Morocco Spanish colony that was annexed by Morocco in 1975 (see Green March). Morocco claims that the Western Sahara is part of its territory and refers to that as its Southern Provinces. Morocco's capital city is Rabat; its largest city is its main port, Casablanca. Other cities recording a population over 500,000 in the 2014 Moroccan census are Fes, Marrakesh, Meknes, Salé and Tangier. Morocco is represented in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 geographical encoding standard by the symbol "MA". This code was used as the basis for Morocco's internet domain, .ma. The country's Mediterranean climate is similar to that of southern
Economy of Morocco recent years has yielded strong growth and investment grade status and it is weathering the negative impacts of the global crisis impressively well. Morocco is now addressing persistent social problems by reducing absolute poverty rates, investing in human capital through quality education, expanding access to drinking water, and linking rural areas to markets through investment in roads. Morocco faces challenges on human development outcomes despite progress over the past decade, in particular. Overall illiteracy rates and gender disparity in access to secondary education remain high and the country continues to suffer poor outcomes on infant and maternal mortality. It also