Social aid Morocco devotes 2% of its GDP to beneficiaries – Today Morocco

Social environment, age groups, territorial distribution… the details of the first assessment of the National Social Support Agency

The ANSS takes stock. The first activity report for the year 2025 was unveiled by the National Social Support Agency (ANSS) to retrace the significant stages of its first year of operation. The document reveals several program management indicators. Since its launch, it has supported 3.9 million households, including 5.5 million children and 1.7 million elderly people. Territorially, 60% of beneficiaries come from rural areas. The correlation between the multidimensional poverty map and the geographical distribution of beneficiaries appears to be almost total. This concordance confirms the effectiveness of the targeting operated by the Unified Social Register, which directs aid according to areas of territorial vulnerability. The financial effort made reflects this ambition: since the launch of the program in December 2023 and until the end of December 2025, the amounts paid to families total 51 billion dirhams. Relative to national wealth, the annual envelope of the program represents approximately 2% of Gross Domestic Product, a rate which is beyond the average observed in developing countries where this ratio represents between 0.5% and 1.5%. A level of investment that positions the Kingdom as a benchmark in its continental and regional environment.

A human relationship with the beneficiaries
During its first year of operation, the ANSS launched its first pilot territorial representation in the province of El Jadida, with the ambition of transforming social assistance from a financial mechanism to a lever for productive inclusion. This objective is based on individualized support for beneficiaries, provided by the Agency’s social representatives, within the framework of an institutional partnership with the various local stakeholders. The Agency intends to gradually generalize this model on a national scale, according to a rigorous methodology, concerned with territorial equity and contributing to the integrated territorial development desired by His Majesty the King.

To better understand the needs of beneficiaries, the ANSS adopted an analytical approach aimed at deepening the understanding of the social structure of families and adapting its interventions to their assets, taking into account the vulnerability factors that characterize their situation. This approach resulted in a classification of beneficiary households into five groups, the characteristics of which are documented in the Agency’s Activity Report: “Emerging Homes” (1.2 million families), “Moulting Homes” (986,000), “Tandems of Life” (946,000), “Deserted Nests” (584,000) and “Solitaires without Relay” (156,000). The report also presented the results of the field study conducted by the ANSS eighteen months after the launch of the program. This reveals that direct social assistance represents on average 18% of the income of beneficiary families, and that 87% reported a reduction in their financial anxiety. Regarding their expectations, 40% would like to benefit from support towards professional integration, and 77% affirm their ambition to provide their children with a higher level of education.

Beyond the assessment, the annual report outlines the program’s prospects by exploring trajectories of productive inclusion of beneficiaries. These include in particular support measures intended to strengthen access to the labor market and encourage the schooling of students, in order to make direct social assistance an effective instrument for combating vulnerability and a lever for economic and social empowerment.

Expansion of beneficiaries
The year 2025 was also marked by the expansion of the benefit of direct social assistance to orphaned and abandoned children, taken care of by social protection establishments, in order to guarantee their access to secure capital and facilitate their entry into adult life. “To support these various actions, the Agency has undertaken rigorous internal structuring work, in particular through the activation of governance instruments, the progressive recruitment of its human resources, the establishment of information systems and compliance with compliance requirements, particularly in terms of the protection of personal data. In this momentum, the Agency’s institutional culture has been affirmed around founding values: a strong sense of public mission, efficiency in action and collective responsibility assumed at all levels.

The challenge of this first year was to bring together teams with diverse profiles around these guiding principles, in the service of a shared objective: guaranteeing fair, understandable and secure social support,” explains the Agency in its report. “At the end of this first year, the ANSS asserts itself in its role of management, monitoring and evaluation of the Direct Social Assistance Scheme. Today it is a strategic, structured, operational public establishment recognized by all stakeholders in the social field. Its positioning is based on a logic of complementarity and close coordination with administrations and institutional partners. It acts as a pivotal player to strengthen the impact of the Direct Social Assistance Scheme, while respecting everyone’s prerogatives. This year also allowed us to learn several fundamental lessons.

The first is the importance of institutional coordination as an essential condition for the success of this inter-administrative social policy,” adds the same source. And to conclude: “The second reminds us that digital technology, a powerful lever for transformation, can only produce its full effects by being associated with local human support and diversified access methods, to guarantee effective access to rights for all citizens. These achievements and lessons shed light on the Agency’s future choices: strengthening governance through data, deepening inter-institutional coordination and developing approaches combining digital presence and territorial anchoring constitute the main challenges, with a view to sustainably guaranteeing the equity and effectiveness of social support.