The first few days of November have quickly become known as Entrepreneurship Week in Dubai. The Dubai School of Government kicked off the week with a panel on women's entrepreneurship in the Gulf, featuring leading businesswomen from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the region. The next day at the Young Arab Leaders Entrepreneurship Summit, cross-generational leadership was represented, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and his son Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan attending.
The youth summit, which I was involved in organising, was a Who's Who of Arab business leaders, including Rabea Ataya, the founder of Bayt.com. Habib Hadad, the founder of Yamli.com, Ihsan Jawad, the founder of Zawya.com, Dr Naif al Mutawa, the creator of The 99 comics, and Sheikh Khaled bin Zayed, the founder of the Bin Zayed Group.
The list of Emirati and regional guiding lights in entrepreneurship goes on and on. But perhaps the most important element among the 500 or so attendees were the scores of students and aspiring entrepreneurs who were there to learn from those who had gone before.
The week was capped with what will be viewed as a day of historic transformation in the world of Arab entrepreneurship. Led by Arif Naqvi, the chief executive of Abraaj Capital, and Fadi Ghandour, the chief executive of Aramex, more than 2,000 budding and established entrepreneurs congregated for the Celebration of Entrepreneurship 2010. At the event, Wamda.com, which means spark in Arabic, was launched as a meeting place for the region's entrepreneurs. (watch video: Impressions of CoE which ends with my quote)
The truth is that Arabs are sick and tired of hearing of the trouble that regional governments' failed policies have got us into. Arabs are now ready to do something about it. According to UNDP estimates, 50 million jobs (some say 100 million) need to be created in the Middle East by 2020 just to prevent unemployment from growing even worse. Harbour no allusions that Arab governments will be able to create these tens of millions of jobs: only the private sector and entrepreneurship have the potential.
Everyone was there for one common goal: instilling the spirit of entrepreneurship in young Arabs. The same podiums were shared by the likes of Naguib Swairis, the founder of Orascom Telecoms, and a pair of brilliant teenage Yemeni students who have started a new coffee-producing business. Their plans are no less grand than ridding their country of the menace of qat and bringing back coffee as an agricultural earner of foreign exchange.
Indeed, we are desperate for grand ideas. We need ideas that will allow the Arab world to make a giant leap into the present, rather than linger in the era of bygone policies.
A consensus was reached at the conference: the fragmented approach that Arab governments have taken will not work. It is simply not good enough for one country to create jobs while others lag behind. When Europe rose out of the ashes of the Second World War, it was not because Germany or France competed or worked in isolation; it was largely because of their joint effort to establish the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor to the European Union.
Arab governments need to understand that without pan-Arab initiatives, true economic prosperity will not be achieved. We must capitalise on our demographic strengths as a region with a population larger than the United States and comparable to the European Union.
It is no coincidence that Maktoob.com, recently sold to Yahoo! for more than $100 million (Dh367 million), garnered so much global attention. After all, it was always a pan-Arab, not just a Jordanian firm.
The Celebration of Entrepreneurship 2010 featured ministers such as Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi and Reem al Hashimi, entrepreneurial legends including Samih Touqan and Fadi Ghandour, and ambitious young people all voicing their concerns and sharing their aspirations.
One day we will look back on a few days in November, when thousands of young, aspiring leaders came together and believed in what seemed to be impossible: things will be better for the next generation of Arabs. Through entrepreneurship, one person's fledgling business of today will become the transnational corporation of tomorrow. Yes, these are lofty goals, but even Thomas Edison's ideas started with a spark.
*This article first appeared in The National on Sunday 14th November 2010
Showing posts with label Arab world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arab world. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Arab world will feel the pain of division in forsaken Sudan
Take a good long look at the map of the Arab world today; the chances are that it’s going to change drastically pretty soon. The news in 12 months’ time will be the most significant transformation among the 22 Arab nations since Palestine was wiped off the map in 1948. But unlike Palestine, Sudan will probably be split via the ballot box in January 2011. Although the expected schism in Sudan is short on symbolism – there is no Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth or Jericho – it is no less of a tragedy for Arabs to endure.
Sudan is unlike other Arab countries in many ways. Geographically, at 2.5 million square kilometres in area, it is the largest Arab or African country. It borders nine states including Ethiopia, the source of the vital Blue Nile River, which converges with the White Nile in Sudan and provides drinking water to a third of the Arab world’s population on its way to the Mediterranean.
This potential breadbasket of the Arab world has been ignored by most in the region. The very few exceptions include the UAE, which is considered the second largest investor in Sudan after China. In 2008 UAE investment there reached US$7 billion (Dh25 billion) in sectors as varied as real estate, telecommunications and agriculture. Other Arab countries that have invested in Sudan’s agricultural sector include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Libya, but these remain individual efforts and not collective initiatives.
The reality is that the Arab world has largely forsaken the Sudan, as political differences and personal grudges held against the kleptocratic regime there has blinded us to the bigger picture.
Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of a historic peace treaty signed in Nairobi between the ruling Muslim majority in the north and rebels from the Christian minority in the south, which brought an end to a two-decade bloody conflict that cost the lives of more than 1.5 million people. The cornerstone of the agreement was the referendum due to be held next January, when the autonomous South will vote to either stay part of the country or split into an independent state.
In the five years since the agreement, what has the Arab world done to strengthen the unity of the country? Very little in fact. It is typical for regional governments to pay lip service to “vital matters”; just read the final communiqués from the Arab League summits. There is no substance to what is said or promised or agreed. The decisions are simply words on paper.
In Sudan’s case it is no differenct. In the final communique of the 2005 Arab League summit, a few weeks after the historic peace treaty, Arab countries vaguely promised to “support the peace, development and unity in Sudan” but offered no concrete action.
What is required is a major investment in the southern part of the country if it is to remain within the Arab world. Job opportunities for southern Sudan’s eight million people must be provided along with investments in infrastructure to strengthen the unity of the country. A rail track and motorway network linking the North and the South should have been commissioned within months of the 2005 treaty and could have been finished by today. Vocational and Arabic-language training centres should have been set up in the South and visa permits given to young people to work in richer Arab nations such as the Pan-African champion Libya and the countries of the GCC.
While the South was preparing for the referendum, the North was busy with a tragic conflict in the western region of Darfur, which has resulted in genocide charges filed by the International Criminal Court against the president Omar al Bashir in 2008.
Because of the neglect of the Arab world and the policies of the central government in Khartoum, it is most probable that the South will vote to separate from the North. This would result in the country losing control of most of its proven oil reserves.
What can be done today to stop the country’s split? Mr al Bashir should, first, refrain from running in April in the country’s first multiparty elections in 24 years. His National Congress Party should introduce a clean slate of candidates who are not tainted with corruption and genocide charges.
International observers should be brought in to make sure that the election process is free and fair. The Arab League has one last chance to move beyond lip service and save 640,000 square kilometres of territory by introducing a pan-Arab, multibillion dollar fund to invest in the South. The money should be placed this spring in a non-member country’s account to be readily available for projects in the South based on the expertise of neutral world agencies.
But of course, this won’t happen. Mr al Bashir will run in the elections, and the southern candidates will lose and feel disenfranchised. The Arab states will only pay more lip service to unity at their annual summit in March and Sudan will be split in two, for now. You can bet on it.
*This article first appeared in The National on Sunday 10th January 2010
Sudan is unlike other Arab countries in many ways. Geographically, at 2.5 million square kilometres in area, it is the largest Arab or African country. It borders nine states including Ethiopia, the source of the vital Blue Nile River, which converges with the White Nile in Sudan and provides drinking water to a third of the Arab world’s population on its way to the Mediterranean.
This potential breadbasket of the Arab world has been ignored by most in the region. The very few exceptions include the UAE, which is considered the second largest investor in Sudan after China. In 2008 UAE investment there reached US$7 billion (Dh25 billion) in sectors as varied as real estate, telecommunications and agriculture. Other Arab countries that have invested in Sudan’s agricultural sector include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Libya, but these remain individual efforts and not collective initiatives.
The reality is that the Arab world has largely forsaken the Sudan, as political differences and personal grudges held against the kleptocratic regime there has blinded us to the bigger picture.
Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of a historic peace treaty signed in Nairobi between the ruling Muslim majority in the north and rebels from the Christian minority in the south, which brought an end to a two-decade bloody conflict that cost the lives of more than 1.5 million people. The cornerstone of the agreement was the referendum due to be held next January, when the autonomous South will vote to either stay part of the country or split into an independent state.
In the five years since the agreement, what has the Arab world done to strengthen the unity of the country? Very little in fact. It is typical for regional governments to pay lip service to “vital matters”; just read the final communiqués from the Arab League summits. There is no substance to what is said or promised or agreed. The decisions are simply words on paper.
In Sudan’s case it is no differenct. In the final communique of the 2005 Arab League summit, a few weeks after the historic peace treaty, Arab countries vaguely promised to “support the peace, development and unity in Sudan” but offered no concrete action.
What is required is a major investment in the southern part of the country if it is to remain within the Arab world. Job opportunities for southern Sudan’s eight million people must be provided along with investments in infrastructure to strengthen the unity of the country. A rail track and motorway network linking the North and the South should have been commissioned within months of the 2005 treaty and could have been finished by today. Vocational and Arabic-language training centres should have been set up in the South and visa permits given to young people to work in richer Arab nations such as the Pan-African champion Libya and the countries of the GCC.
While the South was preparing for the referendum, the North was busy with a tragic conflict in the western region of Darfur, which has resulted in genocide charges filed by the International Criminal Court against the president Omar al Bashir in 2008.
Because of the neglect of the Arab world and the policies of the central government in Khartoum, it is most probable that the South will vote to separate from the North. This would result in the country losing control of most of its proven oil reserves.
What can be done today to stop the country’s split? Mr al Bashir should, first, refrain from running in April in the country’s first multiparty elections in 24 years. His National Congress Party should introduce a clean slate of candidates who are not tainted with corruption and genocide charges.
International observers should be brought in to make sure that the election process is free and fair. The Arab League has one last chance to move beyond lip service and save 640,000 square kilometres of territory by introducing a pan-Arab, multibillion dollar fund to invest in the South. The money should be placed this spring in a non-member country’s account to be readily available for projects in the South based on the expertise of neutral world agencies.
But of course, this won’t happen. Mr al Bashir will run in the elections, and the southern candidates will lose and feel disenfranchised. The Arab states will only pay more lip service to unity at their annual summit in March and Sudan will be split in two, for now. You can bet on it.
*This article first appeared in The National on Sunday 10th January 2010
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