Morocco Now Buys Almost All of France’s Arms Sales in North Africa

Northern Africa · Defence

Morocco France arms exports reached 532.1 million euros of new orders in 2025, roughly US$623 million, out of 533.0 million for the whole of France’s North Africa grouping. On Paris’s own figures, Rabat is now essentially the entire regional market.

What the report says about Morocco France arms exports

The figures come from the Ministère des Armées’ annual report to Parliament on French arms exports, published on 12 August 2026. Its annexes break orders down by country and year.

Moroccan orders ran at 532.1 million euros in 2025. The comparable figure for the report’s North Africa grouping was 533.0 million, of which Algeria contributed 300,000 euros and Tunisia 600,000.

Note that Egypt, normally one of France’s largest customers anywhere, is counted in a different regional grouping in the report, which is why it does not appear in that total. Within North Africa as the report defines it, France booked almost no new Algerian business in 2025, while its Moroccan order book jumped roughly fortyfold from 13.1 million euros in 2024.

Over the decade from 2016 the cumulative Moroccan total is 1.3251 billion euros. The 2025 figure alone is 40% of everything Paris has sold Rabat since 2016.

Orders are promises, deliveries are hardware

The gap between the two columns is where the caution lives. France delivered 83.3 million euros of equipment to Morocco in 2025, against 904.7 million over the ten-year period.

So the 532.1 million is a book of future work, not kit that has arrived. Defence orders typically convert over five to ten years, and some never convert at all.

The licensing data tells a similar story of intent. France accepted 42 individual export licences for Morocco in 2025, and 559 since 2016, with the 2025 batch valued at 1.27 billion euros.

A licence authorises a sale; an order records one actually placed. That is why the licence total runs well ahead of the order book.

One licence dominates that total: a single authorisation worth 969 million euros, about US$1.13 billion, booked under category ML5. Read that carefully, because the report explains that where a licence covers several categories, the whole value is assigned to the financially predominant one.

What ML5 actually covers

The report’s own glossary defines ML5 as fire-control, surveillance and warning equipment, together with related test, alignment and countermeasure systems, specially designed for military use.

In practice that means radars, targeting and laser designation systems, and electronic countermeasures. The report illustrates the category with a surveillance radar and a laser designator.

A single 969 million euro authorisation in that category points at something substantial in the pipeline beyond the helicopters. It is also, on the report’s own methodology, potentially a bundle.

In the report’s table of 2025 licences by financially predominant category, Morocco’s 42 licences are spread across fourteen headings. But one ML5 authorisation alone accounts for 969 million euros of the 1.27 billion total, or 76% of the year’s licensed value in a single document. Separately, France granted Morocco one re-export authorisation, also under ML5.

The Caracals, and why the price is not public

The visible hardware is ten Airbus H225M Caracal helicopters for the Royal Moroccan Air Force, confirmed by Airbus in a press release on 18 November 2025 at the Dubai Airshow.

They are configured for combat search and rescue, with a double hoist, searchlight, a Safran electro-optical system, machine-gun capability and electronic self-protection. They replace SA330 Pumas that have been flying for over 40 years.

Airbus did not disclose the contract value, and The only figure previously on the record was around 800 million euros, for a larger package of eighteen aircraft that was expected at President Macron’s state visit in October 2024 and never signed. The report’s 532.1 million is Morocco’s total 2025 orders from France, not a helicopter price.

What the report does establish is the scale of France’s total 2025 business with Morocco, the first official figure of any kind covering the year the contract entered into force.

Morocco buys from everyone, and that is the strategy

French helicopters are one leg of a deliberately multi-vendor posture. Rabat took a second batch of seven Boeing AH-64E Apaches on 8 May 2026, bringing it to 13 of 24 ordered, handed over at Cap Draa in the Tan-Tan region at the close of exercise African Lion 26.

Morocco and US Africa Command signed a memorandum at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart on 13 July 2026 to establish an Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center, or AMTEC, at Tan-Tan. It was signed by General Mohammed Berrid, Inspector General of Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces, and General Dagvin Anderson, commander of US Africa Command.

The framing there is careful: the two sides are seeking to establish the centre, which is to include a training area, a drone academy and an innovation centre, with a build-out target of 2030. It is a memorandum, not a construction contract.

Add Israeli artillery systems and Turkish drones and Morocco is buying from at least five suppliers at once. Set against its long dispute with Algeria over Western Sahara, the territory Rabat claims and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front contests, that spread of suppliers is the point.

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