Between the current of French-speaking Africa, the kingdom is experimenting with its own digital currency. A technological advance with major political implications – between emancipation, authority and potential shift to a programmable society.
An African pioneer against the giants of the South Globa
While African looks remain riveted on economic crises, the coins stowed to the CFA franc or to inflationary pressures, Morocco advances, without noise, in a direction that little really anticipate. On July 21, 2025, during a long-awaited intervention, the governor of Bank al-Maghrib, Abdellatif Jouahri, announced the experiment of a e-dirham – a Central Bank Digital Mint (CBDC)issuing and guaranteed by the State.
It is not a cryptocurrency. It is not an application. It is not a gadget.
It is a profound change in monetary sovereignty, anchored in controlled technology, programmable architecture, and a clear strategic intention.
Morocco thus becomes The first North African country To engage also concretely in this path, while China, India and Nigeria have already started their own transitions. Even more: Bank Al-Maghrib confirms having launched A direct cross -border transfer test with Egyptwithout going through the dollar or the Swift system. A barely hidden monetary rupture act, when the BRICS themselves seek to circumvent Western financial hegemony.
Neither Algeria, nor Tunisia, nor even the countries of French -speaking sub -Saharan Africa have reached such a stage of experimentation. Morocco is positioned, de facto, as A continental laboratory of digital sovereignty.
The return of politics in monetary architecture
At first glance, the E-Dirham resembles a technological evolution: a digital dirham, circulating between two phones, based on a private blockchain. In reality, it is a reinvention of money as an instrument of public action.
According to official information, this digital currency:
- is issued directly by Bank al-Maghrib,
- retains a strict parity with physical dirham,,
- circulate without banking intermediaries,,
- East programmable : its period of validity, its geographic destination, or its use can be defined in advance.
It means that Social aid can be paid in digital form, with an expiration date or a user restriction. A housing grant, for example, cannot be diverted to buy a smartphone or be transferred to a third party. Food aid can only be used in a given area, with certified traders.
Behind this logic: the will to Modernize redistributionof target public policiesand fight against abusewhile disintermediating private banks of the social assistance circuit.
An apparently pragmatic objective, but whose scope is eminently political.
Efficiency against freedom? Towards a programmable company
What Morocco inaugurates with E-Dirham is also a new era: that of theconditional money.
Social assistance that expires. A school allowance that only works in certain businesses. A geolocated fuel grant.
Behind the promises of efficiency, a crucial question arises: Do we want a money that obeys?
In a system based on a private blockchainthe State can, in theory, follow each transaction, activate or deactivate an allowance, restrict a use.
Traceability becomes a control tool. Mint becomes a code.
It is a new power, which does not yet say its name, but whose implications must be thought of now.
If technology can allow significant advances – fight against fraud, financial inclusion, cash reduction – it can also become The technical base of a fine, algorithmic, and silent social control.
In the long term, if these logics are generalized, The relationship between state and citizen can switch : money ceases to be a neutral good and becomes an active packaging tool.
The Moroccan test, a strategic brick
It would be naive to believe that E-Dirham is only one project among others. In reality, it is part of a broader vision: that of a Morocco that seeks to become An autonomous, digital, African polewith its own rules, its sovereign infrastructure, its internal flows and its ability to escape, partially, from global monetary chains.
It is a monetary response to the fragmentation of the world.
It is also a recovery of the monetary lever by the politician.
And it is, above all, a risky but assumed bet on the Power programmable.
This power-that of modulating the currency itself, depending on strategic objectives-could become one of the main markers of power of states in the 21st century. It is therefore not trivial that it is an African country which seizes it first in its region.
It remains to be seen whether this power will be supervised, transparent, and democratically debated.
