orocco now chairs the African nuclear agreement. Meeting on Thursday, September 17, at the Vienna International Centre, the African states party to the African Regional Cooperative Agreement for Research, Development and Training Related to Nuclear Science and Technology elected the Kingdom by acclamation to its presidency for the 2026-2027 term, according to MAP. Morocco holds the seat in the person of Hamid Marah, director general of the National Centre for Nuclear Energy, Sciences and Techniques, who succeeds David Tshere of Botswana. The vote was held at the thirty-seventh meeting of the representatives of the states parties, on the margins of the seventieth session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the presence of its director general Rafael Grossi and of Azzeddine Farhane, Morocco’s ambassador and permanent representative to the international organizations in Vienna.
What the Kingdom puts forward comes down to one word: ownership. The Moroccan presidency will work to strengthen African command of AFRA’s programs, the pooling of national capacities and the transfer of knowledge, Mr. Farhane said, in the service of health, agriculture, food security and the sustainable management of water. Hamid Marah for his part restated Morocco’s commitment to consolidating what the program has built and to developing African nuclear capacity. Forty-six African countries today benefit from the agency’s initiatives, notably in the fight against cancer, and the agency repeated its support for technical assistance across the continent. Two years pass quickly for a cooperation measured in decades. They will nonetheless say whether the ownership announced in Vienna will have remained a word of ceremony or will have changed the way the continent builds its own expertise.
Photo: Suicasmo, CC BY-SA 4.0.
