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Ceramics, wicker objects, wrought iron furniture are piled up in the deserted shops of the Oulja artisan center, located in Salé, near Rabat. The coronavirus has left artisans without income or activity, devastated by the epidemic.

"The coronavirus is the final KO: without help, our trade will disappear", laments Youssef Rghalmi, a 49-year-old potter who has just reopened the premises where he exhibits the fruit "of an art passed down from generations" .

In the family workshop, the clay dries, the oven is turned off, and the nine employees no longer come. The last order, destined for a client from France who canceled her trip due to the closure of the borders, is filled with dust in a corner.

This sixty-year-old asset has attached a small restaurant to his store, but had to close it due to the state of health emergency established since mid-March.

Foreign tourists have disappeared, mandatory confinement has paralyzed economic life, and local customers "have other priorities than buying rugs," says Ahmed Driouch.

On the first floor of the store, some employees dust off the nearly 10,000 stocked handmade rugs one by one. "You have to clean everything, although no one is coming at the moment," one of them laments.

The Minister of Tourism and Crafts Nadia Fettah recently alluded to some clues to revive the sector, such as the creation of exhibition spaces in large commercial areas. The craft employs more than two million people - that is, 20% of the working population - and among them are 230,000 traditional artisans. Crafts represent about 7% of Morocco's GDP, with a turnover of 1 billion dirhams last year (USD 100 million, EUR 91 million).

The 30 women who weave tapestries for the small cooperative “La femme créatrice” (The creative woman) have lost all their small income.

The weavers work eight hours a day for less than 100 euros (USD 110) per month, "when the rugs are sold" but they have received nothing "because there has been no sale in three months," Rachida Nabati sadly explains.

This woman, in her 40s, has been working since she was seven, and now she has had to "borrow" to survive.

In the cooperative, some weavers have nevertheless received direct aid from the State, coming from a special fund "Covid-19", but others "have received nothing and now cannot pay their rents."