Chronology
Four eras, one address.
The journey of Ali Wakrim is inseparable from the journey of a company. What follows is a dated record: what was founded, what was built, when responsibility passed to the second generation, and what has been added since.
Origins: a trade before a company
Ali Wakrim was born into a business that already existed — but only just. The two families that would build Afriquia were traders first and industrialists later.
Fuel trading begins
Akwa Group dates the origins of the business to 1932, when Ahmed Ould Hadj Akhannouch began trading fuel supplied by Socony-Vacuum. Haj Ahmed Wakrim, who came from a trading family of his own, is named alongside him in the group’s founding account.
Afriquia is incorporated in Casablanca
Three years after Moroccan independence, Ahmed Ould Hadj Akhannouch and Haj Ahmed Wakrim — by then brothers-in-law — formally incorporate Afriquia SMDC. The partnership between the two families dates from this point, and has never been dissolved.
The physical base is built
Three decades of capital expenditure. Storage, bottling, industrial gases and supply agreements — the assets that later made a stock market listing possible.
Major storage capacity acquired
The business takes control of a storage facility of 286,000 cubic metres — an early and decisive commitment to holding stock rather than merely moving it.
Afriquia Gaz is launched
Gas distribution is established as a named activity, beginning the company that Ali Wakrim would eventually chair.
Supply partnerships and the oil shock
The group enters a partnership with Elf Aquitaine and responds to the decade’s oil crisis in part by importing Soviet petroleum — a reminder that supply security, not price alone, defines this industry.
Maghreb Oxygène is created
The group moves into industrial and medical gases. Sources date the company’s creation to 1974 and to 1977; both fall within the same expansion.
Restructuring: gas becomes a company
The Afriquia group is restructured and its gas activities are transferred into Afriquia Gaz. Company records place Ali Wakrim in an executive role there from this year, and at the head of Afriquia SMDC from 1985.
The second generation, and the public market
The defining period of Ali Wakrim’s career. Responsibility passes to the sons of the founders, and a private family business submits itself to a regulated exchange.
Reorganised as Akwa Holding
The business is restructured as a holding company under second-generation leadership: Aziz Akhannouch and Ali Wakrim. The two families continue to hold it jointly.
Afriquia Gaz lists in Casablanca
In April, Afriquia Gaz is admitted to the Casablanca Stock Exchange — the point at which audited results, regulatory oversight and outside shareholders become permanent features of the business.
Entry into publishing
The group acquires Caractères, publisher of La Vie éco and Femmes du Maroc, extending its interests into media and communications.
The Akwa name is adopted
The holding takes the name Akwa Group, formed from the two founding surnames. English-language corporate records date the change from Groupe Afriquia to March 2002.
Merger with Somepi Carburants
Consolidation in Moroccan fuel distribution adds scale to the retail network.
A property division is created
The group formalises real estate as a business line alongside hydrocarbons and distribution.
Chairmanship of Afriquia Gaz
On 7 November the board adopts Ali Wakrim’s nomination as chairman, following Aziz Akhannouch’s resignation from the chair. He has held the office since.
Scale, and a widening definition of the business
Ports, renewables, hospitality and retail are added to a group whose centre of gravity remains fuel and gas.
Tanger Med Terminal 3
The group wins the concession for Terminal 3 at Tanger Med, connecting its logistics to Morocco’s principal container port on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Market leadership in LPG confirmed
Afriquia Gaz records sales of 801,356 tonnes and a 42 per cent share of the Moroccan LPG filling and distribution market, consolidating its position as leader.
Green of Africa
Akwa Group establishes Green of Africa, a clean-energy joint venture with O Capital Group — a hydrocarbons business taking a position in renewable generation.
Forbes lists the family
Ali Wakrim and family appear on Forbes’ ranking of Africa’s fifty richest, with a fortune assessed at 450 million US dollars and its source given as gas.
Results at scale
Afriquia Gaz reports revenue of 7.13 billion dirhams and net income of 503.86 million dirhams; the company’s market capitalisation is recorded at 15.53 billion dirhams in 2022.
A group of roughly three billion dollars
Akwa Group operates across hydrocarbons, distribution, property, tourism, media and renewable energy, employing more than a thousand people from Casablanca. Ali Wakrim continues as chairman of Afriquia Gaz and vice-chairman of the group.
Reading the record
Sixty-five years, and no discontinuity.
Read end to end, the chronology has an unusual property: there is no rupture in it. No break-up, no sale of the core business, no separation of the founding families, no change of home city. Succession happened once, in 1993, and it happened between two pairs of hands at the same time.
That continuity is the most distinctive fact about Ali Wakrim’s working life, and it is the starting point for the Philosophy page, which reads these actions for the principles they imply.
Dates and events verified