The traditional way of crossing from Rabat to its twin city of Salé has been to take a rowing boat across the Bouregreg estuary that separates Morocco’s administrative capital from the old corsair town. But after centuries of cultivation, the small holdings that fill the Bouregreg estuary valley seem set to disappear, and the Rabat-Salé boatmen have been lobbying to preserve their livelihood, as the area is set for radical transformation into a multi-billion-dollar real estate development financed by investors from the United Arab Emirates, who are also tapping into local savings that have long searched for a home.
The Bouregreg experience is being replicated across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as the 2005-06 oil price boom is translated into a huge investment hike by the region’s wealthier countries and individuals into projects and new financial initiatives. The template established by Dubai’s glitzy commercial and leisure hub is being replicated in some unlikely destinations: there is an upsurge in Kuwaiti investment in Syria, providing just one example of Gulf investors looking to place their money in one of the MENA region’s less attractive investment targets (see The Banker, August 2006).
