Capgemini to Double Presence in Morocco in 2 Years

News Source: Nelson Hall Industry Comment

Capgemini has forged agreements with four Moroccan universities to double its presence in the country within two years. The company has signed agreements for ongoing training and research projects with:

o Hassan 1st University for the Setat Faculty of Technical Sciences
o Mohamed V University
o National Superior School for IT and Systems Analysis
o Moroccan School of Engineering Services.

As part of the agreement, students of those universities will attend classes from Capgemini in Morocco.

Capgemini has been present in the country since 2007 and currently has 260 personnel locally. The company's Technology Services business is providing application development & maintenance and SAP services to ten French clients in the public sector, energy, financial services and telecoms. In addition, Capgemini's Sogeti business is planning to develop a remote IT infrastructure management offering.

Capgemini has also opened new headquarters in Morocco, in Casablanca. The current headquarters for the country are in Casanearshore, the BPO and IT services zone set up by the Moroccan government for promoting the usage of the country as a nearshore center to French- and Spanish-speaking clients.

Analyst comments:

Surprisingly, Capgemini has been somewhat slow in developing its presence in Morocco. Logica for instance has an estimated 800 personnel in the country. The company is still looking for the right way of positioning its Moroccan center, in particular against its Indian centers.

Moroccan nearshoring is still considered as an intermediary step before Indian offshoring. Several IT service vendors, including Atos Origin, GFI Infomatique or GFI Informatique as well BNP Paribas and France Telecom, have made the most of the Moroccan Casanearshore tax incentive program. Yet, the country suffers from a low number of new engineering graduates (estimated by NelsonHall to be under 5,000 a year). This compares with the 20,000 IT graduates France produces every year.