Geoeconomics and Morocco's Trade in Africa : Finance, Diplomacy, and Infrastructure as Drivers of Competitiveness A PRISMA Systematic Review

Abstract

This article employs the PRISMA 2020 approach to conduct a systematic literature review on Morocco's competitive advantages in its trade with Africa. The period covered by this review (2020-2026), following the COVID-19 crisis, aims to capture the growing research interest in this topic. Based on a final selection of 18 research articles from databases (Scopus, Moroccan Scientific Journals, Cairn.info), a detailed two-step analysis – descriptive followed by thematic – reveals the foundational processes of Morocco's trade performance. This research rigorously follows the PRISMA 2020 protocol. The thematic analysis of the 18 included articles reveals three main families of geoeconomic mechanisms explaining Morocco's competitive advantages in Africa: (1) finance-diplomacy coupling (supported by several West African case studies); (2) mediation in exchange for commercial access (observed in East African contexts such as Ethiopia); and (3) proximity infrastructure advantage (Mauritania, West Africa). No study in the corpus validates a pure cost advantage or a simple factor endowment effect. The literature converges towards an interpretation in terms of geoeconomic coordination capacity.