Morocco's first woman prime minister inherits stadium-sized problem
Lovisa Goodwill
Published: October 5th, 2026
Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri took office exactly five years after Tunisia named the Arab world's first woman head of government. Her toughest audience is a generation that spent last fall asking where the hospitals went.
This week Morocco's King Mohammed VI named Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri head of government on Sept. 29, making her the first woman in history to lead the country's government, and the new owner of some very loud expectations. She is now prime minister, but Morocco works a little differently from Canada. By law, King Mohammed VI still retains his authority as head of state and handles federal matters. After each election, once a party wins, he chooses someone from the party with the most seats to lead. El Mansouri's Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won 97 of 395 in the Sept. 23 election. That is the most of anyone, but falls 101 seats short of a majority. So, her first act of leadership is then persuading rival parties to share a cabinet. Diplomacy, it turns out, can be quite complex.
This inauguration date deserves a moment as well, as El Mansouri is only the second woman to lead a government in the Arab world. The first, Tunisia's Najla Bouden, was appointed on Sept. 29, 2021. Five years to the date of El Mansouri’s. History, apparently, keeps a calendar.
El Mansouri called her appointment a "historic moment for our country" and a source of pride for every Moroccan woman. However, this is not her first time leading. In 2009, at 33, she became the first woman to run Marrakech, one of the country's biggest cities. Since then, she has added a law career, studies in three countries, and five years as housing minister. The résumé is not the concern. The concern is what awaits her.
Last fall, young Moroccans organized a protest on a messaging app named Discord. They dubbed themselves the GenZ 212, after the country's dialing code, and carried their anger into the streets. Their complaints were concrete: hospitals in disrepair, schools stretched thin on too-small budgets, and jobs in short supply. Civilians were suffering, and the youth had finally decided change must happen. Outrage deepened because while poverty grew and city funding shrank, the government was spending heavily on stadiums for the 2030 World Cup, which Morocco is set to host alongside Portugal and Spain. One chant said it plainly: "Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?" It is difficult to rebut a chant that is so empirically true.
El Mansouri was a minister in that government, and unlike many others, she didn't lecture the protesters; instead, she offered something closer to an invitation: "Young people have the right to not vote for us and criticize us." She knew her party needed to do better, and accepted the responsibility. The public is still making their unhappiness loud today; in the fall, many Moroccans refused to vote, not trusting their government. Voting turnout fell to about 38 percent, the lowest since 2007, in the middle of the financial crisis. So far, her party has promised one million new jobs by 2031. Depending on the next five years, that will prove to be either a plan or simply a very large number.
In 2030, the world will arrive for the World Cup, and the stadiums will almost certainly be finished. The harder project is a country where a young person in Rabat trusts the hospital, finds a job, and decides voting is worth the trip. El Mansouri has already proven she can be the first woman to lead Morocco; now she has to prove it matters.
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