King Mohammed VI of Morocco has appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as the country’s first female prime minister, the Royal Palace announced on Tuesday, tasking her with forming a new government after her party topped the recent parliamentary election.
The palace said in a statement that the King received El Mansouri at the Royal Palace in Rabat and named her head of government in line with the constitution. The appointment came four days after the results of the 23 September legislative election were declared.
El Mansouri, 50, leads the Authenticity and Modernity Party, or PAM, which won 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, Morocco’s lower chamber. That put it ahead of the National Rally of Independents, led by outgoing prime minister Aziz Akhannouch, which took 66 seats, and the Istiqlal Party with 65.
In a televised address, El Mansouri described the moment as significant for women in the country. “This is a source of pride not only for me but for all Moroccan women,” she said, calling the appointment “truly historic”.
She becomes the second woman to serve as prime minister in the Arab world, after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden, who held the office from October 2021 to August 2023.
A lawyer by training, El Mansouri was born in Marrakech in 1976 and studied law at the University of Montpellier in France. She was first elected mayor of Marrakech in 2009, returned to the post after the 2021 election, and served as minister for national territory planning and housing in the outgoing government, during which she rose to lead PAM.
Under the Moroccan constitution, the country remains a monarchy in which the King retains significant powers, including the appointment of the head of government from the party that wins the most seats. The prime minister then works with the King to appoint the rest of the cabinet.
Forming that cabinet will be El Mansouri’s first task, and it is unlikely to be straightforward. Morocco’s electoral system, which spreads seats across many parties, makes it difficult for any single party to secure an outright majority, so a coalition will be required. PAM has said it is open to talks with all sides, and El Mansouri told reporters she had set no “red lines” for the negotiations.
Not every party is willing to join. Abdelilah Benkirane, a former prime minister and leader of the Justice and Development Party, which won 54 seats, said his party would remain in opposition. The left-wing Federation of the Democratic Left has also indicated it will stay out of government.
PAM’s rise reflects a reshuffling among the parties that had governed together. The RNI, PAM and Istiqlal all sat in the outgoing coalition, but relations between them grew competitive as the election approached, with the partners trading blame over policy failures, including an inability to halt rising food prices. PAM’s campaign was also boosted by the recruitment of Fouzi Lekjaa, head of Morocco’s football federation and a former budget minister, who joined the party weeks before the vote and had himself been mentioned as a possible prime minister.
The party founded in 2008 by Fouad Ali El Himma, a close associate of the King, now operates under a collective leadership arrangement adopted at its 2024 congress, with El Mansouri serving as coordinator alongside Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid and Fatima Saadi.
The incoming government inherits a heavy agenda. It will oversee the final stages of Morocco’s preparations to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup with Spain and Portugal, a push linked to investment estimated in official accounts at about 20 billion dollars. Beyond the tournament, El Mansouri’s government faces pressure to deliver on election promises to bring down inflation, raise wages, create jobs and improve education and health care.
Those pressures are not abstract. In the months before the vote, Reuters reported that many young Moroccans continued to voice distrust of political institutions and established parties, a sentiment that fed into a campaign fought partly over the cost of living and the state of public services.
Whether El Mansouri can translate her party’s win into a stable governing coalition will become clearer in the coming days, as she submits a proposed cabinet for the King’s approval. Until that list is agreed and a government sworn in, the shape and direction of her administration remain to be settled.