On the first anniversary of the DELL – EMC merger, I interviewed Ahmed Khalil, Managing Director of DELL EMC North & West Africa, about Morocco’s competitiveness and how to leverage intra-African trade synergies.
Morocco's Competitive Advantages
DELL originally created its Casablanca subsidiary back in 2003 to back up its French sales force. Following the rapid success of the initiative, DELL continually developed its activities in Morocco and now counts 1500 employees focusing on 2 main activities: offshoring and sales force.
Ahmed Khalil attributes the growth of the DELL EMC’s African subsidiary to Morocco’s competitive advantages:
- strategic geographic position
- time zone
- skilled multi-lingual human ressources
- good competence / cost ratio
However, Khalil stresses that although Morocco is not a “low-cost doing business destination”, efforts still need to be made to maintain its fiscal competitivity.
North South Trade
We also talked about how DELL EMC adapts to the African context specificities.
Khalil highlights that the company’s process culture is strong enough to standardize every unit of the multinational. As for the African market’s challenges such as distribution, DELL relies on local partners with a deep knowledge of their markets.
The Casablanca subsidiary is used as a knowledge hub that develops specific solutions for large African corporations’ needs and redeploys them across the continent.
Last but not least, Khalil mentions that DELL North West Africa is proud to support gender equality and that their internal gender policy revealed how Moroccan and African women’ skills are valuable to the company’s thriving growth.
Watch the interview and leave your comments and questions in the section below, I will be glad to interact with you!
Kenza is an entrepreneur, business coach and communication expert. She started her career as a Private Equity analyst and took the plunge of entrepreneurship back in 2011 when she founded an innovative beauty e-commerce and a beauty brand. From her experience, Kenza has a deep understanding of doing business in Morocco and South-North trade.