Morocco has secured the 54th position globally out of 161 countries in the "Economic Freedom Index," achieving an impressive score of 63.74 points. This ranking, published by the British Legatum Institute, reinforces Morocco's status as a leader in North Africa in terms of economic freedom. The index is a crucial component of the broader Legatum Prosperity Index, which assesses various aspects of prosperity and quality of life across nations each year.
This specific sub-index places Morocco within the top 60 countries worldwide regarding economic freedom, outperforming its North African neighbors. The index primarily measures the quality of the investment environment, the conditions for conducting economic activities, and the accessibility of markets. According to the complete 2026 Global Prosperity Index, Morocco ranks 76th overall among the 161 nations evaluated.
Notably, the data reveals a significant discrepancy between Morocco's performance in economic and investment sectors compared to its social sectors, particularly in education and living standards. This 17th edition of the index utilized over 130 sub-indicators and nearly 616,000 data points sourced from 35 international sources, making it one of the most comprehensive global databases for assessing quality of life and levels of prosperity.
The detailed findings indicate marked variations in Morocco's performance across different sectors measured by the index. While the country demonstrated relatively strong results in economic freedom and family cohesion, it experienced notable declines in other areas linked to human development and civil liberties. For instance, Morocco ranked 56th in community integrity and 75th in state integrity, with a lower placement of 94th in local community integrity.
This disparity highlights the gap between improvements in Morocco's economic and investment landscape and the pressing need to enhance social services and citizens' quality of life, especially in education and skill development sectors, which continue to weigh down the country's overall ranking.
The 2026 edition is particularly significant as it implements a new calculation methodology by Legatum, which has been in place since the 2023 edition. This method, known as the "p-mean" model, aims to reduce countries' ability to offset weaknesses in one area by achieving high results in others. The underlying assumption is that true prosperity requires balanced performance across various pillars, and that wealth alone cannot compensate for poor governance, institutional fragility, or social fragmentation.
As a result of this new methodology, there have been noticeable shifts in the rankings of several major countries, with China dropping from 54th to 110th place and Russia from 77th to 113th. In contrast, several Eastern European nations have made significant progress.
On the international stage, Switzerland topped the Global Prosperity Index for 2026, followed by Norway and Ireland. Denmark and Finland also placed within the top five. Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands rounded out the top ten, reflecting the importance of integrated economic, institutional, and social performance in achieving high levels of prosperity.
Regionally, Mauritius maintains its position as the most prosperous economy in Africa, while Botswana, Tunisia, and Morocco continue to lead the African rankings compared to other nations on the continent.
As reported by hespress.com.
