The Kingdom of Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on July 13, 2026, at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to establish the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center (AMTEC) at Tan-Tan, in southwestern Morocco. The agreement was signed by Gen. Mohammed Berrid, inspector general of the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces and commander of the Southern Zone, and Gen. Dagvin Anderson, commander of AFRICOM.
AMTEC is set to open by 2030 and will bring together three elements on one site: A Multidomain Training Area (MDTA), a Drone Academy, and an Innovation and Experimentation Center. Officials describe it as a single complex meant to move new technology from prototype to fielded capability faster than existing arrangements allow.
The MDTA will provide units with dedicated ground for training across land, air, maritime, cyber, and the electromagnetic spectrum at once, including in contested conditions where jamming and signal denial are part of the exercise.
The Drone Academy will train operators, planners, and instructors from Morocco and other African partner nations, with a clear focus on strengthening counterterrorism capabilities against threats in West Africa. Coursework will cover integrating small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) into broader ground operations, airspace deconfliction, strike employment, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) synchronization. The academy builds on drone instruction already run during African Lion, the annual U.S.-Morocco exercise; African Lion 2026, held from April 20 to May 8 across several Moroccan cities, included a 3-day drone familiarization course for U.S. soldiers and what organizers called a “drone academics” class, where American instructors taught operations and planning to Moroccan, Nigerian, and Ghanaian troops.
The Innovation and Experimentation Center rounds out the site, tasked with developing, testing and evaluating new equipment, with an emphasis on low-cost, scalable systems rather than exquisite one-off platforms. AFRICOM says it wants to embed academic and industry teams directly into the design process, pairing Moroccan and U.S. universities with military users early rather than after a system is already built.
“Morocco’s readiness, demonstrated by our existing facilities and skilled personnel, ensures rapid progress from concept to operational reality and provides Morocco and U.S. industries with a reliable and capable partner for joint innovation and export opportunities”, Berrid said in the AFRICOM release. “The Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center will increase readiness and advance capabilities of both nations”, Anderson said, calling it an opening for U.S. and African defense industries and academic institutions to develop scalable technology together. AFRICOM has pitched AMTEC as more than a military range. The command says the project could extend wireless and sensing infrastructure into remote and underserved parts of southern Morocco, with knock-on benefits for local connectivity and economic activity, alongside its role as a low-cost test bed for U.S. and Moroccan industry.
In March 2026, Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, told the 13th African Land Forces Summit in Rome that the United States planned a regional drone training hub in Morocco, describing it as a durable, shared capability rather than a one-off exercise add-on. That summit drew roughly 300 participants from 47 countries. Donahue said Morocco was picked for its location and its standing as a long-term American partner, a rationale AFRICOM has since repeated for AMTEC itself.
The center also sits inside a bigger bilateral shift. On April 16, 2026, Morocco and the United States signed a 10-year Roadmap for Defense Cooperation covering 2026 to 2036, concluded at the Pentagon between Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby and a Moroccan delegation led by Minister Delegate for National Defense Abdellatif Loudiyi and Berrid. The roadmap sets goals for interoperability, data sharing and joint planning over the next decade, and a Senate Armed Services Committee provision in the fiscal year 2027 defense authorization bill would direct the Pentagon to turn it into a concrete implementation plan, including options for cooperative security locations on Moroccan soil.
AFRICOM says African Lion 2027, the annual exercise Morocco has co-hosted with the United States since 2004 and which has grown into the largest multinational military exercise on the continent, will serve as the first proof of concept for AMTEC, with industry partners testing AI-enabled systems, autonomous platforms and advanced communications alongside troops in the field.