Vox pop: Digital transformation across the Arab world

Egypt

“The main challenge is how to prove yourself to investors and to the customers that will buy your product. In Egypt, there are a lot of startups and a lot of entrepreneurships.

But also in Egypt, regarding the infrastructure, if you’re adding a new feature that is not traditional in Egypt, it can be a little bit of a challenge.”

Abdul Malik Mohammed, chief technology officer, Ducky Cars, Egypt

“In Egypt, the infrastructure is not digitised at all. So, for us to make things digitised, it’s super hard. It takes time, maybe months.

Egypt has a lot of skills when it comes to AI, but the infrastructure is a bit slow.”

Rokaya Ashraf, Agridawar, Egypt

Oman

“I think the infrastructure is OK in Oman. It can support the digital challenges. But there is bureaucracy. You have to do too many procedures. If you have a plan in your mind and you want to do it, it goes through too many procedures.”

Majeed Assaifi, chief operating officer, SafaQat Platform, Oman

Palestine

“There are a lot of obstacles. For startups, the problem is that everyone is working in theory. There is not an ecosystem where people can realise ideas. So, someone can know tech, can know marketing, but there’s no way to realise the idea.

The situation in Palestine also makes it a little bit risky for the investors and people, and so on. So, most startups die at the grants stage. You will get grants, but then what? It’s really, really hard to find the actual investor to invest in things.

The mentality with people who have money in Palestine is that they will invest in actual business, trading and so on. The mentality for investment in startups and so on is not there.”

Yazan Abassi, CEO of Plink Play, a mobile gaming discovery platform, Al Quds/Jerusalem

“First of all, it’s the market size in Palestine. It is very limited. The second thing is the situation – the socio-political and economic situation in Palestine. It changes a lot. So, people are not willing to invest in Palestinian companies or startups.

There is a lot of global competition. So, for Palestinian startups that are already at a disadvantage to actually go to the global level, there is a huge disconnect.”

Stephanie Polo, startup manager, B-Cite, the Al-Quds University incubator

“In Palestine, because we have a special situation with the conflict, it’s hard for us to get attention for our startup or to go to the market outside Palestine. Also, we don’t have access to all the technology we need. In a country like UAE or Saudi Arabia, things are more available online.”

Razan Ashhab, founder, Glycare, Al Quds/Jerusalem

Qatar

“From an infrastructure point of view, there are a few challenges. Here in the region, we rely a lot on providers. This is a data privacy challenge as well, because there is a lot of data stored outside, and that brings challenges to do with data sovereignty.

So, the challenge is to develop in-house datacentres and everything to comply with data privacy regulations.”

Almabrouk bin Umran, founder and CEO, Entreprenode, Qatar

Saudi Arabia

“In Saudi and the MENA region, it can be a bit challenging for deep tech [ie, hard science-based projects] ventures to find the right partners, especially in the VC [venture capital] space.

When it comes to deep tech, it requires certain skills, skillsets, which are currently missing in the region.

Finding regional talent is definitely a challenge because the universities, the research centres, are not at the level you would find in the western world. But things are changing with universities like Kaust in Saudi, Khalifa University in UAE, that are producing very good, high-quality research, which is suitable for deep tech ventures.”

Mohammad Karimi, CEO, Saher Flow Solutions, Saudi Arabia

“Saudi Arabia is investing in startups, but maybe the key challenge is awareness among people. They don’t know there is a huge amount of investment available.”

Bayan Al-Shahri, co-founder, Bio Fiber, Saudi Arabia

Syria

“The challenges we are facing are technical. For example, if someone wants to open a company in Syria, we pay mostly in cash. So, our challenge is to integrate Mastercard, Visa, so we can pay easily and make things work easily.”

Ahmad Abdul Jabbar, YallaGo, Syria

“The main issue is that if you want to create a startup, it’s going to be based on some sort of service, and you’ve got to receive money. The main thing is we cannot handle electronic payment yet in Syria.

It’s not about sanctions; it’s that we don’t have money in the bank. So, whatever payment is made, it is not going to be accepted by the service provider because it’s not going to be able to collect its money.

We need to find a good solution for that, and from my point of view, that is to print a new Syrian currency, which can resolve the issue, so people will trust it.”

Khalil Baza, chief technology officer, Mocion, Syria

“The main challenge is the infrastructure. They’re still working on it. But the Syrian government, with its new minister of telecommunication, is doing great.

Also, we need to bring everyone back, especially from abroad. There is a huge pool of talent among Syrian people, coming from Silicon Valley, from the UK, and in Saudi. They’re bringing everyone back with the hope of making it easier for startups. They’re investing a lot in people and ideas.”

Abdullah bin Sumaidiyah, AI director, aiIXplain-Trustangle, a low-code development platform, Syria

UAE

“I think the infrastructure here is geared up for it in terms of the intentions to help early-stage startups and the licensing support. But I feel maybe once people are in the ecosystem, at the very early stage, they’re kind of floundering their way. So, there’s a little gap between when they get traction, to get all the things you need to navigate between compliance regulation, software development, and so on.

There’s no challenge on the people side of things. We’ve been an early-stage startup, and we’ve managed to find amazing people to advise us.”

Lance Bohling, chief technology officer, Great People, UAE

“In the UAE, the cost of building a startup, of expansion, marketing and so on, is costly for those who are trying to figure out how to gain their first traction. But there is opportunity – more opportunities than any other country in the region.”

Bassam Tarek, CEO, Stacks, an AI powered drag-and-drop mobile app builder, UAE

“The UAE is amazing when it comes to startups. We have the ecosystem. We have government backing as well.

The struggle we see in the region, and not only in the UAE, is more on the investment side. Investors are very safe in what they want to push forward.

In the UAE, the money is here; it’s about where the money is being allocated. Investors don’t come in at the early stages of a startup. They want to come when the startup is already making money and is actually successful.

That limits creativity a lot because it forces smaller startups to pivot to where the money is, but then lose focus on their main mission.”

Yahya Kabara, marketing and strategy manager, MyGatePass, UAE

“In Dubai and the other emirates, it’s very vibrant and there’s a successful ecosystem to support startups. If you need a mentorship or something like that, they support us very well.

But there needs to be more women in business, and in that, we need a little bit more push. Especially in the AI business – it’s male-dominated, so there needs to be more support for women to come into the business.”

Nafiseh Gharavi, chief operating officer, Onkaru, an AI toy, UAE