FIWARE Mundus Committee’s Vice-Chairman for Africa Pierre-Yves Danet, from Orange, managed to get an invitation from Maroc Numeric Cluster (MNC) for FIWARE to participate at the Smart City Expo World Congress event in Casablanca, Morocco. The main objective if this presence was to advertise the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding between MNC and the FIWARE Foundation. A FIWARE-MNC booth was set up, and a speaking slot was offered to present FIWARE. A good number of visitors came at the booth, and the room was full when the FIWARE presentation was given by Stefano De Panfilis, COO of the FIWARE Foundation.  The Mundus Team was completed by Géraldine Quetin from InterInnov.

The MoU signature was organised during the gala dinner, between Stefano and Mehdi Kettani, Chairman of MNC. That ensured maximum visibility among the Smart City expo VIPs, including big industries CEOs, ambassadors, and other high-level individuals.

FIWARE Mundus is currently supporting the set-up of a local FIWARE node with MNC and e-Madina. The MoU supports the process between FIWARE stakeholders in Morocco and FIWARE Mundus. MNC, e-Medina, Orange, the FIWARE Foundation and FIWARE Mundus are committed to work together on a common action plan to set up a Morocco FIWARE ecosystem, including communication activities, identification of data providers, working with the local EC bureau to identify relevant development funds, besides setting up the node.

A meeting with Orange Morocco was held aside the event to organise the FIWARE node hosting between MNC and Orange.

This message is posted on behalf of Pierre-Yves Danet and Geraldine Quetin, FIWARE Mundus (Africa)

Maroc Numeric Cluster (MNC, http://www.marocnumericcluster.org/), founded in 2010, is a Public Private Organization that federates different actors from ICT ecosystem: The Moroccan Ministry of Industry, Trade, Investment and Numeric Economy, Large enterprises, SMEs, Academia and Research institutions, ICT Associations and funding organizations. MNC has signed a Contract Program over 3 years with the Moroccan Government and serves the ambitions of the Moroccan Strategy for the IT sector as a vector of Human Development and a source of added value for other economic sectors and a pillar of the Moroccan economy. MNC seeks to become the leader IT cluster in the region and the vector of a technology hub in the region. MNC’s mission is to help the emergence of innovative and collaborative projects in mainly 5 IT fields: Mobile services, Security of Information Systems, Electronic banking, Multimedia and Business Software.

e-Madina (http://www.e-madina.org/) is a Cluster aiming at developing and implementing best practice for smart cities in Morocco.