By Nii B. Andrews.
When Thomas Pesquet, the French astronaut arrived on the International Space Station (ISS) in April last year, he started sharing photos shot from space on his social media accounts.
One of the photos that went viral was of the great African megapolis of Casablanca.
Pesquet explained, “The ISS always flies from west to east, so Casablanca is one of the first lights that greet us, after a night flight over the North Atlantic.”
As the kingdom’s industrial city, Casa (as its often called) holds a special place in the heart of Moroccans; their response to the photo was gushingly overwhelming.
The city’s name is bound up in history, legend and myth.
But some of us prefer to accept that the Moroccan myth pertaining to the name’s origin might suggest that two appellations (Portugese and Arab-Moorish) were born somehow simultaneously, and not out of each other.
Whatever the actual set of circumstances, by 1851 all of the maps and nautical charts of the area had replaced the old Berber settlement dating from 10th century BCE – Anfa, with Casablanca.
Today this city located on the northern reaches of our continent, is a modern, gritty, vibrant, cutting edge metropolis of over 5m people.
It is home to top shelf facilities for culture, technology, commerce, industry, finance, education and art……the urban heart and muscle of Morocco, Africa as it ought to be.