English publications in Morocco represent 2.5% of national output

English publications were slightly above 2.5 percent of the country’s total literary output in 2023, according to a recent report on publishing and books in Morocco,

The report issued by the King Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud Foundation in Casablanca concerns the State of Publishing and Writing in Morocco in the Fields of Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences from 2022 to 2023, during which 3482 titles were published. An average of 1714 publications were published annually, covering both print and digital formats. The report also noted that Moroccan Journals contributed 496, of which 93 are digital.

Printed publications accounted for 92 percent of the Moroccan publishing output within the report’s fields. In contrast, digital publishing accounted for 8 percent, which was primarily released through public institutions, official bodies, and public research organizations.

The report highlighted the difficulties faced by private professional publishers in making a significant leap into digital publishing due to the fragility of the country’s economic model, Moroccan readership habits, where digital texts are deemed to be free, and a lack of awareness of the intellectual property and author rights, which explains the decline in the number of digitized materials.

Concerning publishing languages, the report estimated that Moroccan publications in the fields of literary creativity, humanities, and social sciences written in Arabic exceeded 78 percent of the total publications, while those in French accounted for over 17 percent, and English publications were slightly above 2.5 percent. Meanwhile, publications in the Amazigh language did not exceed 1.51 percent.

The same institution counted 53 printed publications in Amazigh during the reporting period, with an annual average of 27 publications per year and not more than 1 percent of the total Moroccan publications.

The Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region dominated publishing in Amazigh as most of the publications are issued by the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture based in the capital, Rabat, followed by the Souss-Massa region through “Tirra” association, which issued 14 publications out of 15 Amazigh publications in that region. While the Eastern region ranked third in this regard.

The report also noted the predominance of literary creativity in Amazigh publishing, with 43 creative texts, while pointing out that despite the official adoption of the Tifinagh script since 2003, there are still issues on the level of standardization of the script used in Amazigh writing.

It added that the dominance of the Latin alphabet persists in published Amazigh writings. Of these, 39 publications, 20 use a unified Latin script and 19 a dual script, while only 7 titles were published in Tifinagh script.

On another level, the report outlined that 191 titles were digitally published in Moroccan in the fields of humanities and social sciences, dominated by French language with 84 titles, followed by Arabic with 63 titles, and then English. It also highlighted a strong presence of economic studies within the digital publishing output, accounting for 38.74 percent, followed by political and strategic studies and community studies with 23.03 and 10.47 percent, respectively.

Furthermore, the foundation observed the continuity of the Arabization trend in the Moroccan publishing sector, as noticed through reports since 2015.

 It is noteworthy that French publications declined in comparison to the 1960s and 1970s, which marked a unique phase in the history of Moroccan intellectual production, due to the Arabization movement that affected the teaching of humanities and social sciences within Moroccan universities since the 1970s. 

Thus, the newly graduated generations are Arabic-speaking researchers and authors, thereby impacting the fields of authorship and publishing.