Rebuilding After Disaster: Can Reconstruction Restore Communities in Morocco?
By Ayesha Tauqeer
On June 5, 2026, officials from Morocco, the European Union, and the European Investment Bank gathered in Rabat for a ceremony that carried the language of progress. The EIB mobilised a second tranche of €500 million, part of a €1 billion commitment, marking what it called the programme’s “transition into its large-scale deployment phase” for reconstruction of the High Atlas regions devastated by the 2023 earthquake. The day before, EIB’s Vice-President had toured reconstructed schools and health facilities in Al Haouz province. The optics were careful. The reality on the ground is considerably more complicated.
The September 8, 2023 earthquake was Morocco’s deadliest seismic event in over six decades. It claimed nearly 3,000 lives, injured more than 18,000 people, and damaged approximately 60,000 homes, especially in remote regions of Al Haouz and Taroudant provinces. The government responded with a five-year reconstruction plan valued at approximately $11.7 billion, roughly 8.5 percent of Morocco’s annual GDP.
Nearly three years on, the government’s official figures tell one story. Authorities reported that 46,650 families completed construction or rehabilitation work on their homes, with displacement tents dropping from 129,000 to just 47. Civic groups tell another. The National Coordination of Al Haouz Earthquake Victims cited widespread inconsistencies in official figures, unfulfilled aid promises, and credible allegations of tampering by local officials during damage assessments and fund distribution. Many families reportedly received only partial compensation despite total housing loss, while others received nothing.
A February 2026 citizen-observation report by Transparency Maroc found that 220 schools in the provinces of Al-Haouz, Azilal, and Chichaoua were still not functioning, and none of the 242 damaged social protection facilities had been restored during the programme’s first year. Health infrastructure, the report noted, remained at “ground zero” in some areas.
Reconstruction is rarely just about buildings. In Al Haouz, the hardest hit communities are predominantly Amazigh, Morocco’s Indigenous Berber population, living in some of the country’s most remote and historically underserved terrain. Researchers warn that delayed reconstruction combined with escalating climate conditions will push more families to leave the mountains permanently, directly threatening Amazigh identity, language, and cultural continuity.
While national efforts struggled, grassroots initiatives stepped in. In Ait Bourd, a Moroccan architect introduced an insulated, earthquake-resistant home design capable of replacing around 50,000 destroyed homes, a bottom-up solution that the top-down programme had failed to produce at scale. Caritas Morocco, working alongside local organisations, created listening and dialogue spaces with survivors, adjusting strategies based on community feedback and amplifying the voices of women and youth, approaches that formal state channels rarely replicate.
Perhaps the most telling detail is what happens to those who speak up. In January 2025, activist Said Ait Mahdi, who had led a victims’ group and campaigned extensively for reconstruction in the worst-hit areas, was jailed after highlighting the government’s stagnant efforts on social media. On the second anniversary of the earthquake, dozens of survivors gathered outside parliament in Rabat carrying signs that read “No to exclusion, no to marginalisation” and “A roof for every life, dignity has no price.”
Reconstruction, when it works, is a conversation between a state and its people. It requires not just funding and logistics, but transparency, accountability, and the willingness to hear from those most affected, even when what they say is inconvenient. Morocco has the resources and the international backing. What the survivors of Al Haouz are still waiting for is the part that no infrastructure budget can buy: the acknowledgement that rebuilding a home is not the same as restoring a community, and that you cannot do the second without first listening to the people who lived in the first.