Casablanca, Morocco – It is 5:30pm and the huge Rachidi skate park – commonly known as “Nevada Park” – in Arab League Park, central Casablanca, is bustling with dozens of happy children dashing about on scooters and rollerblades.

The biggest skate park on the African continent is a lively place for families and young people.

Off to one side, Ayoub, Yassine, Akram, Mouad and Oussama are skateboarding, as they do almost every day. Once restricted to areas in the street and a single, dilapidated park, they now have ample space to practise their sport.

For the past few years, the wholesale regeneration of Casablanca as Morocco’s economic centre has gone hand in hand with the emergence of new skate parks and other infrastructure to support a growing culture of urban sport.

This has opened up a wealth of opportunities for young people like Akram, who see skateboarding as a way of expressing their identities and hopes for the future of their city.

“Before the Nevada skate park was built in 2018, which enabled us to make a lot of progress, there was nothing,” Akram, who teaches skateboarding, says. “We skated on spots we found in the street. There was only the Ain Diab skate park, but it was broken up and cost 20 dirhams ($2) to get in.”

Yassine, 24, is a young skateboarder who has been fascinated by the sport for the past 15 years.

“I grew up in Oujda in northeast Morocco,” he tells Global News Insight. “When I was nine, I spotted a boy skateboarding in the street. I was fascinated. My parents bought me my first board and that boy quickly became my friend. My father would go with me to find spots to practise and then sit in the cafe while I had fun.”

Yassine also met his fellow skateboarder, Mouad – who works in real estate in Rabat – practising in Oujda. But, back then, he says, people in Oujda were not accepting of skateboarders – “They thought we were Satanists.”

Then, when he went on family holidays to Casablanca, he says, “I found the first groups of skaters who roamed the city and built small ephemeral skate parks with their own resources. It’s to that older generation that we owe the growth of skateboarding in Morocco and these new infrastructures.”

In Anfa, on the south side of Casablanca, glass towers have begun rapidly springing up. A hyper-modern new district housing Casa Finance City, one of Africa’s largest financial centres, is being built and a skate park went up in 2020.

However, as Akram points out, the sport still needs its own ecosystem, “There is no brand, sponsor or competition that might enable us to have real ambitions thanks to skateboarding. We’re not there yet.

“Most of us practise skateboarding as an escape from our life problems, and even our own mental health problems.”

Ayoub, who says he has not missed a day of skateboarding in six years, is more hopeful. Also a music composer, he takes a sentimental view of Casablanca’s development, “I see the city evolving, also from an artistic point of view, and that fills me with joy for the future.”