Brain drain—or, how Morocco's future is moving abroad
College-educated young adults are moving away en masse from Morocco. While they feel deep sorrow and loyalty towards their country, they don’t believe that a future for them exists there.
23-year-old “Brahim” is at Morocco’s average professional peak. As a master’s student who teaches English speakers the Arabic language, he is relatively well-employed, well-paid, and well-educated—more stable than many of his fellow Moroccans. He has the money to dress nicely and own a motorcycle. He even lives in the well-connected, well-serviced municipalities outside of Rabat, meaning his family has access to private schools, functional hospitals, communications infrastructure, and basic goods and services.
Many of his fellow citizens lack these things, so Brahim is fortunate. But even he plans to leave Morocco for better opportunities.
“I won’t find any opportunity in Morocco,” he says. “My country is not giving me any opportunity to stay here. If I stay in Morocco, I’m going to work as a teacher, teaching Arabic to Moroccans, in public school with the government, and I’m going to get [7000 MAD, $700] a month. Do you think it’s enough?”
Today, like always, he drove his motorcycle to the school where he teaches Arabic learners. At this point in the conversation, his fingers drum on his bike helmet. He says, “If [young Moroccan students] stay here, they waste their time.”
Across Morocco, his sentiment is becoming increasingly common. Each year thousands of the country’s most qualified young professionals—studying engineering, medicine, education, and other highly skilled fields—depart Morocco for hypothetically greener shores in Europe, the Gulf, and America. This phenomenon is known as brain drain: the emigration of talents and qualifications from one country into another.
Moroccan brain drain has accelerated over the past decade. And if young Moroccans are not leaving the country, they are protesting its policies. Public healthcare and education systems, which many citizens argue are stymied by government corruption, are under immense pressure from overcrowding, meaning many are unable to access the kinds of services that other nations may take for granted. This issue has drawn thousands of Moroccans to the Generation Z 212 protests that began rocking the country in early September.
In response to the protests, Head of Government Aziz Akhannouch’s administration has increased its health and education budget by 16% in FY 2026. But this reform does not approach the extent demanded by protesters, and as more and more dissatisfied young adults depart Morocco, problems with healthcare and education only worsen.
This results in a ping-pong effect. Bad healthcare and bad education create bad opportunities, so the people with sufficient opportunity—meaning college students or young professionals—leave. Their exodus creates a talent vacuum. Industry issues worsen, and so do opportunities for progress.
But who started the ping-pong effect? Where do nationwide issues in healthcare and education source from?
Overwhelmingly, frustrations point back to employment and allegations of government corruption.
What’s the problem?
According to the Ministry of Higher Education, an estimated 3,700 Moroccan doctors and engineers emigrate annually. Sometimes as much as a third of the graduating medical and pharmacy class from Morocco’s flagship university, University Mohamed V in Rabat, immediately go abroad after graduation. In previous years, thousands of professionals in other fields—including in computer science, mechanical engineering, economics, and more—have emigrated alongside them, often amounting to tens of thousands of annual emigrés.
Historically, they tend to go to Germany, Spain, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and, in particular, France—so much so that France has begun to recruit specifically from North Africa.
One of the most critical statistics is this: In 2024, Arab Barometer found that about one in three of surveyed Moroccans wish to leave the Kingdom for economic reasons alone, leaving out political and social causes; in 2023, over 70% of young surveyed Moroccans wished to leave. And outside of statistical data, anecdotal evidence suggests that “everyone” wants to leave, per the college students and graduates interviewed for this article.
“It’s like a win or lose situation. And winning is leaving.”
“While the government has increased the number of engineering and medical graduates, Morocco struggles to retain its talent. Many skilled workers are drawn to Europe, where wages and opportunities are significantly higher,” writes journalist Dakir Madiha, who reports on brain drain for Walaw.
The Moroccan government has continued to pour funding into education, thereby increasing the number of graduates and diluting the impact of emigration. Along with allocating more funds to education in 2026, they have also made partnerships with international organizations like the World Bank, which in 2023 invested $300 billion in Moroccan higher education.
In the interest of adding actual jobs and attracting more income into Moroccan circulation, the government has also invested in events like the African Cup of Nations, to be held in December 2025, and the World Cup, to be held in 2030. Then, thanks to the United Nations’ recent resolution placing the Western Sahara under Moroccan authority, Morocco has turned towards foreign investors. Labor laws have even been rewritten to attract and accommodate an influx of international corporations. Much income is expected to flow into Morocco via foreign companies and tourists.
But many jobs associated with such work are transient, far-away, or unrelated to the fields most on Moroccans’ minds—health and education. Furthermore, foreign investments do not provide timely or direct enough assistance to people like Brahim and his friends.
This is displayed by statistics like those of Trading Economics, which state that the Moroccan youth unemployment rate hovers around 36%. Last year it reached an all-time high at 40%.
“[It’s] very concerning… many young people can’t find jobs that match their education or skills [or there is a] lack of opportunities, especially in small towns and remote villages. [I’m] both worried and sad,” said Brahim.
Though no official survey data exists, informal interviews and anecdotal evidence seem to suggest that Brahim’s words are accurate.
Take the example of Fahd and his partner, a couple in their 30s living in Rabat. Though both received college educations in engineering and teaching, they ultimately only found employment as a driver and a vape shop attendant, respectively.
There is also Mohamed, a man in his 40s who studied law in college but now works as a taxi driver; Soufiane, 34, who studied business, but now works at a call center; and many others whose education now goes untouched in the course of an entirely unrelated and sometimes poorly-paying profession.
The issue stems back to a lack of available, adequate positions. As Brahim says, his master’s program employs only two people every year. Even in fields with high demand like engineering, teaching, and healthcare, openings are few and salaries are low. There are not enough firms, schools, or hospitals to satisfy workers and consumers, and even in the ones that exist, good wages are not guaranteed.
In other words—it does not matter whether or not Moroccan young adults want to go. If they want to use their degrees, they must.
Caught between a rock and a hard place: The emotional toll of leaving the homeland
A concept central not just to Moroccan culture, but to Arab culture, is ghorba (غربة). This little word means something that the English language cannot concisely capture. It conveys a deep, intrinsic, and inescapable longing for home, along with a feeling of estrangement from that very place.
Though this sentiment sources back more particularly to refugee conflicts like in Palestine, Syria, and other places, it comes up many times in interviews with the young adults who love their country, but believe they must leave.
“Amir,” a 23-year-old finance student at University Mohammed V in Rabat, said that the thought of leaving tugs deeply on his heartstrings. When pressed about his point of decision—when he realized he would have to leave Morocco to obtain the future he wants, which lies in the intersection of business development and policy-making—he said he could not even remember the decision.
“I think, like, the whole Moroccan society had this… realization… We all [woke] up to [think], like, yeah, this is bad,” said Amir. “It’s like a win or lose situation. And winning is leaving.”
Though Amir says he feels great pain over his decision to leave, it is because he cares deeply about his family and his fellow citizens. He disavows loyalty to his government.
“The problem here… is the trust, especially with the last events [the Generation Z 212 protests and detainments],” said Amir.
“A deep thing of trust [was] broken inside every Moroccan that saw how the government used violence.”
Nevertheless, Amir says that if opportunity improved, he would not leave Morocco. He also would like to come back to Morocco after securing his own future. “The older [I get], the more resources I have, I can help Morocco.”
Amir is not alone in his sentiments. Interviewed college students and professionals say that they would not leave Morocco if they could find opportunity to work here, or that they hope to return to Morocco to reinvest in their homeland after studying and working elsewhere.
But many feel alienated by the government’s present conduct—which is deeply related to the Generation Z 212 protests that have appeared in every major Moroccan city. In the course of these protests, thousands of young adults have been arrested while protesting—including two of Brahim’s friends—though the detainees, human rights advocates, lawyers, and eyewitnesses attest that they were demonstrating peacefully and legally.
The Moroccan government has looked on with concern as brain drain has accelerated over the past decade. And if young Moroccans are not leaving the country, they are protesting its policies.
People like Brahim, Amir, and others also believe that they cannot make a difference in politics outside of protesting. Brahim alleges that, even if he were to try to enter politics, the electoral process is stifled by candidate dishonesty. This would bar him from advancing to a national level.
“Corrupt politicians buy votes from unaware citizens… This makes the political arena dirty and repulsive,” said Brahim. “In the last election, I was offered 500 MAD to vote for a candidate, but I refused. I also know many people who were offered money to vote.”
The wealth gap therefore prevents Moroccans from making a political difference, especially at levels above that of their local community. Upward social mobility averages around 35% in Morocco and is particularly low in rural communities, meaning people tend to stay in the same sphere of influence as the one in which they were born.
Furthermore, many in the governing class, meaning Parliamentary officials or wealthy business leaders, entered their roles via what the Washington Institute calls “parachutage”—meaning leaders are usually the children of previous leaders. Outsiders cannot access such circles.
This altogether creates a feeling of helplessness. If Moroccans are detained while peacefully protesting, if the government does not recognize their demands, if they cannot enter the government themselves, and if they cannot find adequate employment or education within Morocco, then they have no choice but to leave.
“My country is not giving me any opportunity to stay here. If I stay in Morocco, I’m going to… get [7000 MAD, $700] a month. Do you think it’s enough?”
At the conclusion of the interview, Brahim zips his motorcycle jacket back up. It is chilly outside, and it is a long drive home to his family’s farm in the suburbs of Rabat. He may be happy to see them, but he will still be glad to move away—one day. He dreams of going to the United States eventually. If not that, Europe. But growing anti-immigrant sentiment in America and Europe works against him.
Even with increasingly long odds, he goes to school and work and networks with American and European professors and students in addition to his Moroccan friends and teachers.
Meanwhile, the news cycle covers the World Cup and the Western Sahara, but not the gap between protesters’ demands and results; meanwhile, his own friends who were arrested while demonstrating sit in detainment. Meanwhile, his family struggles to eke out a living. The whole time, emigration stays on his mind.