البنك الدولي
تكافؤ الفرص للجميع
نظرة عامة
تقرير ممارسة أنشطة الأعمال 2017: تكافؤ الفرص للجميع، هو منشور رئيسيصادر عن مجموعة البنك الدولي، وهو الطبعة الرابعة عشرة في سلسلة من التقارير السنوية التي تقيس الأنظمة التي تعزز النشاط التجاري وتلك التي تعوقها. يقدمتقرير ممارسة أنشطة الأعمال عدد من المؤشرات التي تتعلق بالأنظمة التجارية وحماية حقوق الملكية التي يمكن مقارنتها عبر 190 اقتصادا من أفغانستان إلى زيمبابوي وعلى امتداد الوقت.
By Raghad Zein*
The MENA region is a beacon of largely unchartered technological territory with its potential often stunted by lagging institutional resistance and slow adaptation to change.
Middle East Business
Sage Chief Technology Officer Klaus-Michael Vogelberg talks about the role chatbots, collective intelligence and blockchain will play at start-up and scale up enterprises next year.
بقلم: ايمن ابو الخير
يتم الحديث كثيرا في الوقت الراهن عن ما يسمى بالثورة الصناعية الرابعة. ولقد مر العالم بثلاث ثورات صناعية خلال القرنين الماضيين. بدأت بوادر الثورة الصناعية الأولى في بريطانيا في أواخر القرن الثامن عشر مع استخدام المياه والطاقة البخارية لمكننة الإنتاج. ثم جاءت الثورة الثانية في أوائل القرن العشرين وذلك عندما قام هنري فورد بادخال خط التجميع المتحرك وبذلك فانه فتح الطريق لعصر الإنتاج الشامل.
By Ayman Abualkhair
Nowadays, much is being said on the 4th Industrial revolution. The world has gone through three industrial revolutions during the last two centuries. The First Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century, with the use of water and steam power to mechanize production. The second revolution came in the early 20th century, when Henry Ford mastered the moving assembly line and ushered in the age of mass production.
Middle East Business
Middle East Businesses Leverage Data Management to Become Digital Predators by 2020
Successful Digitization Projects Require Right Mix of People, Skills, and Risk, Says Tom Pegrume of Hitachi Data Systems;
IDC: Middle East, Africa, Turkey ICT Spend to Top USD 243 Billion in 2017
Middle East Business
What Businesses in the Middle East Can Learn From Innovation Live Dubai
To complement the UAE innovation week, Dubai recently hosted its long-awaited Innovation Live event. Its goal was to inspire creative thinking and highlight the importance of innovation in the Middle East.
Tech gurus from Uber, Google, SoundCloud, Microsoft and 500 Startups have visited Gaza on their own dime as volunteers to mentor startups.
by Christopher M. Schroeder*
If you have any doubt that near-universal access to tech is helping a new generation take control of their own lives, solving problems and building opportunity from the bottom-up everywhere — that “near-universal” means it’s not a phenomenon of the elite, but unleashing talent anywhere it resides — come to Gaza.
We’ve all seen it on the news. Gaza is a land of closed borders, three terrible conflicts in seven years and among the highest unemployment rates anywhere.
At the same time, and even with spotty and irregular electricity, it also has one of the higher levels of education and internet access in the Arab world. More than two-thirds of Gazans are under 24, and nearly all have high written and computing literacy. If the definition of a great entrepreneur is one who thrives in working through and around challenges and creating innovative solutions, it’s no surprise that Gaza is chock-full of them. Half of them, by the way, are women. And they are fighting for better futures there and across the region.
As in most nascent rising startup ecosystems in emerging markets, the pulling together of talent, their ideas, skills, mentoring and capital takes concerted work. In 2011, the global NGO Mercy Corps founded the co-working space Gaza Sky Geeks as an initial effort to convene young entrepreneurs. In 2013, two people joined to take it to a new level: Iliana Montauk, a Silicon Valley native with extensive experience in the Middle East, and Said Hassan, a former employee from the region’s largest e-commerce player, Souq.com, who had just returned home to Gaza.
What, they asked, if there were an acceleration program so prevalent in Silicon Valley and now around the world right there in Gaza? They cultivated the first class of investments by the end of that year. By 2014, more than 600 entrepreneurs applied to their efforts — double from the previous years combined. More recently, Ryan Sturgill, who launched an incubator in Afghanistan and has extensive experience in advising startups across the Middle East, joined as the new director building on its success to date.
Gaza Sky Geeks finds some of the leading startup ideas and entrepreneurs and connects them with mentors, training and coaches to help them turn these concepts into businesses. They also run a network of local freelancers so young people can earn income part-time by doing gig economy work online across the region. Plans are in the works to launch a coding academy to teach young Gazans not just how to code but why to code — what real-world application can software be brought to bear to create new opportunities. The offices are equipped with their own fiber lines and sufficient fuel to power their generators — and keep high-speed internet up — at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
It doesn’t take a lot of capital to get an idea into motion. Entry-level software engineers command $100,000 to $150,000 a year in Silicon Valley, but less than $4,800 in Gaza. With access to the web, this talent is significantly self-taught — accessing the best programming classes from around the world, gathering together in hackathons to improve their skills and partnering with other investors and accelerators in the region, like Oasis500 and PALinnO in neighboring Jordan.
What are these young women and men building? Everything you’d expect anywhere in the world today, often with a local flavor. 5QHQH is a platform to create and share funny online content in Arabic. Baskalet is a gaming studio aimed at Arab culture. MockApp offers professional designers apps to create prototypes, share them and manage projects. KooKies is a community of cooking enthusiasts that also provides access to home-delivered ingredients to create new recipes. Health care, ed-tech, e-commerce and more are all there, driven by a rise in consumer spending and ubiquitous access to mobile.
Inspired by Gaza’s geeks, and understanding the impact that entrepreneurs can have in bettering people’s lives and their economies, Silicon Valley and other global tech hubs have taken note. Tech gurus from places like Uber, Google, SoundCloud, Microsoft, 500 Startups, Endeavor Global, Udacity, Hitachi and more have visited Gaza on their own dime as volunteers to mentor these startups.
Complementing funders like Google, the Coca-Cola Foundation, Skoll and local players, Gaza Sky Geeks leveraged this support and track record to run its first crowd-funding campaign to help fund operations in 2014. They hoped to raise $70,000, but raised over $267,000 within weeks, and from more than 60 countries.
Last month, they kicked off their second campaign, Power Up Gaza Geeks, this time with matching contributions from regional ecosystem leaders like the founder of the largest VC firm there, Fadi Ghandour of the Wamda Group, and Samih Toukan, who founded one of the earlier successful exits in the Arab world and now chairs Jabbar Internet Group. In addition, matches are coming from the likes of 500 Startups co-founder Dave McClure, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, Foundry Group and TechStars managing director Brad Feld and Crowdpac co-founder Gisel Kordestani. Just yesterday, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and “Lean Startup” author Eric Ries joined the campaign match.
This campaign was launched to buy a generator and fuel to extend the co-working hub’s hours in response to Gaza’s most severe energy shortage to date. In addition, they are raising funds to launch Gaza’s first coding academy.
Ghandour built Aramex, the largest tech-powered logistics company in the Arab world and perhaps the first true “unicorn” before the term was used. As a go-to investor in the Arab world, he has seen everything. “This is what we do at the Wamda Group,” Ghandour explains. “We support entrepreneurs and we help nurture the ecosystem in the region. Gaza Sky Geeks is where techies come to get their dose of hope in achieving part of their ambitions under a blockade system that punishes everyone. This is about Gazan Geeks becoming entrepreneurs and building businesses like everyone else around the world. It is ambitious, talented youth exploring, venturing and succeeding.”
McClure, who now operates funds in nearly every core emerging market, told me, “Gazans are smart people working on ideas for companies, and to some extent they have even more hustle than I’ve seen elsewhere, because they’re working in such a tough environment. They may actually be some of the best entrepreneurs in the world.”
One of the greatest and least understood stories of our times is not only that a new generation — everywhere — is solving problems themselves and not waiting for anyone to give permission, but has for the first time the tools in their pockets to do so at scale and affordably.
And nothing stands in their way. Said himself is living proof. His home was destroyed during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. Israeli shelling destroyed his whole neighborhood, including the U.N. building across the street from his home, where his father had previously worked. Said was able to evacuate with his laptop and returned to Gaza Sky Geeks, living in a friend’s house and back to work in a matter of days.
This story in Gaza is hopeful in and of itself, but a lens for prosperity and paths to futures everywhere. What I have seen has convinced me to be an adviser to them and their entrepreneurs and support their campaigns. They are deeply worthy.
The original article is published at the following link
*Christopher M. Schroeder is a U.S.-based venture investor, tech entrepreneur and the author of “Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East.” Reach him @cmschroed.
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**This article is so interesting that we would like to share it with our readers.
According to the web site of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affaires, OECD’s Development Assistance Committee invited Switzerland to host the Arab-DAC Dialogue on development in 2017 in recognition of the Swiss Agency for Development’s engagement with Arab donors.
War is costly. Not only in lives lost, towns destroyed, nations split or whole continents in turmoil, but in the massive amounts spent on weaponry and mercenaries/fighters.
In the Middle East, the cost is all too apparent. Many once great cities stand in ruins, historic monuments and mosques razed to the ground. But who profits from war? And why isn’t such an enormous amount of money invested in peacemaking initiatives?
Middle East Magazine
The latest Global Peace Index report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), found that 2015 was a bad year for international peace and security, recording a further deterioration in global peace based on historic trends.
Globally, 2015 witnessed the highest number of global battle deaths for 25 years, persistently high levels of terrorism, and the highest number of refugees and displaced people since World War II.
This violence had a huge cost. The report finds that for 2015 alone, the economic impact of violence to the global economy was $13.6 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). This is equivalent to $5 per day for every person on the planet, or 11 times the size of global foreign direct investment (FDI).
The toll of violence is typically counted in terms of its human and emotional cost, but the financial damage to the economy is yet another additional factor to consider. When counting the economic impact one must look at the costs of preventing and containing violence, as well as measuring its consequences. This is important because spending on containing violence, while perhaps necessary, is fundamentally economically unproductive.
How do you quantify the costs of war?
IEP’s method is a comprehensive accounting exercise to “add up” those direct and indirect expenditures related to creating and containing violence plus its consequential costs. These include not just military spending but domestic expenditures on security and police plus the losses from armed conflict, homicides, violent crime and sexual assault.
The $13.6 trillion of expenditures and losses represent 13.3% of world GDP. To break this figure down, it’s the equivalent of $1,876 for every person on the planet. The numbers refer to the current expenditures and their estimated associated effects in 2015, and are represented in PPP international dollars.
These numbers are notable for two reasons.
Firstly, over 70% of the economic impact of violence accrues from what is mostly government spending on the military and internal security. This shows that significant amounts of government expenditure are tied up to this end. In a perfectly peaceful world, these huge resources could be directed elsewhere.
Secondly, the remaining amount is consequential losses from violence and conflict and these, too, are enormous. They significantly outweigh the international community’s spending on building peace.
A quick examination of the numbers reveals that the world continues to spend vastly disproportionate resources on creating and containing violence compared to what it spends on peace. In 2015 alone, UN peacekeeping expenditures of $8.27 billion totalled only 1.1% of the estimated $742 billion of economic losses from armed conflict.
When looking at peace-building – the activities that aim to create peace in the long term – those totaled $6.8 billion or only 0.9% the economic losses from conflict. Spending on peace-building and peace-keeping is minuscule when compared to the economic losses caused by conflict, representing just 2% in 2015.
But fundamental to future improvements in peace is a greater investment in peace-building and peace-keeping. Peace-keeping operations are measures aimed at responding to a conflict, whereas peace-building expenditures are aimed at developing and maintaining the capacities for resilience to conflict.
Peace-building expenditure aims to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into violent conflict by strengthening national capacities and institutions for conflict management and laying the foundations of sustainable peace and development.
These numbers suggest a serious under-investment in the activities that build peace and demonstrate that the international community is spending too much on conflict and too little on peace. Given the fact that the cost of violence is so significant, the economic argument for more spending on peace is indeed powerful.
The rise of peace inequality
Furthermore, a new phenomenon is emerging as some countries grow more peaceful while overall levels of violence increase: peace inequality. This drives a broader dynamic of greater economic inequalities between nations; as the least peaceful countries spiral into greater violence and conflict, they are also further set back economically.
Weapons of war – Middle East imports increasing
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Asia and the Middle East are leading a rise in arms imports, whilst the USA and Russia remain the largest global arms exporters.
Arms imports by states in the Middle East rose by 61% between 2006–10 and
2011–15.
Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme, says; ‘Despite low oil prices, large deliveries of arms to the Middle East are scheduled to continue as part of contracts signed in the past five years.’ The civil wars raging in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, are all contributing to the proliferation of arms on the streets of the Middle East.
War costs us $13.6 trillion globally. So why spend so little on peace? 2017, Middle East News.
middleeast-business.com
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According to the data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditure in 2000, was estimated to be around $1132 billion, whilst in 2014, this estimation increased to about $1746 billion. For the most part, these figures are due to the large military budgets of the Americas and Europe.
Source: Data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
* Arab countries include: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen.
Similarly, military expenditure data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) show that military costs in the Arab world increased from about $62 billion in 1990 to about $134 billion in 2015. This comparative difference is significant when put into Iran or Switzerland’s context, but in terms of military expenditure for the USA, this cost expansion is minimal. Evidently, the USA raised its military finances from about $555 billion in 1990 to around $596 billion in 2015. An excessive growth, matched by no other.
Source: Calculations depending on data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
* Arab countries include: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen.
Source: Data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
* Arab countries include: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen.
The following table shows data on military expenditure in the Arab world compared to the other main actors in constant (2014) US$ million and as percentage of gross domestic product for the period 1988-2015.
1. Data for 2008, 2. data for 2006, 3. data for 2000, 4. data for 2010.
Source: Data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
* Arab countries include: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen.
Cost of conflict for the Middle East
A report by Strategic Foresight Group has calculated the conflict opportunity cost for the Middle East from 1991-2010 at a whopping $12 trillion. Had there been peace in the region, Lebanon’s share during this period would be almost $100 billion (according to 2006 prices). In other words had there been peace and cooperation since 1991, every Lebanese citizen would be earning over $11,000 instead of the $5,600 in 2010.
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