The development of financial centers in Africa: Case of Casablanca finance city

Abstract

Financial centers are at the heart of tomorrow's economies. A country cannot be attractive or competitive without the establishment of a local financial center. Finance becomes an important source of power and innovation, as well as a means of governing money inflows. These centers provide financial economic agents with specialized and personalized services essential to support their transactions and offer decision-makers in the financial world and the real economy appropriate structures to facilitate the implementation of their policy.

This paper tends to highlight the importance of international financial centers in the economic structure of the country based on the Casablanca Financial Center (CFC) project. The latter is specially intended for the channeling of investments towards the African territory. In this article, we will try to answer the following question: What is the state of the international financial center of Casablanca and how it developed since its creation? By trying to show the added value of the financial center and detect the obstacles that hinder its success. We came to the conclusion that CFC is without a doubt the first international center in Africa, and it can only maintain the current situation by working on the marketing side and push its potential for further market development, particularly with the rise of Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Nairobi after the sanitary crisis.

JEL Classification: F55, F65, G15, G20

Paper type: Theoretical Research.