Educational marketing as a lever for South-South academic cooperation: The case of continental mobility of Sub-Saharan african students in medical higher education in Morocco

Abstract

Although intra-African academic mobility has become an increasingly prominent field of research, studies explicitly connecting educational marketing, the mobility of Sub-Saharan students to Morocco, and South–South academic diplomacy remain limited. In a global context marked by growing efforts to develop more equitable alternatives to traditional North–South cooperation, South–South cooperation has emerged as a strategic pathway for strengthening regional integration, development, and educational sovereignty among countries of the Global South. Medical higher education represents a particularly relevant domain for advancing such cooperation. Morocco hosted 25,227 African students in 2023, a significant proportion of whom were enrolled in medical programs. However, this policy of international student mobility remains insufficiently supported by a coherent and structured educational marketing strategy.

This study examines how an educational marketing strategy can contribute to strengthening South–South academic cooperation, drawing on a case study of medical higher education in Morocco. A sequential exploratory mixed-methods design was adopted. The qualitative phase consisted of five semi-structured interviews with key institutional stakeholders, including representatives of the Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation (AMCI), the Directorate of Cooperation and Partnership (DCP), CESAM, and medical faculties. The interviews were thematically coded and analyzed using NVivo. The quantitative phase involved a questionnaire survey of 52 Sub-Saharan students enrolled in public and private medical institutions in Rabat. Descriptive analyses were conducted using SPSS and Excel, followed by cross-corpus triangulation.

The findings reveal a structural gap between institutional ambitions and students’ lived experiences. While more than 80% of respondents reported high levels of satisfaction with the quality of teaching, more than half considered administrative services inadequate. Digital channels also appear to play a limited role in attracting international students, with fewer than 10% identifying them as a source through which they first discovered the educational offer. These findings point to the need for a more integrated strategic approach based on audience segmentation, distinctive institutional positioning, digital communication, and the enhancement of the student experience. Such an approach would enable educational marketing to move beyond its conventional role as an instrument of student attraction and become a strategic lever for proactive South–South academic diplomacy.

Classification JEL: I23, M31

Paper type: Theoretical Research or Empirical Research