Mostafa Terrab

Mostafa Terrab (Arabic: مصطفى الطراب‎‎; Born 1955 in Fes) has been the CEO of the Moroccan state-owned phosphate-mining company OCP since 2006. He was an adviser to Hassan II and member of the G-14 think-tank, which counted figures such as Taieb Fassi-Fihri and Driss Jettou.

Biography

Education

Mostafa Terrab graduated in engineering from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1972, completed a Masters in Engineering in 1982 and furthered his studies with a Doctorate in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1990.

Teaching

Mostafa Terrab was assistant professor and researcher at the MIT between September 1986 and August 1989 and professor in the departments of decision sciences and engineering systems and civil and environmental engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York from 1990 to 1992.

Career

He started his career as a transport systems analyst at Bechtel Civil and Minerals, Inc. (1983-1985) in San Francisco, where he was tasked with planning studies for the Dammam International Airport project in Saudi Arabia as well as forming part of the team that carried out economic research into the Strait of Gibraltar fixed link. He served as assistant professor and researcher at the MIT between September 1986 and August 1989 and consultant at the Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts between 1989 and 1993. He then went on to serve as policy adviser for the office of Hassan II between April 1996 and July 1999 and became Director General of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT) on 9 February 1998.

He progressed to the World Bank in 2002 and, in 2006, was named CEO of the OCP Group, which possesses the world's leading phosphate resources. With the backing of international partners, Terrab set up the Atlantic Dialogues forum in 2007.

Other roles

In 1992, Terrab was appointed as a policy adviser to the Royal Cabinet. In 1995, he was given the post of Secretary General to the Executive Secretariat of the Economic Summit for the Middle East and North Africa (Morocco). In April 1996, he was invited to take part in the G14. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Banque Centrale Populaire SA since 2012 and Deputy Chairman of the Mohammed VI Foundation for Sustainable Development since 2015. He is Chairman of the OCP Foundation and works tirelessly to promote entrepreneurship and human development at home and abroad.

He was one of the founders of the Rabat School of Governance and Economics (established in 2008) and co-chairman of the Moroccan-British Business Council (MBBC). He is a member of the Executive Board of the International Fertilizer Association and the MIT's Sandbox Innovation Fund Program.

He is also on the board of the French Institute of International Relations and a member of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc. (AMIDEAST).

Personal Life

Mostafa Terrab is married and the father of three children.

Awards and honours

In 1998, he received the Frederick C. Hennie III prize for his contribution to the MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science teaching programme. In 2012, Morocco World News named him Person of the Year for his contributions to the "most vital" sector of the Moroccan economy. He was named one of the 100 most influential Africans by New African Magazine in 2013 and one of the 50 most influential Africans worldwide by Jeune Afrique Magazine in 2014.