Morocco has a new prime minister — and for the first time in the country’s history, the job goes to a woman. King Mohammed VI on Tuesday appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as head of government, handing the country’s top executive office to a seasoned politician, lawyer and former mayor of Marrakesh.
The royal palace said on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, that the King had received El Mansouri at the palace and tasked her with forming the new government, according to Reuters and AFP. The appointment makes her the first woman ever to lead Morocco’s government.
The election that set it up
The appointment follows Morocco’s September 23 parliamentary election, in which El Mansouri’s party, the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), came out on top with 97 of the 395 seats in the House of Representatives, up from the 87 it won in 2021, according to results delivered by Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit and reported by Khaleej Times.
Under Article 47 of Morocco’s Constitution, the King appoints the head of government from the political party that finishes first in elections to the House of Representatives, AFP reports. With PAM finishing first, the constitutional path to El Mansouri’s appointment was set.
Who is Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri?
El Mansouri, 50, is one of Morocco’s most experienced political figures. Born on January 3, 1976, in Marrakesh, she trained as a lawyer — registering with the Marrakesh Bar Association in 2005 and specialising in property law — after studying law at France’s University of Montpellier and at Mohammed V University in Rabat, according to Khaleej Times.
Her political career has repeatedly broken glass ceilings. She became mayor of Marrakesh in 2009 — the first woman to hold the post — served until 2015, and returned as head of the Marrakesh municipal council after the 2021 local elections, AFP reports. She served in the outgoing government as minister of national territory planning, housing and city policy from 2021 to 2026, and has been one of PAM’s three collective leaders since 2024.
Her profile was already international: in 2014, Forbes magazine named her among the 20 most influential women under 45 in Africa, and she was also selected as a Young Global Leader.
A coalition government ahead
The appointment is the beginning of the political work, not the end. PAM’s 97 seats are well short of the 198 required for a parliamentary majority, so El Mansouri must now negotiate a governing coalition, AFP notes. The royal cabinet said she has been “tasked with forming the new government.”
The historic dimension of the moment reaches beyond Morocco’s borders: Khaleej Times noted that Tunisia’s Najla Bouden Romdhane was the first woman to serve as prime minister in the Arab world when she took office in 2021, remaining in the post until August 2023 — putting El Mansouri among a very small group of women ever to lead an Arab government.
What to watch next
The immediate question is which parties will join PAM’s coalition and who gets which portfolios — the composition of the government will determine how much of PAM’s economic and social agenda can actually move. For Morocco, though, Tuesday’s news already marks a milestone decades in the making: a woman at the helm of the government, appointed by the King himself, in one of the Arab world’s most-watched monarchies.
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