The hoverfly fauna of North Africa, understood as the territory comprised from Egypt on east to Morocco on west and bordered in the south by the Sahara Desert, is poorly and unevenly known. The genus Xanthogramma Schiner, 1861 (Syrphinae: Syrphini) is represented in this region by a few records of four species, Xanthogramma dives (Rondani, 1857), Xanthogramma evanescens Becker & Stein, 1913 (endemic to North Africa), Xanthogramma marginale (Loew, 1854) and Xanthogramma pedissequum (Harris, 1776). After examination of old Xanthogramma material collected in Tanger, Morocco (=type locality of X. evanescens) from the ‘Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid (MNCN)', specimens with distinctive morphology were spotted and found to be different from a syntype of X. evanescens. Consequently, we revised all the material of Xanthogramma from North Africa available to us, characterised a new species from Morocco, proposed a lectotype for X. evanescens, and provided an identification key to the North African species of this genus. The new species differs from X. evanescens in characters such as the facial width, colouration of proepimeron and katepisternum, length of mesonotum pile and wing microtrichia. We would like to thank Mercedes París García (MNCN), Sven Marotzke (‘Museum für Naturkunde', Berlin, Germany), Sihem Djellab (‘Université Larbi Tebessi', Algeria), Gunilla Ståhls (Finnish Museum of Natural History) and Martin Ebejer (National Museum of Wales, UK) for arranging the loan of specimens, and the ‘Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Transferencia del Conocimiento', for funding Antonio Ricarte's position at the University of Alicante (UATALENTO17-08).