On October 18 and 19^th, 2019, MIPA held its 4^th Policy training in the city of Tangier. The training saw the participation of 20 participants, with various backgrounds such as doctoral students, journalists and other professionals. The diversity of the training participants held up the quality of the interactions. Dr. Mohammed Masbah, director of MIPA, kicked off the event with a presentation about the various techniques and requirements for writing a policy paper for MIPA, in essence explaining the various stages of what a policy paper goes through. Secondly, Dr. Rachid Aourraz, senior fellow at MIPA, presented his own paper “How the rentier economy ousted UBER from Morocco”, explaining the process of publication in MIPA, including the review and editing as ways to improve the quality and depth of MIPA papers.

The training saw the participation of two major guest researchers and lecturers, based in Tunisia, that is Dr. Jean Louis Romanet Perroux founder of NAPI (North African Policy Initiative) and Dr. Marouen Taleb.

Dr. Romanet Perroux gave a high-quality lecture on the specific methodology of writing a policy paper, highlighting the difference between it and writing a purely academic paper. Also, he spoke about the different ethical considerations and techniques whilst facing hurdles in the country or area of research. He used his example as being a researcher in Libya. From his side, Marouen Taleb, who gave advice to the researchers on how to conduct research in the Maghreb countries, as these countries were similar in fashion, regarding their bureaucracy.

Also, all participants worked on a workshop to elaborate a research topic, and discussed how to elaborate a research question, the appropriate methodology and a brief outline. This gave a chance to all participants to directly apply the techniques learned during the lectures.

To conclude the event, each participant was awarded a certificate of participation and they were briefed on how to proceed regarding the drafting of the papers in the upcoming weeks.