Participants at the symposium held on Monday in Laayoune to mark the 60th anniversary of the Establishment Agreement between Morocco and Senegal adopted the Laayoune Declaration, determining the Rabat-Dakar axis as a hub of pan-African collective intelligence in the service of food sovereignty, sustainable development, and peace.
The symposium, held by Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and the Timbuktu Institute – African Center for Peace Studies, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Glorious Green March, aims to establish Moroccan-Senegalese relations as a “testing ground” for pan-African cooperation based on knowledge, innovation, and shared responsibility.
In their Declaration, representatives of the Timbuktu Institute and UM6P, researchers, experts, and institutional decision-makers from both countries recalled deep historical ties between Morocco and Senegal, forged through centuries of economic, intellectual, and spiritual exchanges.
Participants also welcomed the strategic ambition of the Atlantic Initiative, spearheaded by the Sovereign, which aims to make the Atlantic region a lever for stability, sustainable development, and regional integration.
Convinced that Morocco’s Southern provinces stand as a natural bridge between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, participants affirmed their shared willingness to transform the Rabat-Dakar axis into a pan-African model of sustainable cooperation.
To this end, the Laayoune Declaration offers four major areas of cooperation, namely academic mobility, strategic and forward-looking African research, promoting the historical and symbolic role of Southern provinces, and supporting entrepreneurship, innovation, and food sovereignty.
Beyond its programmatic content, the Laayoune Declaration reaffirms the role of Morocco’s Southern provinces as an area of convergence between the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, where a new dynamic of African development based on knowledge, sustainability, and technological sovereignty is being modeled.
By choosing Laayoune as the anchor for this vision, the two sides affirm the prominent position of this region in South-South cooperation dynamics and in reshaping African intellectual relations.
MAP:27 October 2025
