Morocco to get Africa's first high-speed train in 2018

Morocco will get the first high-speed train in Africa in the summer of 2018, the national rail operator ONCF announced on Wednesday.

The work on the TGV, "high-speed train" in French, has achieved 86 percent, said Mohamed Rabie Khlie, the director general of ONCF, during an international meeting on train safety held in the northern city of Tangier.

The official said Morocco doubled the investment dedicated to the development of its trains and railways in the last decade, which reached 3.4 billion U.S. dollars between 2010 and 2015.

Since the beginning of the year, the French-made double-decker TGVs have being tested ahead of the launch of a flagship new line linking the Mediterranean city of Tangier with Morocco's financial capital Casablanca.

The new trains, which can reach a speed of 200 miles per hour, will reduce journey time between the two cities from five hours to about two hours.

The 2-billion-dollar project has been in development for a decade, financed by numerous partners, including Morocco, France, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Endit