Oracle has opened a second research and development centre in Morocco, extending a strategy that is turning the country into its engineering base for North Africa, while South Africa continues to anchor its cloud services farther south.
The new facility in Agadir follows the recent opening of an Oracle R&D centre in Casablanca and will develop cloud software, AI applications, data platforms and industry-specific products for Oracle customers worldwide.
Although Oracle presents the move as part of its AI expansion, the announcement is really about talent.
The company says the Agadir centre will employ Moroccan engineers, developers and researchers, complementing the Casablanca operation and creating what it describes as a multi-city innovation network. The hub will focus on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, AI-powered business applications, data platforms and industry software, while drawing on engineering talent beyond Casablanca.
The new centre was inaugurated by Moroccan head of government Aziz Akhannouch, together with ministers responsible for digital transformation and investment, underlining the importance Morocco places on attracting high-value technology investment.
“Through this new R&D Centre in Agadir, Oracle has chosen to continue and expand its presence in Morocco,” says Akhannouch. “This confirms that our country is now recognised as a credible, competitive, and attractive platform for research and development activities and advanced technologies.”
Oracle executive vice-president Simon de Montfort Walker says the expansion reflects the company’s confidence in Morocco’s engineering capability.
“The success of Oracle’s Casablanca R&D centre, followed by the opening of our Agadir hub, reflects Oracle’s confidence in Morocco’s exceptional talent, strong digital ambitions, and rapidly growing technology ecosystem,” says Walker. “This expansion reinforces Oracle’s commitment to helping establish Morocco as a leading centre for digital innovation that will help advance cloud and AI technologies, delivering new capabilities and greater value to our customers and partners worldwide.”
Oracle says the Agadir facility will include collaborative workspaces, software development environments and innovation laboratories supporting research, experimentation and product development across its technology portfolio. The company has not disclosed the size of the investment or how many engineers will be based at the new site.
For Africa, the announcement reflects a broader pattern among global cloud providers.
Microsoft has concentrated its African cloud infrastructure in South Africa while expanding development activities elsewhere on the continent. Google established its first African cloud region in Johannesburg before increasing investment in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. Oracle appears to be following a similar path: cloud infrastructure where demand is strongest, software engineering where technical talent is growing rapidly.
Morocco has become an increasingly attractive location for that work. Its proximity to Europe, multilingual workforce and engineering graduates have helped it attract research operations from several international technology companies, while government incentives have encouraged investment in digital industries.
Oracle now has two cloud regions planned in Morocco, with Casablanca already operational and Settat scheduled to follow. Together with the Agadir and Casablanca R&D hubs, that gives the country a larger Oracle engineering footprint than anywhere else on the continent.
South Africa nevertheless retains a distinct role in Oracle’s African strategy.
Oracle launched its Johannesburg Cloud Region in 2022, making it the company’s first cloud region in Africa. It remains Oracle’s primary platform for customers across sub-Saharan Africa, particularly those with data residency requirements and low-latency access to cloud services.
The latest investment also reflects Oracle’s broader evolution. Best known for decades as a database software company, Oracle has become one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud infrastructure providers, investing heavily in data centres and AI computing capacity to compete with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Expanding its engineering base is as important to that strategy as building new cloud regions.
The Agadir investment suggests Oracle no longer sees Africa as a single market. South Africa has become the continent’s cloud gateway, while Morocco is increasingly serving as a development base for the technologies that run those cloud services.
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.