Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri

Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri was born on 3 January 1976 in Marrakech, into a family from the Rehamna region. Her father, Abderrahmane El Mansouri, a lawyer, served as pasha of the city before representing Morocco as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.

She grew up in a household where public affairs were present from the start. It was from her father, she says, that she drew her sense of responsibility and a lasting bond with the life of the city, local governance and service to the common good.

Educated in the French system in Marrakech, she earned her baccalaureate at Lycée Victor Hugo in 1994. She then read law at Mohammed V University in Rabat, graduating with a degree in private law.

She went on to France for a postgraduate diploma (DEA) in business-contract law at the University of Montpellier, and completed her training in New York with a certificate in common-law business law. This path gave her a strong legal grounding and an international outlook that would shape her whole career.

Admitted to the Marrakech Bar on 22 March 2005, she specialised in land and real-estate law. She also practised at a business law firm in Casablanca, and founded her own practice, dedicated to real-estate and commercial transactions.

Practising land and real-estate law gave her first-hand knowledge of land, permits and investment: the very issues she would later handle at City Hall and at the Ministry of Housing.

In 2008 she joined the Movement for All Democrats, and was among the founding members of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), later serving two terms on its political bureau.

On 12 June 2009 she was elected to the Marrakech city council. Ten days later, on 22 June, the council elected her mayor by 54 votes to 35. At 33, she became the first woman to lead Marrakech, and the second woman mayor in Morocco’s history.

Heading a 96-member council, she made proximity her method and sound finances a priority. By her own figures, presented in January 2014, the city budget doubled in four years and posted a surplus of 150 million dirhams.

Her council prepared the programme “Marrakech, City of Permanent Renewal” through a participatory process of 30 workshops with 1,200 citizens. On 6 January 2014, His Majesty the King launched it: 6.3 billion dirhams over 2014-2017 for urban integration, mobility, cultural heritage, the environment and human development. She addressed the King at the ceremony.

First elected to the House of Representatives in 2011, she was re-elected in 2016 in the Marrakech Médina-Sidi Youssef Ben Ali constituency. In September 2021 the list she led came first there, with 16,136 votes.

On 23 September 2026 she was elected there once more, on the day the PAM came first in a legislative election for the first time.

On 24 January 2016 the PAM’s 3rd national congress unanimously elected her President of its National Council, a post to which she was unanimously re-elected on 9 February 2020. In February 2024 the 5th congress, meeting in Bouznika, created a collegial leadership of the PAM with her as national coordinator, alongside, today, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid and Fatima Saâdi.

On 13 February 2024 His Majesty King Mohammed VI sent her a message of congratulations praising her human qualities, competence and experience. Under her coordination the party adopted an ethics charter and a political academy, launched the Jeel 2030 youth dialogue platform and, in September 2026, presented a programme of twenty measurable commitments.

On 7 October 2021 the King appointed her, at the Royal Palace in Fès, Minister of National Territory Planning, Urban Planning, Housing and City Policy in the government of Aziz Akhannouch. She launched a National Dialogue on Urbanism and Housing across the 12 regions, with more than 4,000 participants, then on 17 October 2023 presented the direct housing aid programme to the King.

Launched on 2 January 2024 on a fully digital platform, the programme had 108,459 beneficiaries by June 2026. Her ministry oversaw reconstruction after the Al Haouz earthquake (58,945 permits issued, more than 54,400 homes rebuilt or repaired), accelerated the Cities Without Slums programme (62 cities declared), approved 444 urban planning documents and carried two reform laws, 64.23 and 34.21, published on 10 August 2026.

Re-elected mayor on 17 September 2021, she has led, alongside her ministerial duties, a programme of 423 projects and 15.16 billion dirhams of planned investment, 311 of them delivered or under way. Her line: reconciling investment with the preservation of the city’s urban and heritage identity.

The record of this term includes 349 new buses, 15 of them electric, the Azzouzia bus station, 130 km of roads, the 120-hectare Zitoune park, the 40-hectare Moulay El Hassan park and the 65-hectare M’Hamid urban forest, and the launch of the restoration of the historic Agdal Ba Ahmed garden.

In March 2014 the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. In December that year Forbes listed her first among the 20 youngest power women in Africa.

As minister, she led Morocco’s delegation at the UN General Assembly high-level meeting on the New Urban Agenda in New York on 28 April 2022 and spoke at the Africities summit in Kisumu; at the UN-Habitat Assembly in Nairobi, Morocco’s address was delivered in her name. In May 2024 she was elected to the Bureau of the International Association of Francophone Mayors.

On 23 September 2026 the PAM came first in the legislative elections with 97 of 395 seats. Six days later, on Tuesday 29 September, His Majesty King Mohammed VI received her at the Royal Palace in Rabat and, under Article 47 of the Constitution, appointed her Head of Government, charging her with forming the new government. She succeeds Aziz Akhannouch, Head of Government since 2021.

For the first time in Morocco’s history, a woman heads the government, a post often described as prime minister in English-language media. She announced immediate consultations, first within her party and then with all political parties, with a view to proposing the new team to the King.