal Mandate That Created a New Asset Class

In April 2019, Morocco's King presented a national vocational training roadmap before a full ministerial council. The centrepiece was Project 2: the Cités des Métiers et des Compétences — twelve next-generation campus complexes, one per region, combining technical training, digital infrastructure, residential facilities, and industry-linked placement pipelines under a single roof. This was not a pilot programme. It was a sovereign industrial policy decision, backed by full state financing, and carried through with the kind of velocity that Royal directives generate in the Moroccan administration.

By 2025–2026, ten CMCs are fully operational. The final two are opening. Each campus covers 10 to 20 hectares. Each offers 2,000 to 3,000 training places across ten or more sectoral poles — from renewable energy and industrial mechanics to digital infrastructure, agribusiness, and hospitality management. Boarding, cafeterias, sports infrastructure, coworking spaces, Fab Labs, Digital Factories, and incubators are standard across the network. The state built it. The state filled it. The structure is now ready for private operators.

The PPP Structure — What OFPPT Has Actually Opened

The OFPPT board has publicly confirmed that CMCs will be structured as Sociétés Anonymes — joint-stock companies — specifically to enable private equity entry, management concessions, and co-development partnerships. This is not a future aspiration. It is a governance decision already embedded in the CMC legal architecture. The PPP mechanism explicitly contemplated by OFPPT includes three modes: management concession of existing CMC operations, co-investment in new campus expansion (additional halls, residential blocks, specialised labs), and sector-specific training partnerships with international operators who bring curriculum, certification, and placement pipelines.

The structure is already defined. What matters is how you position within it.

How You Get Paid — Four Revenue Layers

The CMC revenue model is structurally more diversified than a standard education PPP. Layer one is training fee income: trainees pay MAD 50 in registration fees, but the real revenue is the per-trainee government subsidy and the corporate training contracts with industrial anchors in each region — OCP, Renault, Safran, Stellantis, and dozens of regional SME clusters who have formal partnerships with CMC campuses. Layer two is residential income: the on-campus boarding infrastructure accommodates 16% of the trainee population on average, generating year-round accommodation and catering revenue entirely outside the public budget. Layer three is services income from the commercial infrastructure embedded in each campus — Fab Labs rented to startups, conference centres booked by corporates, Digital Factories contracted by technology companies for short-cycle upskilling programmes. Layer four, available to investors who execute the right structure, is real estate yield: the BEA (Bail Emphytéotique Administratif) over government land combined with campus expansion creates a long-duration asset with compounding income.

The Government's Position in This Investment

OFPPT brings to this concession: the land, the existing buildings, the national brand, the trainee pipeline, the regional employer networks, and the sovereign budget backstop for the training subsidy. The private operator brings: management excellence, international curriculum, corporate placement agreements, and capital for campus expansion. The asymmetry is deliberate. Morocco does not need investors to build the infrastructure — it is already built. It needs operators who can maximise the return on that infrastructure, accelerate placement rates, attract international certifications, and create the kind of outcomes that justify the next wave of expansion.

What You Must Have Before Engaging

The OFPPT evaluation framework for CMC private partners is more demanding than a standard concession tender because the Ministry is not simply outsourcing operations — it is selecting a long-term co-owner of a national brand. Education management or vocational training operational track record is non-negotiable. International certification capability — City & Guilds, German Dual System equivalents, ISO 29990, ILO CINTERFOR methodology — materially differentiates proposals. So does the ability to demonstrate an active employer placement network in Morocco or a comparable MENA market. Corporate training revenue from industrial anchors is not optional upside; it is a core evaluation criterion. Investors who arrive with capital alone and no operational credibility will not pass the first filter.