Image alt text: Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri speaks at a televised address after being appointed Morocco’s first woman prime minister
On September 29, King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as Morocco’s prime minister, making the 50-year-old urban planner and longtime mayor of Marrakesh the first woman to hold the role in the kingdom’s history. She is also the third woman to serve as prime minister in the Arab world. “For the first time in our country’s history, a woman is taking on the responsibility of leading the government,” El Mansouri said in a televised address. “This is a source of pride not only for me but for all Moroccan women.”
From Marrakesh’s city hall to the prime minister’s office
El Mansouri was born in Marrakesh in 1976 and studied law, earning a diploma in advanced studies from the University of Montpellier in France and a diploma in Anglo-Saxon business law from New York University. She entered local politics in 2009, elected mayor of Marrakesh at 33 and the first woman to hold that office. After the 2021 elections she returned to lead the Marrakesh municipal council and served multiple terms in the House of Representatives.
In October 2021 she moved into national government as Minister of National Spatial Planning, Urban Development, Housing and Urban Policy. That put her in charge of housing reform and, more urgently, the effort to rehouse tens of thousands of people displaced by the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake, which killed nearly 3,000 people and wiped out whole villages in the High Atlas mountains.
Building a coalition with the World Cup on the clock
El Mansouri’s Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) won the most seats in Morocco’s September elections, taking 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives. That’s well short of the 198 needed for a majority, so building a coalition comes first. The Justice and Development Party and the Federation of Democratic Left have both announced they’re staying in opposition. PAM, founded in 2008 and closely tied to the monarchy, has said it will work with anyone else.
The government she puts together will be running things during Morocco’s build-up to the 2030 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted with Portugal and Spain, with billions in infrastructure spending attached and a level of international attention that tends to raise the stakes on everything. El Mansouri spent her career in urban planning, housing reform, and post-earthquake rebuilding. Given what’s coming, that’s not an accidental fit.
The third woman prime minister in the Arab world
El Mansouri follows two Tunisian predecessors: Najla Bouden, who served from October 2021 to August 2023, and Sara Zaafarani, appointed in March 2025 and still in the role. Ten years ago the idea of three women holding prime ministerial office across two Arab countries in five years would have seemed optimistic. Morocco has also seen women’s parliamentary representation grow steadily over the same period.
Now she has to hold a coalition together, run a budget, and deliver on the housing and urban development agenda she has been carrying since 2021. The World Cup investment will reshape Moroccan cities long after the final whistle, and whoever oversees that money will have a lot to answer for. She called the appointment “truly historic.” On that score she’s probably right. Whether her government earns the same description is a different question.
