King Mohammed VI to Visit Ghana on Wednesday Ahead of AU Summit

PERSISMA, Rabat – King Mohammed VI will be visiting Ghana on Wednesday, according to “reliable” sources close to the matter cited by Le360. The trip will begin the monarch’s latest tour of Africa, right before the African Union summit in Addis Ababa at the end of January, during which Morocco is expected to be officially reinstated to the continental organization.

The newly-elected Moroccan parliament is expected to pass a bill approving the kingdom’s return to the AU later this week, after internal leadership elections take place.

King Mohammed VI has been working on ramping up support for Morocco’s reentry to the African Union since the second half of 2016. Over the past six months, he has visited several countries – Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nigeria and more – that hold stances traditionally hostile to the kingdom’s take on the Western Sahara.

Morocco left the AU in 1984 after the rest of the nations in the organization voted to allow the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) to become a full member. The SADR is a puppet government led by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a group that contradicts Morocco’s sovereignty over its “Southern Provinces.”

Morocco’s top businessmen accompanied King Mohammed Vi on his tours, signing major investment agreements with their African counterparts during their time abroad. One of the biggest developments came during the monarch’s time in Nigeria, when the 4,000-kilometer Trans-African pipeline was announced.

In Rwanda, Morocco launched agricultural and banking development programs to encourage South-South cooperation and secure the economic future of the continent. (Zainab Calcuttawala)