Aziz Akhannouch

Born to a self-made father, who started building his fortune through the reselling of imported fuel, Aziz Akhannouch has very successfully leveraged on that heritage to build the multi-billion conglomerate Akwa, averaging 13 million dollars in profit as of 2015.

According to Forbes, Aziz Akhannouch is second wealthiest person in Morocco, outside of the royal family. He ventured into politics in 2003 and become President de Region (Governor of the region) under the banner of Morocco’s Rassemblement National des Independents party (RNI). He has been Morocco’s Minister Minister of Agriculture for the past ten years, first appointed in 2007, and reconducted in the newly elected government in 2011.

Akhannouch’s interest in media has come fairly late in the history of his conglomerate. The Akwa group aquired the group Caractères, one of the leaders in the media market in Morocco, producing 5 titles edited in Morocco: the daily newspaper La Vie Eco, the monthly feminine magazine in French ‘Femmes Du Maroc’, the monthly feminine magazine in Arabic ‘Nissaa Min Al Maghrib’, the magazine ‘Maisons Du Maroc’, and the monthly feminine magazine in Arabic ‘Nejma’, and one title edited and distributed in France ‘Le Courrier De L’Atlas’.

His wife, Salwa Idrissi, has a successful group of her own, through which she holds franchises of major fashion brands (Zara, Gap amongst others) and built Morocco's flagship mall. Their fortune is estimated at $1.59 B.