Settat

The municipality of Settat belongs to the province of the same name in the Casablanca-Settat region, whose capital is Casablanca.¹ Until the 2015 reorganisation, the provinces of Settat, Khouribga, Berrechid and Benslimane formed the Chaouia-Ouardigha region.² Berrechid had been split off from Settat province as a province in its own right in 2009.³

The municipality grew from 117,375 inhabitants in 2004 to 142,250 in 2014⁴ and had 171,556 in 2024. Settat province reached 652,292 inhabitants in 2024, of whom 405,203 lived in rural areas.⁵

The province covers some 7,220 square kilometres, about 35 percent of the region's area. A distinction is made between the Basse Chaouia with its tirs soils and the Haute Chaouia, a country of limestone plateaus where the fertile soils gradually thin out and phosphate beds are widespread. The climate is continental and semi-arid, with about 400 millimetres of rain in an average year.⁶

Settat is the largest market town of the fertile coastal plain of the Chaouia. Its best-known building is a kasbah that the Alaouite ruler Moulay Ismail had built in the late 17th century.⁷ Road and rail link the town with Casablanca to the north and Marrakesh to the south; the surrounding countryside is one of the important vegetable-growing areas supplying Casablanca.⁸

In the 2013/14 farming year the province's agricultural land amounted to around 382,165 hectares. Only 1.3 percent was irrigated; the rest of the cropland depends on rainfall, and cereals took up almost three quarters of the cultivated area. Harvests vary with the weather: 2013/14 brought 2.5 million quintals of cereals, the year before 7.1 million.⁹ Since the early 1980s Settat has been home to a regional centre of the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique that specialises in dryland farming; its research covers, among other things, the breeding of cereals and legumes and soil fertility.¹⁰

The town's history as a seat of higher education began in 1994 with the École Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion and the Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, both initially run by the Université Chouaïb Doukkali in El Jadida. In 1997 they became the independent Université Hassan I.¹¹ It has locations in Settat and Berrechid, five faculties, three schools and three institutes, and 34,066 students.¹²

The Casablanca–Settat section of the A3 motorway opened on 2 June 2001, the Settat bypass on 1 November 2005 and the continuation to Marrakesh on 16 April 2007; the town is served by the Settat Nord and Settat Centre junctions.¹³ Trains run to Settat from Casa Voyageurs station.¹⁴ In 2014 the railway carried more than 1.8 million passengers and over 3.5 million tonnes of freight in the province.¹⁵