Saloua Karkri Belkeziz, Moroccan businesswoman and feminist activist
Audio 03:17
Saloua Karkri Belkeziz, Moroccan businesswoman and feminist activist.
© Olivier Rogez / RFI
By: Olivier Rogez Follow
7 mins
She is a pioneer whom we portray in “
Today the economy
”
.
Saloua Karkri Belkeziz, who publishes her memoirs entitled “
Le chemin des possibilities
”
(La croisée des paths), has helped promote the role of Moroccan women in businesses.
Businesswoman, activist and, for a time, a Member of Parliament.
Olivier Rogez met her.
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“
I'm the style to get into everything that's new.
I was the first woman to create an information technology company, the first to create an association of women entrepreneurs…
”Saloua Karkri Belkeziz introduced herself.
At 59, the businesswoman has lost none of her curiosity or her strong character.
The one that allowed him at the end of the 1970s to leave the family home at the age of 17, with his baccalaureate in hand, to go to France to continue his studies.
At home, her uncle balks a bit, and her grandfather resigns himself to seeing the brilliant student fly to other skies.
“They knew I was stubborn.
My grandfather always told them "if she screams, if she wants something, give it to her, anyway, she won't change her mind," "she
says.
Saloua Karkri Belkeziz, boss at 25
Coming from a modest background but where education is revered, the young graduate gifted in mathematics, chooses computer science. After her studies in Paris, she returned to Morocco and decided to set up her own Professional Systems company.
“I created the first IT service company in Morocco that sold software. Before it was only hardware companies. I was 25, it was a first. There were certainly women who ran family businesses, but in the technology sector, I was a pioneer, ”
she continues.
We are in 1987 and Moroccan society is still very conservative.
25-year-old patron Saloua Karkri Belkeziz has had a bitter experience.
Bankers look down on her, and sometimes the employees slam the door.
“One day an engineer quit for no reason,”
she recalls, “
and a few years later he confessed to me that he couldn't stand having a female boss.
He came from the north of Morocco, and for him, it was the men who should be the bosses.
"
In Morocco, the activity rate of women is still only 20%
Through hard work, Saloua Karkri Belkeziz earned a reputation for excellence, to the point that the French IT services group GFI joined forces with her, before buying her company a few years later, entrusting her with the Moroccan management. In parallel with this career, she founded
AFEM
, the Association of Women Entrepreneurs in Morocco.
“
I found that women did not participate enough in economic debates.
she explains
. The first objective of this association was to involve them in debates on economic reforms. And also, to encourage girls to start their businesses by participating in a network.
"
AFEM is a success. More than six hundred women entrepreneurs have become members in 20 years. Saloua Karkri Belkeziz, who was also a socialist deputy, fought for twenty years against the prevailing conservatism and so that the progressive laws adopted at the turn of the 2000s do not remain a dead letter in Morocco. Because, she deplores, the activity rate of women is still only 20% against 75% in a country like France. It has even decreased over the past twenty years. “
This rate could increase if we put in place an environment to allow women to work outside the home
,” she says.
This is what you have in France, with nurseries, school transport, taxation for home service jobs. All this, unfortunately, we dohave not yet.
"
Having become in thirty years a respected figure in entrepreneurship as well as a voice of Moroccan feminism, Saloua Karkri Belkeziz now devotes part of her time to transmitting a simple message to Moroccan women: the doors are never closed if the we push hard enough.
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