The world’s largest exporter of fertiliser, the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), has had a productive, if trying, month.
On 8 March, OCP signed a deal to provide Kenyan company MEA with 100,000tn of fertiliser each year. Continuing Moroccan companies’ moves into sub-Saharan Africa, OCP also signed a deal to help create a map of soil fertility in Mali, with an eye to providing the necessary chemicals to boost production.
Malian businessmen recently purchased 25,000tn of fertiliser from OCP, signalling the beginning of a longer-term relationship between Malian agriculture and the company. Privatised in 2008, OCP is in expansionary mode, with the aim of creating 10 new production units over the next decade. It has co-production agreements with Brazilian, Indian and Pakistani companies.
Morocco holds three-quarters of the world’s phosphate supplies and controls 40% of global exports.
In these days of tighter oil and food prices, it is a strategic asset, which may explain the muscular police intervention to break up a sit-in organised by the children of OCP pensioners protesting that local jobs were being given to outsiders. More than 60 people were injured and 200 arrests were made during the confrontation outside the offices of the company in Khourigba on 15 March.
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