Two years on from Morocco's selection as one of the co-hosts for the 2030 football World Cup, the government's multi-billion-euro investment in the tournament has become a rallying cry for protesters now leading their second weekend of demonstrations to demand better public services.
Rallied by online collectives including GenZ 212 and Morocco Youth Voices, thousands of mainly young Moroccans took to the streets in a dozen towns and cities last weekend waving placards and shouting slogans including: "Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?"
Although the estimated €6 billion costs of building and revamping stadiums and roads for the World Cup appear to be the main conductor for their anger, the month-long Africa Cup of Nations that starts on 20 December could bear the brunt.
"Football is much more than entertainment or sport," said Abderrahim Boukira, professor of the sociology of sport at Hassan 1 University in Settat.
"It’s a vehicle for national pride and identity and a perfect tool for social cohesion and inclusion – if it is used in the right way.
"But also football exposes structural weaknesses such as inequality, lack of spaces and social exclusion."
Morocco Gen Z protests enter sixth day with calls to oust government
Double hosting duties
The Confederation of African Football (Caf), which organises the biennial Cup of Nations, declined to comment about the protests which, according to the Moroccan Interior Ministry, have left at least 589 police officers as well as 50 civilians injured and led to nearly 500 arrests.
The 35th Africa Cup of Nations was handed to Morocco in September 2023, a year after Guinea was stripped of hosting duties due to its lack of progress on revamping stadiums and roads.
A week later, Morocco's football administrators were celebrating anew. The bosses at Fifa, world football's governing body, awarded them co-hosting duties with Portugal and Spain for the centenary edition of the World Cup in 2030.
Two years on, with protests now in their second week and GenZ 212 calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, a poser has emerged for Moroccan politicians and football tournament organisers.
Now that they have been questioned, how can they effectively appease the disaffection to ensure a friction-free Cup of Nations and show the demonstrators that they are responding?
Young and angry
Tahani Brahma, a researcher and secretary general at the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, told RFI: "Moroccan youth are taking to the streets to call for functioning hospitals, quality schools and decent jobs.
"They're rejecting the reality of billions being spent on stadiums for the World Cup while basic services are collapsing.
"Most importantly, Moroccan youth do not want promises, they want their rights."
People born between 1995 and 2010 make up a fifth of Morocco's population of 38 million. In August, Morocco's national statistics office reported unemployment rates of 35.8 percent for 15- to 24-year-olds and 21.9 percent for the 25 to 34 cohort.
The demographic's ability to mobilise swiftly and vocally on the streets via online platforms such as TikTok and Discord has transformed them into an unpredictable mass with palpable reasons for anger – such as a string of deaths on a maternity ward in Agadir that they say are evidence of the public health sector's shortcomings.
How Gen Z is taking the fight for their rights from TikTok to the streets
Akhannouch, who is also mayor of Agadir, responded to protests outside that hospital in early September by acknowledging that the centre had been facing problems for decades.
The billionaire fuel and media tycoon insisted that the government was in the process of building and upgrading hospitals across all the country's regions.
Data from the World Health Organisation suggests that quest could be long.
In 2023, WHO statistics showed Morocco having 7.7 medical professionals per 10,000 inhabitants and far fewer in certain regions, including Agadir, with 4.4 per 10,000. The WHO recommends 25 per 10,000.
Spending priorities
The government has also been accused of failing to adequately help victims of the earthquake that struck Morocco's Atlas Mountains on 8 September 2023.
More than 2,900 people were killed and 5,500 people injured during the 6.8-magnitude tremor and its aftershocks.
Just over two years on, Crown Prince Moulay El Hassan inaugurated the 68,000-seat Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat. Amid the pomp and ceremony for the heir to the throne, officials cooed over how the old stadium was demolished and replaced within two years with a state-of-the art venue that will host the first match at the Cup of Nations as well as the final.
Ongoing hardship for Moroccan quake survivors still struggling to rebuild
A few days later, dozens of quake survivors congregated in front of Morocco's parliament as part of a public plea to the government to take reconstruction aid as seriously as the World Cup projects.
Brandishing banners with the names of villages destroyed during the earthquake, they chanted: "Quake money, where did it go? To festivals and stadiums."
Tourism concerns
While GenZ 212 and other organisers are urging peaceful protests, there have been reports of violence in several smaller towns over the past week, including three deaths in the village of Lqliaa near Agadir on Wednesday night.
Officers fired on protesters "in legitimate defence" after they allegedly tried to storm a police station, the authorities said.
In Sale, near Rabat, groups of young men hurled stones at police, looted shops, set banks ablaze and torched police vehicles. Security forces in Tangier faced a barrage of stones, and in Sidi Bibi, masked youths burned the commune headquarters and blocked a main road.
Gatherings since then have been largely peaceful, but the shadow of unrest may be enough to worry tourism chiefs.
Tourism contributes significantly to Morocco's economy, accounting for 7 percent of its GDP. Between January and the end of August 2025, Morocco welcomed 13.5 million visitors, a 15 percent rise on a similar period in 2024, said the Ministry of Tourism.
The 2025 Cup of Nations is expected to improve those figures. But the numbers arriving in Rabat, Agadir, Casablanca, Fez, Marrakech and Tangier for the month-long tournament could be affected if a threat of protests and violence stalks the nine venues.
Sports sociologist Boukira suggested it was the opposite of the image the Moroccan administration hopes to project.
"Football is also a tool of soft power," he said. "Hosting big tournaments, improving infrastructure and attracting global attention shows that football functions beyond sport: it’s a way to project a modern image and to engage internationally."
He also pointed out the potential benefits at home: "Events like the Cup of Nations and the World Cup also create employment, bring in more tourists and investments. And all that helps in our socio-economic development."
But with young protesters now demanding fundamental reform, there is no guarantee that logic will convince them.
"Young people in Morocco have been suffering for a long time, and not only young people, but the entire population," said human rights campaigner Brahma.
"Young people are demanding freedom and dignity, and I think these demands will only increase."
