As a colony of France, Morocco had 55,000 hectares of grapes producing almost 80 million gallons of wine annually before its independence from France in 1956. By the 1990s, only 13,000 ha of wine grapes remained, thanks to a loss of traditional markets due to import quotas imposed by the EEC and a poor response by the Moroccan state in terms of both taxation and vineyard management. By the end of the 1990s, some foreign investment, primarily French, was encouraged leading to a revival of the wine industry and a re-establishment of some European markets. Morocco is Africa’s second largest producer of table wines after South Africa.