 Good evening everybody, and welcome to this press conference, and also a warm welcome to our audience on the live stream. This is the last press conference on the first day of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa, and the title of the press conference, I'm sure you're all aware because you're here, is the New Vision for Arab Employment. And if you follow the program today, you've seen that employment, unemployment have already been very strong on the agenda today, and I'm very pleased that we have this press conference because I'm joined by a very distinct panel of experts from the private sector and also from the World Economic Forum to talk about the issue. And without further ado, let me introduce our panel to you. I'll start to my immediate left. This is my colleague Sadia Sahidi. She's a senior director at the World Economic Forum, and she's also heading the World Economic Forum's work on gender, but also, and that is more important for us here today on human capital. Further down the line, we're joined by Mr. Oma Alganim. He's the CEO of Alganim Industries from Kuwait joining us today. Thank you for being here. Next to him is Majid Jafar. He is the CEO of Crescent Petroleum from the United Arab Emirates. And last but by no means least, Oma Almadi, who is the managing director and member of the board of Abdul Latif Jamil Industrial Development Company joining us from Saudi Arabia here today. And I'll keep my roll to a minimum and hand over to you, Sadia. Just one sentence for you to have the context. The World Economic Forum launched last week, one of its flagship reports, the Human Capital Report. And in this report, we showed that despite significant investment, the labor market and the skill sets here, especially here in the region in the Middle East, are not what the labor market needs. But in more detail, Sadia, please, over to you. Okay. Thank you very much. Let me give just a little bit of context to what the forum is doing in this space. The forum has committed significant time and energy for some time to come to ten global challenges that we're going to make a long-term effort around. One of those is the topic of employment skills in human capital. And there we're trying to do two sets of things. One is analysis that gives us a sense of where we are today, where we might be headed in the future and what can be done about it. And the second set of things is applications of that analysis through regional projects as well as industry projects. And one of those regional projects is what you will hear about later today, the new vision for Arab employment. On the analysis, the Human Capital Index is a tool for understanding how countries are developing and deploying their human capital. You won't be surprised to learn that, given the issues in the region, that only two countries actually make it into the top half of the rankings of 124 countries. That's the UAE and Qatar at 54 and 56. We coordinate Egypt at 76 and 84, actually do better than very high-income countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that are at 85 and 93. And then we've got Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania all really much further down between 95 and 124. So the last ranking country is also from the region. What the index tells us overall, and it's trying to divide up various sections of the demography of each of these countries by age group. So in the under 15 group, there are obviously a lot of investments being made, but the major issue is quality, what is actually being taught. In the 15 to 24 year age group, that's where you start seeing some real divergence happening. That's where even in the countries with the biggest rates of people going to university, so for example, 57% tertiary enrollment right now in Saudi Arabia, that still means about 40% of your young people are not going to university. This is still much, much lower than Europe or the United States, for example, and so much work still to be done just simply to make sure that people are making it into university. And then what is being taught in universities clearly there is a major mismatch between what is happening in terms of giving people high skills, tertiary skills, and then what's happening inside labor markets because very quickly you start seeing even for those that are highly educated, very high rates of youth unemployment. What that leads to for the region is very high unemployment obviously, a skills mismatch when it comes to the workplace, and then many people that are actually not active at all. So again to give the example of Saudi Arabia out of the 40% or so that are not active at all, about 16% hold university degrees. Most of these people are women, but basically even where there is talent that has been invested in, they're not actually choosing to be active in the labor force. So those three sets of issues are actually happening around the world, the rising unemployment, the changing nature of the workplace, and the growing skills mismatch, in particular for this region that leads to this paradox where on the one hand, yes, people are not finding the jobs that they need, but on the other hand business leaders are saying they're not finding the talent that they need. And a little bit more on that before I hand it over, what does the future of jobs look like in the main area region? So another study that we're conducting, and I'll tell you just a little bit about the preliminary results of that, what we find from the heads of strategy and the heads of HR that have been responding to our surveys from this region in particular, technology will obviously cause some of the biggest disruptions to business models. But the overall outlook for employment is incredibly positive. Almost 70% of the people that we interviewed said that they expect technology to create more jobs rather than disrupt jobs, but that comes with a very specific set of conditions, only if people are skilled in order to be able to take those jobs. Otherwise, not only will businesses not grow, but unemployment will be higher. Let me give you a very quick example from three industries, healthcare industry. What's going to be some of the professions that they're going to need much more of? It's not doctors, it's data analysts. In the case of the financial services industry, it's not brokers, it's not bank tellers, it's IT security analysts. And in the case of the consumer and retail industry, it's not assembly workers, it's not factory workers, it's actually people who can manage complexity. It's basically managers, collaborators, people who are going to make those more automated systems work together. So given that particular shift, we will only see worsening rates of unemployment and a more difficult situation for businesses to be able to find the kind of talent they need, unless we make some very specific investments in training and skilling. Thank you, Sadia. Thank you for the analysis. Clearly, that is a challenge for all industries, not only in this region, but Oma Alganim, you're a CEO. You have a company to run. Is the situation of human capital keeping you up at night? And what can you, what can the private sector do to help alleviate that situation? Thank you. And, Sadia, thank you for covering the situations thoroughly. So I assume, Chairmanship of the Regional Business Council for the last year. And the Regional Business Council has done a tremendous amount of work beforehand doing diagnostic work and really understanding what the problem is with youth unemployment and trying to understand and diagnose what the problem is and a tremendous amount of work. And you can tell from what Sadia was saying here and really understanding that problem well. But in the last year, what we've really tried to do is try to harness the bandwidth of the organizations that are within the Regional Business Council to affect change to the youth now. So what can the organizations that are part of the Regional Business Council do to really take the lives of young people, affect that and change it now? So we came up with a commitment that the companies would make. Which is to affect 100,000 youth by the time we get to Davos later on, early next year. And we're already 55% of the way there. And inshallah we will beat the goal and beat the 100,000 mark. And that's, you know, we look at the problems. And we spent a lot of time here looking at problems. But I think what we also need to do is create momentum. And create momentum towards fixing problems. And that's the power of the Regional Business Council. And the companies are in there. And by the way, that's only 10 out of the 30 companies that have responded so far. So I still think we're going to really beat the 100,000 and get a much better response. And once you create momentum, and once you start affecting young people's lives, you start affecting the way people think and shape the way people think, the way governments think about young people, and see that you can reskill these people. You can have them get engaged into the private sector. You can have them look at life differently. And when that happens, and when you create that positive momentum, that's how you can start changing societies and start changing the future of the way the society that we live in. And after all, where we do business is the neighborhood that we're in. And so it's our responsibilities at private sector to do this. So it's something that I'm very excited about. And I'm very excited about all the support of all the groups that are sitting here, and it's really their support that's made this possible. And it's a tremendous effort. And I think I will call to action from the forum, and it's exciting. I'll talk a little bit about what my company is doing, Algonum Industries. We've committed to take on 4,000 youth, part of them through INJAS, which is a youth entrepreneurship program, where we send two volunteers into schools and help these young people start up their own companies, their own ideas, and that culminates in a country competition and then a regional competition. And then the other part is helping people get their MBAs. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think that was a very powerful call for action indeed. Mr. Jafar, obviously you have joined that effort already, so you don't need convincing. But share with us why did you join this initiative? What's your perspective? Thank you. Thank you. So as I'm going to describe the Regional Business Council as as members, the members of the corporate members from the Middle East, North Africa region and the World Economic Forum. The number one risk identified for our region by the forum's global risk survey is youth unemployment. Aside from the analytical and policy work and the issues which get discussed at the summit today and tomorrow and other summits, including the annual meeting in Davos, there was the desire as Omar expressed it for us to be doing something bottom up to really be affecting young people now. And it's critical for our issue. My own industry, the oil and gas industry, it makes up a very large part of the economy in the region, but actually a very small part of the workforce. And that's even smaller today than it was 30 years ago. You don't need, you know, 30 years ago, you might have needed 50 people to run an oil installation. Now you can do it with five people and some software. So the impact of technology, as was mentioned, can be an opportunity, but it can also be a threat. So re-skilling or upskilling the workforce, developing employment skills, not just the education skills which are provided for by the Ministry of Education curricula. But really what the private sector needs is critical. And it's an area where the members of the community, of the council, the regional business council, can really add value because they know the skills that they need in the marketplace. So I think it can very much complement. So the three key areas that the different initiatives looked at and tried to tackle, one or two or even all three, is developing employment skills, fostering entrepreneurship and connecting talent to markets. And some of the companies will do the projects in house and many will partner with organizations. Amar mentioned JAZ. We as Crescent Petroleum and Crescent Enterprises, two companies in our group combined commitment to eight and a half thousand young people. And we have different partnerships as well, including IDRAC, Queen Rania Foundation here in Jordan, Mosaic, which is a UK charity for providing opportunities. And they have an international program, which is currently going on for young people from across the region. It's actually going on these three weeks in Jordan this year, but it moves around. So private sector companies partnering with nonprofit entities and global institutions is very much part of the approach. Thank you very much. Umar Almadi, share your perspective with us why this is an important initiative and especially what is the Saudi Arabian perspective here. Thank you. So I'm here representing my colleagues in ALJ Community Initiatives, which was founded back in 2003 as our platform for giving back to society and to our communities. From the earliest days of founding ALJ Community Initiatives, or ALJCI, we've been attempting to be pioneers in active and positive social change and contributions within our local community in Saudi Arabia, but across the border of Saudi as well. And we give back through five main platforms of pillars, which we've identified, one of them being the job creation pillar through Babris Jamil, the arts and culture pillar through Art Jamil, global poverty alleviation through multiple partnerships, education and training, or what we call education Jamil, last but not least, social Jamil, which is health and social. We firmly believe in the need to both create employment, to place people, young people in jobs, and also to finance SMEs and the youth's ability to enter into the job market. And along those lines, since 2003, we've trained more than 30,000 people. We've done that through cooperation with technical and vocational institutes, which we've either established or partnered in establishing, including the Saudi Japanese High Institute for Automotive, the Electronics Institute, the Anafisa Shams Academy for Arts and Crafts, and the Saudi Health Institutes. On job placement, we've placed more than 140,000 people in Saudi Arabia and across the region, 41% of whom are women. The types of jobs we've placed in our customer service, sales, management, IT, retail, automotive and engineering jobs. And in 2003, we established also the financing arm to support in-self employment. We provide interest-free loans up to $100,000. We've supported more than 30,000 entrepreneurs using that. We've also entered into micro-finance and micro-loans for females, especially who would like to work from home, so enabling at-home employment for females. And more than 200,000 females have benefited from that. So all in all, in the past 10 years or since 2003, we've participated and helped in the creation of more than 590,000 jobs. And we firmly believe in this cause, we're firmly committed to continue growing with the years and in partnership with them. Thank you very much. We will have the opportunity for a couple of questions. But before I open the floor, we asked our audience on Facebook and Twitter before for questions. And actually, a lot of young people from the region asked a very pragmatic, very straightforward question. And they said, so we have these three business leaders on the panel. They clearly must know how their industries are developing. So in a nutshell, the question was, what should I study? What should I learn to find a job with your companies? And Sadia mentioned before, healthcare, banking, consumer retail, how the skillsets that are needed are changing. Maybe you have a sentence or two for us. What would you recommend to the young people in the region? What should they take up? I know there's no one answer, but maybe you can give us some insights there. Thank you. Well, I think the skills that are missing so far as an education side is getting access to schools that can really teach people the critical thinking that's required within business. And you're asking the question from a perspective of a young person. And so that's what makes it difficult. Do they have access to that type of school? And so I think it's, for me, it's less about the subject matter and it's more about learning how to think and the process of thinking. And that's what I look for with the people that I try to employ. If you go to Silicon Valley and you go to other areas that are very innovative, it's less about the degrees that they have and more about the way that they think and the way that they look at problems. And that's typically what I try to look for. So I'm less concerned whether somebody's an engineer or a marketeer, but it's really how they think. Thank you very much. Yeah, I would say, first and foremost, English skills. As much as we want to protect our heritage and our language, and we must, but for global employability. And even if that's local, it's a globalized economy. Skills in English are very important. I would say technical skills. You don't have to go and study computer science. That's a great one if you can. But certainly having those skills are important. Obviously, sciences and engineering and technical degrees are always in demand and going forward that will continue to be the case. And the other piece of advice I would give is try and get some work experience while you're studying. Everybody complains in this region, everyone goes and gets a good degree and then they can't get a job without experience. Everyone says, you have to get experience. How do I get experience when you don't give me my first job? So actually, what is not so common in our region, which I think needs to be is having, doing summer jobs and doing holiday jobs and apprenticeships and work placements, even if they're unpaid, even if they're not organized by your university or your school, go and find them. Go and find the company that you want to spend time at and badger them and offer to do some holiday work with them because I think that's a very attractive thing to potential employers. Thank you. Definitely, building on what both Amaran and Majid said, I think critical thinking is extremely important. And then the degree is also not the most critical factor as Majid says. It's, to me, an important part that's missing in a lot of the youth is their ability to sell themselves to employers as well. How do they prepare their resume? How do they act and interact? How do they build their resume also in terms of community engagement summer jobs, as you mentioned? So that's a very critical skill that a lot of the youth don't really pay a lot of attention to. So ultimately, how do you present yourself? How do you sell yourself? I think are very complementary to the important points mentioned by my colleagues. Thank you very much. And because the gentlemen on the panel have been almost shy about the announcement today, let me repeat this, until Davos next year, which happens in January, as you know, the pledge is to train and skill 100,000 young people in the region. And the good news, much more than the silver lining, actually, is that we've reached a large part of that. Sadia, I don't want to say the wrong number here. 55%. 55%. So more than half, I think that's very encouraging. And without further ado, we open the floor. We have a microphone in the back. If you could state your name and your organization for the sake of our online audience, please. Any questions? I think you've all been so impressed by the question that came in through Twitter that all the answers have been delivered already. Well, thank you very much, then. Thank you for joining us today. And we're definitely looking forward to Davos next year when we hopefully can announce the next step in this great initiative. Thank you very much.