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King Mohammed VI has confirmed that Morocco's longest road, a 1,055-kilometre expressway built at a cost approaching $1 billion, will carry the name of the Donald J. Trump Highway.
The monarch set out the decision in a letter to the American president dated July 2 and published over the weekend by Maghreb Arabe Presse, the Moroccan state news agency. Trump had thanked him for the honour on social media a week earlier, before any parallel announcement from Rabat.
The road runs from Tiznit in southern Morocco to Dakhla, following the Atlantic coast for roughly 655 miles. It is the longest continuous highway project in Africa.
It also crosses into Western Sahara, which is why the naming carries more weight than a courtesy.
What the road runs through
Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony roughly the size of the United Kingdom, resource-rich and disputed since Spain withdrew in 1975. Morocco controls most of it and describes the area as its southern provinces. The Polisario Front, an armed independence movement backed by Algeria, controls part of it and seeks a separate state for the Sahrawi people. The United Nations classifies the territory as non-self-governing.
The conflict is among the longest-running in Africa.
In December 2020, during his first term, Trump broke with decades of American neutrality and formally recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. The recognition came as part of an arrangement in which Morocco agreed to normalise relations with Israel.
That decision is what the highway now commemorates.
"Historic recognition of Morocco's sovereignty over its Sahara will forever be etched in the memory of Moroccans, from generation to generation," the king wrote.
He added: "Although our relations have always been rooted in close friendship and constant loyalty, they have never been as vigorous and fruitful as during your two presidential terms."
Bloomberg reported that the king described the naming as an expression of his deep appreciation of the American leader. He also called it a personal expression of his high regard.
Trump responded on Truth Social, calling the tribute a great honour and saying he hoped to travel the highway himself one day.
A corridor, not a monument
The road has a commercial purpose that predates the name.
Rabat has positioned the Tiznit-Dakhla expressway as a strategic axis linking the north and south of the country, and as the spine of its Atlantic Initiative, a plan to give landlocked Sahel states access to the ocean through Moroccan ports.
Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad have no coastline. All four have historically moved goods through ports in countries with which relations have deteriorated, and Morocco has offered Dakhla as an alternative. A deep-water port is under construction there.
The highway is the road connection that makes the offer credible. It is also, if completed as planned, the infrastructure that binds Western Sahara more tightly to the Moroccan economy.
The king's own position
Mohammed VI is among the wealthiest individuals on the continent. Forbes last valued him at $5.7 billion in 2015, deriving the figure from his interests in Al Mada, the family investment holding company formerly known as Société Nationale d'Investissement.
Al Mada holds positions across Moroccan banking, insurance, telecommunications, mining, energy, retail and agribusiness, and its portfolio has expanded across francophone West Africa over the past decade. He has not appeared on the Forbes list in more recent years.
The Moroccan economy has been reshaped around large infrastructure projects during his reign, including the Tanger Med port, now the largest container terminal in Africa, and the continent's first high-speed rail line.
What comes next
Neither Rabat nor Washington has said when the renaming takes formal effect, or whether signage has been changed.
The Polisario Front has not commented publicly on the decision. Algeria, which hosts Sahrawi refugee camps at Tindouf and has backed the independence movement since the 1970s, has consistently rejected Moroccan sovereignty claims and is likely to view a road named for the president who recognised them as a further hardening of the position.
The highway itself will keep carrying trucks either way.
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