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Anouar Majid, Ph.D., vice president for Global Affairs and founding director of the Center for Global Humanities, has twice been featured on Moroccan news website MAP Express, where he discussed Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s efforts to invest in the Sahara south of Morocco.

In a piece on Nov. 9,  Majid told the outlet that Morocco has made the Sahara a model of socioeconomic development and integration by investing in its Atlantic ports and maritime resources.

The recovery of the Sahara was “the catalyst for a national strategy of governance and autonomous economic development,” Majid noted, stressing that the determination of Mohammed VI to promote the maritime resources of the region, either in field of fisheries or in the dynamic transport sector, “can only give the Sahara region enormous impetus and transform it — like the city and the region of Tangier — into one of the main economic poles of the country.”

In a subsequent piece on Nov. 12, Majid responded to questions about the development in the Moroccan Sahara.

In the piece, he called the construction of an Atlantic port in Dakhla a “stroke of genius;” said the King’s promotion of autonomy in the Sahara is, “the only way that allows the inhabitants of the Sahara to manage their local affairs and to invest freely in their community;” and called new roads, schools, ports and airports that now connect the Sahara region with the rest of the country, “an integral part of the social and economic fabric of Morocco.”