The Kingdom of Morocco hosted the Fourth Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in 2025, where leaders endorsed a new declaration to reduce road deaths and injuries. Morocco's convening role reflects the country's standing as one of the African Region's most committed road safety actors.
In recent years, Morocco has built crucial new institutional architecture and data systems, and has shown the will to translate strategy into action. The number of road fatalities in the country is now falling.
As governments gather at the UN High-Level Meeting on Improving Global Road Safety in July 2026, Morocco's experience offers insights that countries at every level of development can draw on.
A national strategy with quantified targets
Morocco's approach rests on a foundation WHO recommends: a national strategy with time-bound, quantified targets that is fully backed by the highest political authority. Morocco's Second National Road Safety Strategy (2017–2026) set a target of a 50% reduction in road deaths in a decade. It grants the country's National Road Safety Authority (NARSA) a legal mandate to coordinate enforcement, procure equipment, and manage a national demerit-point system for drivers.
The Interministerial Committee for Road Safety, chaired by the Head of Government, provides political validation. The Permanent Committee, chaired by the Minister of Transport, serves as the technical coordination forum. This two-tier structure ensures that road safety is neither siloed in a single ministry nor left without executive authority to act.
From generalized activity to data-driven enforcement
The 2022–2024 National Road Control Plan has transformed Morocco's traffic enforcement from broadly distributed activity into a targeted, evidence-based programme. It brought four major shifts:
- priority enforcement zones are now selected from crash data;
- five nationally defined priority violations – excessive speed, drink driving, mobile phone use, non-use of seatbelts, and non-use of helmets;
- modernized enforcement equipment deployed across all twelve regions; and,
- regional road safety committees with enforcement responsibilities.
Crash data from police and gendarmerie records, analysed by NARSA's Observatory alongside Safety Performance Indicators, have driven location choices and violation priorities for road policing and enforcement. This data-led, institutionally grounded approach is precisely what the Global Plan for the Decade of Action identifies as a distinguishing feature of countries making sustained progress.
Advances in Morocco's governance and coordination methods bode well for an increase in the reductions in road deaths and serious injuries in the coming years. More rapid gains typically come with a strong strategy, lead-agency authority, and performance frameworks working in combination.
The country's Control Plan can be seen as the operational arm of the strategy. Led by an agency with budget authority, enforced through Law 103-14 (2018), and monitored against sub-targets covering pedestrians, motorcycle riders, children, and professional transport, it could strengthen road safety.
Motorcyclists and pedestrians, often left dangerously exposed, are now covered explicitly in Morocco's road safety strategy. Each come with dedicated sub-targets, allocated financing, and sharper interventions on enforcement, urban infrastructure, helmet standards, and behaviour change. The willingness to use a performance framework to identify failure, and redesign around it, is a clear and admirable governance lesson.
Key lessons
Morocco's experience points to five transferable lessons:
- without an agency holding budget authority and head-of-government support, neither legislation nor enforcement can operate decisively;
- regional coordination is essential – national plans without regional sub-targets and accountable committees can create lasting implementation gaps;
- enforcement must be embedded in a national strategy with quantified targets;
- data must drive location selection, concentrating limited resources where risk is highest; and
- willingness to use a performance framework to identify failure, and redesign around it, is a clear and admirable lesson.
