Morocco's king appoints Fatima Zahra Mansouri as the country's first woman prime minister

30 September 2026

King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Zahra Mansouri, 50, as prime minister of Morocco on 29 September 2026. She is the first woman to hold the post in Morocco and the second in the Arab world after Tunisia's Najla Bouden. She belongs to the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which won 97 of the 395 seats in the legislative elections held the previous week, short of the 198 needed for a majority. Mansouri was previously urban planning minister and mayor of Marrakesh. Her first task is to build a governing coalition.