Cegid Launches Excellence Center in Morocco
As Africa grapples with a significant demand for digital skills, international tech giants are increasingly establishing their presence to support the rising number of young graduates in the sector. On May 19, European cloud management solutions provider Cegid inaugurated its excellence center, "Cegid Atlas," in the strategic hub of Casablanca Finance City, marking a pivotal development in its Moroccan operations. With a workforce of 240 employees recruited since June 2025, the center encompasses high-value strategic activities such as customer support, cloud deployment, integration, training, post-sales assistance, and research and development. Additionally, it houses back-office functions in finance, human resources, and information systems.
For Cegid, this center is not merely a support platform. "Casablanca represents a strategic establishment for Cegid, complementing our international setup," stated Bruno Vaffier, CEO of Cegid.
A Regional Hub Aligned with Forward.ai Strategy
Cegid Atlas is not an isolated outpost; it is part of the group's "Forward.ai" roadmap, which places generative AI at the core of its technological development. As such, it becomes the operational pillar for Cegid in the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, and Africa. Founded in 1983 in Lyon, Cegid operates in 130 countries, serves over one million clients, and reported €1.07 billion in revenue in 2025, operating entirely on a SaaS model.
According to Said Ibrahimi, CEO of Casablanca Finance City Authority, this inauguration affirms the area's attractiveness. The establishment of Cegid "fully illustrates our ecosystem's capability to attract high-value international service providers, especially in tech and R&D." At the heart of Cegid's decision to set up in Casablanca is a human capital investment. Tam Kaghat, President of Cegid Atlas, noted that Morocco "has a pool of qualified, committed talents who can quickly adapt to demanding technological environments." She further emphasized that their employees are already a key asset in developing international expertise and capabilities. Ibrahimi corroborated this by highlighting the "quality, depth, and competitiveness" of Moroccan youth in engineering, development, and programming.
The establishment comes amid a structural tension in digital skills. Currently, Morocco trains only 14,000 IT engineers and technicians annually, far below the national target of 100,000 professionals trained each year. The "Digital Morocco 2030" strategy, officially launched on September 25, 2024, by the Ministry of Digital Transition, aims to create 240,000 direct jobs in the digital sector and contribute 100 billion dirhams to the GDP by 2030, with 11 billion dirhams allocated for the period 2024-2026.
On the ground, the public program JobInTech exemplifies this dynamic. Launched in June 2023 along the Casablanca-Rabat axis, it has trained 1,000 young people in one year, achieving a professional insertion rate exceeding 73%, according to available data. Since May 2024, it has been expanded to the entire Kingdom with a goal of training 15,000 youths in digital professions over three years, across 12 regions and involving 45 operators. For the 2025-2026 academic year, 746,500 trainees have joined vocational training institutions, marking a 38% increase compared to the 2021-2022 period.
As reported by agenceecofin.com.
