Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain for the logistics competitiveness of Moroccan exports: A systematic literature review

Abstract

In a global market where competition is intensifying and digital transformation is speeding up, export macro-logistics has become a key factor in Morocco's international competitiveness. This study draws on a systematic literature review conducted under the PRISMA protocol to examine how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain technology (BC) can improve the performance of Morocco's export macro-logistics and strengthen firms' competitiveness abroad. From an initial set of 94 publications found across multidisciplinary academic databases, 47 articles published between 2020 and 2026 were retained after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. The findings are organised around six axes: traceability and regulatory compliance, demand forecasting and export flow management, process automation, security and resilience, collaborative governance, and sustainable performance. Across these axes, the AI and blockchain combination is associated, in the reviewed studies, with reported positive effects on logistics performance; these are effects suggested by the corpus rather than a directly demonstrated causal relationship. Source quality was assessed through indexing status and peer review, and the interpretation of the results remains conditioned by the methodological and typological heterogeneity of a corpus combining peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings and doctoral theses. The corpus is mostly French-language (72%) and consists of 81% peer-reviewed articles. The review also sets out the success conditions, the limits of this combination, and several research avenues for the Moroccan context.

JEL Classification: O33, L91, F14, M15.

Paper type: Theoretical Research