Stakeholder Management in Public-Private Partnerships for Territorial Innovation: The Case of Nouaceur Technopole in Morocco’s Green Industrialization

Abstract

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are emerging as a new source of territorial innovation for green industrialisation in developing countries, necessitating stakeholder management in social projects. This paper investigates the Nouaceur Technopole in Morocco as a PPP innovation initiative that co-produces resources from the State, OCP Group, and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) to build sustainable industrial ecosystems for green hydrogen and circular phosphates, framed as a social project for inclusion and resilience. Drawing on territorial innovation models and stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984), we formulate a research question to investigate how stakeholder management in a public-private partnership (PPP) can make an industrial development project sovereign, resilient, and inclusive in a resource-poor setting. A qualitative analysis of secondary data from 2021-2024 indicates significant outputs of €300 million in green finance, three sustainable fertilizer pilot plants, and 1,200 youth trained per year (OCP Group, 2023; UM6P, 2024). These outputs validate the PPP innovation initiative as reinforcing sovereignty and support a zero-carbon pathway by 2030. Still, one troubling finding jeopardises inclusivity: 70% of qualified jobs in this innovation process do not involve local SMEs due to asymmetric power relations (Région Casablanca-Settat, 2024). This paper evaluates the replicability of the hybrid innovation initiative in the Global South. It proposes local governance mechanisms to reinforce sustainability at the territorial, SME, and stakeholder-management levels, in accordance with social project requirements (Freeman et al., 2010).