 My name is Karim Abdulgani, I'm the program coordinator in the ITU Arab Regional Office. I have the pleasure to be with you today as a master of ceremony for this year's Regional Innovation Forum for the Arab States. This forum is organized on an annual basis to share experiences and good practices pertaining to digital innovation ecosystems in the Arab region. We have an array of distinguished speakers presenting their interesting perspectives and practices throughout both days of the forum today and tomorrow. Of course, the sessions will be brought to you live on Swapcard. Please use the chat to comment, to enter your questions and answers in the box and connect with each other directly on Swapcard. Should you wish to promote your participation in this forum, please use the hashtag rediscover innovation to join the conversation. If you wish to listen to only one of the interpretation languages, English, French or Arabic, please click on the buttons relevant to the interpretation on the bottom of the screen to select the language of your preference. Remember, you can only ask questions on Swapcard and in English. I would now have the pleasure to present Mr. Adel Darwish, the regional director of the ITU Arab Regional Office, to present his opening remarks for the forum. Please, under the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Kareem. Bismillah, Rahman, Raheem. First of all, a very good morning to all the viewers and participants and to the panelists that are joining us in this event today. Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. It is always my absolute pleasure to be here among innovators during the Regional Innovation Forum, an event we at ITU pride ourselves on organizing with the generous support of our partners. Please allow me to thank them for their unlevering support of innovation in the Arab region and beyond. The Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technology of Rahman, MTCIT, Tiamil Aziz City of Science and Technology, KAACST, and the Arab Innovation and Entrepreneurship Network, RAIN. Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. The Arab region is one where human talent and resources that we believe are the building blocks of the future for prosperity. With the youth forming more than 32% of our population, we are teaming with potential and power to innovate, create, and change. Earlier this year, we witnessed the launch of first unicorn from the Middle East with a valuation amount of 1.5 billion USD. This achievement highlights that the Arab region is slowly but surely becoming cradle of entrepreneurship as we send off our first unicorns to the world. The pandemic has allowed for rapid digitization, advanced technology, and change in customer demands, which were catalysts for increasing business investment in the Middle East. Arab nations today fully grasp the importance of innovation and technology advances in creating the infrastructure and foundation for progress. These initiatives can only thrive in the right regulatory environment and a rich interconnected ecosystem. At ITU, we proudly position ourselves as one of the fierce believers, supporters, and enablers for this digital innovation ecosystem agenda. We have assisted countries in identifying gaps in their ecosystems and continuously offer our recommendations and support in establishing and upgrading them. Our regional best practices report that we will be launching during this forum is a collective of some of the regions most praised for the initiatives that contribute to accelerating innovation, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation in the Arab states. These good practices can be used to accelerate digital transformation and serve as a basis for better policies in countries where digital gaps and divides exist. By replicating and amplifying good practices in the region, other countries can strengthen their digital innovation ecosystems and follow in the footsteps of global leaders. It is therefore imperative to share regional and global knowledge expertise and experience. Following the same philosophy, ITU is supporting the Sultanate of Amman in creating a digital innovation profile, a study that assesses the country's ecosystem performance and highlights best practices to develop an innovative and competitive ICT industry. Having identified the gaps, ITU will undertake the project designed for a novel regional innovative center in the Sultanate. Through our new approaches that bring together the whole ecosystem, the center will create meaningful initiatives, marshalling resources and expertise in the country's digital ecosystem. Next year, ITU plans to do innovation profile assessments for three additional Arab countries and will keep going on to make sure that we are at the forefront of innovation within the region. Finally, we have yet again shown our resolute commitment to knowledge sharing and network through this regional innovation forum. Our aim is to build regional and national capacities by identifying learning and highlighting successful projects, initiatives, policies and programs in developing Arab digital innovation ecosystems. Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for attending this forum and for your support for the innovation and entrepreneurship causes in the MENA region. This is only building partnerships and showing up for each other that we will make our dreams of progress a reality. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Mr. Adid Alwish for the opening remarks. We shall now start with the first session of the forum titled tech entrepreneurship and key sector developments in the Arab regional context. I remind you again, dear participants, if you wish to interact with the session and enter your questions and answers, please use so on Swapcard. You can also tweet about your experience or your comments on using the hashtag we discover innovation. As well, you can follow the languages of your preference English, French or Arabic on the zoom interpretation button. If you wish to do so. We look forward to your engagement throughout the session. Questions and answers will be, of course, if we have time answered at the end of the session. So with that, I hand the floor back to Mr. Adid Alwish to moderate the session and carry on with the first session. Please, Mr. Adid. Thank you very much again, Karim. I would like to now take the opportunity to extend the warm welcome to the distinguished speakers of the session. His Excellency, Mr. Abdul Aziz Dahi, Minister of Digital Transformation, Digital Transition, sorry, Innovation and Administration Modernization of Mauritania. Your Excellency, welcome. I'd also like to welcome Mr. Olaia Khutib, CEO Smart Capital Tunisia. Welcome, Mr. Olaia. And I'd also like to welcome Dr. Saoud Ashuaily, Director General of Policies and Governance, Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technology of Sultanate of Amman. Welcome, Dr. Saoud. To kickstart our session, maybe I'll start with my first question to his Excellency, Mr. Aziz. Could you please tell us how technical or tech entrepreneurship fuels competitiveness or key sectors with potential in the Arab strategy or Arab states region? Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank ITU for organizing this important forum and for the opportunity given to me. Thanks also to the panelists. And maybe it would be useful to remember some important numbers before going to the question. As you know, the Arab population is growing very fast and is even one of the fastest growing population in the world. And it's expected to double in the next three years. The unemployment varies a lot between countries which are very different in terms of resources and development. We have a rich country like Gulf country. We have middle country like Maghreb and we have four countries also. So the situation is not the same in the entire Arab region. The unemployment is a very big challenge. And unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world. It is over 30% for example in some non-oil producing economies with serious economic and social exclusion of brain-brain implications. The Arab countries have to create millions of new jobs to keep peace with new entrances in the labor market. The challenge so is very important and is probably to create sufficient growth that can ease the social and economic pressure. And COVID has not arranged things yet, as you know. So back into the question, I think that a lot of reforms must be conducted in order to address this unemployment, to higher private sector investment which can bring growth. These reforms have to create jobs for the first time job seekers, job keepers, who constitute the largest part of the job seekers. Today with the explosion of digital platforms and the increase of digitalization of business, manufacturing, energy, agriculture, the digital economy represents more than 16% of global GDP and is projected to be more than 66% in 2025. The development of cloud-based, high-speed digital infrastructure is critical for me for the development of job creation and entrepreneurship. But the good news is that hope is permitted. As Adel Darouge mentioned before, during the COVID pandemic, we saw a lot of nice initiatives. In Mauritania, for example, we experienced a lot of tech entrepreneurs and these companies are challenging the existing companies in financial sectors, like banks, for example, or chemical operators, and they bring competitiveness with new service and business models. We saw also a lot of startups providing key services, like education platforms and delivery services. So I think there is a very important role for the government in order to launch an environment that can push those startups to develop. Thank you very much. Thank you, Your Excellency. You're absolutely nailed it, if I may say, their innovation in services and business models is indeed key for the transformation in the sector. And the governments do play an important role in enabling the environment for innovation as well. Thank you very much, Your Excellency. Now, if I may go to Mr. Olaya, Mr. Olaya, if you can also maybe give us an overview of the situation in Tunisia at the moment, and again, give us your view on how tech entrepreneurship fuels competition and changes the ecosystem. Mr. Olaya, floor is yours. Thank you so much, Adel. I'm extremely pleased to join you. Thank you for the invitation. In fact, I started to introduce Smart Capital. Smart Capital is the national operator of StartUp Tunisia. StartUp Tunisia is a very ambitious program which has been launched by the government in 2018 to create from Tunisia a startup hub. So anyway, probably we'll speak about it later in the year. But in order really to introduce probably the ecosystem in Tunisia and to link it to your question, Adel, I say that, in fact, technology has been really considered by the government since the early 2000s with several initiatives, essentially. It has been really meant to absorb unemployment as His Excellency Dr. Aziz was really mentioning. It is the problem of all the Arab countries, as he said, I mean, non-oil producing countries. You know, several initiatives creating incubators here and there, I mean, giving advantage to SMEs, encouraging, I mean, the adoption of technology. We fail in some programs, but we believe that the recent program that has been launched, as I said, StartUp Tunisia, probably is the one who has really the vision and also the means probably we'll take about it later. But in getting back, I mean, to your questions, I mean, the technology entrepreneurship is key. Me as a VC, I understand it fully. I mean, the importance of technology on investing in technology and on exiting also. I mean, when company is really having, I mean, technology within it. I mean, all the investors of the world are really willing to invest in the technology. And all of them know that also when you have a technology in a company, both StartUp and SMEs, it's very easy to exit too. You know, because you'll find, I mean, a choir who can really do it. So technology and technology entrepreneurship, as I said, I mean, has been really quite really in the high priority of the government and they start with university with techno parks, as I said, with incubators, etc. And this has been really since 2000. We fail in some policy, we could really have to say succeed in others. But today, I think if just to come back, I mean, to the point of today, today, I think we are really, I mean, both the private sector, the public sector, everybody is really, really willing to bridge. I mean, the gap, the technology gap by trying really too many. I mean, the relation between the SMEs and startups, startups really mastering technology, SMEs need technology in order to reinforce their competitiveness. So today, there is, we've seen a lot of orientation that is a trend on agritech for agri-industries, on edtech for education industries, on biotech for the health industry in general, for fintech. I mean, it's a quite a trend worldwide and Tunisia is not an exception. I mean, there are a lot of startups really working marketplace, you know, handicraft industry, whatever, you know, I mean, students, young people are really creating many, many, many marketplace, you know, software as a service also, this is another trend which is really growing. I think there is an awareness, I mean, in the Arab world and this is an excellent sign. I mean, which has been really encouraged or let's say, we say that it has been really pushed by the COVID, I mean, a crisis that most of the Arab countries today are really thinking about setting up a technology ecosystem, a startup ecosystem, innovation ecosystem has been. And thank you for the good news. I mean, if today we have one liquor and I mean, which is really has been launched, I mean, within the Arab world, this can be only a trigger and an excellent incentives, you know, to encourage others really to follow. I mean, the examples, and I think Tunisia is really on on the way to follow. This example, these examples and, you know, we have an our objective to create 1000 or 1500 startups to be able to have one liquor. And but one liquor could really compensate the whole what we call the traditional sector. I mean, in terms of fiscal fiscal in terms of revenues in terms of employment, many, many, many, many things. So what I can say, I mean, for this, for your question, Adel and I am extremely keen to listen to what the other panelists will say about this issue. Thank you very much, Mr. Alayya. Now I'll go to Dr. Saoud. Dr. Saoud, again, could you kindly share with us the situation in Saltanat of Rahman when it comes to tech entrepreneurship and how it fuels competition as well. And maybe if you can also shed some light on some initiatives that the government has been doing in this life as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Adel. Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for the ITU for giving us this opportunity and platform to share our experiences. And in parallel to that, I would like also to thank the ITU for the initiative that we are currently doing together to study the digital innovation profile of Rahman. It's been highly appreciated and very fruitful and enriching. We are almost halfway through to finish this project and inshallah later on we will be able to share our findings with other colleagues. I'm also delighted to have joined this platform, joined here with His Excellency the Minister and our friend Alayya, the CEO. When it comes to the digital innovation or entrepreneurship ecosystem in Rahman, we have established this ecosystem long time ago. And I will go back just to history since 2005, the Research Council in Rahman was established officially to, I mean, to establish the innovation ecosystem in the country as we all know that entrepreneurship cannot work in isolation. They have to work along the system together and I would like to use the terminology that being used in the literature called triple helix, which described the relationship between the university, the government and the industry, all together stimulating the innovation ecosystem in the country. In Rahman, since the establishment of the Research Council, the innovation strategy was developed to guide the direction for the innovation. Besides that, I will focus now on the digital innovation specifics and the role of the MTC IT within that. MTC IT is the custodian, previously it was the Information Technology Authority. Part of its mandates is to stimulate the startups in the IT industry or in the digital industry. ITA has established what's called SAS, the foundation for the startups. It provides the incubation environment for anyone who has the idea when I said, you know, man, I mean, the younger men is who had the input. I mean, the good ideas that can be incubated and later on spin off and we have good experience among that many companies spin off. Along that also, the government recently launched a program called digital economy program in which the adoption of technology is highly encouraged. This is to make use of the new technologies and to encourage the interbunalship to enter into this field. For example, the ministry has a center called National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data just to encourage the adoption of artificial intelligence in various economic sectors and to make use of the national data that I mean being stored in various areas in the country. So in the digital economy program, we have initiatives for the utilization of big data initiatives for the employment and employing AI in various economic sectors. We have programs specifically for the fintech and the encouragement of interbunalship in fintech and blockchain. CloudSurf is also, we encourage the foreign investment to come and to encourage the local also surface providers to enter into this business area. Cybersecurity as well. We have also space programs. This is only within MTCIT, several initiatives that encourage the adoption of the tech technologies in various sectors. These technologies in various areas which will drive the interbunalships to enter into the field. Of course, this has a positive impact in the competitiveness of the country in general and of the sectors where these technologies will be employed. Unfortunately, due to the time constraints, I will not be able to details it. I mean, if I go to the same example that mentioned by our police earlier during the coronavirus, we have several initiatives that came immediately driven by the demands of the country. For example, for the continuation of the remote working, we have several platforms that help help the movement of the items from one place to another in the logistics sector. We have also several platforms to manage the government meetings that cater for the security required by the government. We have also another initiatives to deliver again back in the postal sector to deliver the staff from one point to another during the period where individuals were not allowed to move. So all these have contributed positively to the competitiveness of the various sectors where these technologies were employed. I think, I don't know if I have enough time to go ahead or this is, we were told just to keep the time. I don't know, Mr. Ahadid, you can advise me on this. Thank you, Dr. Soju. If you have some more interesting topics you'd like to add, please go ahead. We have a few more minutes. Okay. So basically, these are the several initiatives. When it comes also to encouraging adaption even at the policy levels, the ministry also developed various strategies for the IT, the telecommunications and the postal sectors. One of the pillars in all these strategies is the encouragement is to move toward adapting new technologies. So we encourage all the telecom operators, all the postal operators to employ technologies wherever they are, because we all, not only in the ministry, all across the board believe that the employment and introduction of the new technologies will enhance the productivity, will enhance the efficiency of those sectors. And we have seen it in several areas where the technologies were employed. Just last month, the country unfortunately was hit by a cyclone that affected negatively the infrastructure, especially the roads, in which some medicines, I mean, some people were not able to access to pharmacies or to hospitals. The ministry of health and other pharmacies used drones to deliver the pharmacies on time just to make sure those beneficiaries of those medicines can get their medicines on time. This is just another example by employing drones on delivery. That's it, Adam. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Sood. Now if I may go to the challenges of opportunities of the digital ecosystem and the innovation ecosystem. If I may go back to his excellency, Mr. Aziz, what are some challenges and opportunities for the digital ecosystem that you foresee or you're facing in Mauritania at the moment? Thank you very much again. I think, as I told you before, the digital ecosystem is growing very fast in Mauritania, but it is also facing a lot of challenges. And probably the infrastructure is one of the most important challenges, because as you know, we are in a big country with a very low density of the population. So infrastructure are maybe the cave to Mauritania. Even if that in Mauritania we realize important steps, like national backbone in fiber optics, through submarine connections. So it is not sufficient to bring high speeds in every household and maybe also educate and train population. So access to the market also for startups are a big challenge. And access to finance. Because as you know, which is maybe the big obstacles that they are facing. Sometimes startups put on the table problems related to intellectual and protection properties. There is a lot of integrated ecosystem, like the lack of collaboration between the main actors of the ecosystem without the global approach in Mauritania is also a big challenge. And as IT experts and non tech entrepreneurs, it is also a very big challenge. And to the opportunities, I think the good thing is that our high authorities are aware that maybe digital digitalization is probably one of the most important things and we can do a sort of leap forward. Maybe it's the only sector in which we can do something in our country. It's not necessary to have like big laboratories, high researchers and high investment. I can just remember the Gaffan SME and how they are created, sometimes in the garage. So we have the potential in our country that we can do because it's not necessary to have a lot of investments. We have to unlock the potential of entrepreneurs and services. Maybe one of the main opportunities of Mauritania is the strategy, zero strategy question of Mauritania. As you know Mauritania is faced to Europe, like one hour from Spain. This is between Hungary and Africa and it is maybe the only window to the sea for the G5 countries. So we have big opportunities in Mauritania. We have also a high educated diaspora with entrepreneurial skills. And we organized in the West, we organized a sort of forum in which our diaspora was involved. There were a lot of ideas, a lot of initiatives that we have to develop. And last but not least, the authorities created a new ministry for digital transition, innovation and modernization of administration. So I think with the holistic approach, the strategy which involves all the actors, we can do something in Mauritania. Thank you Your Excellency. Of course the government establishing the ministry to look at the digitization in particular, showcases the level of attention that the government is paying to the sector and to innovation in particular, which is great indeed. And like you rightly mentioned, connectivity and access to high speed connection with financial support of course is very key. And its connectivity is an important pillar that not only the ITU but the UN ecosystem as a whole is looking at in all the sectors. That is really a key important pillar. Now if I may refer to Mr. Olaya again, considering that Tunisia has always been at the forefront of innovation. We have a lot of innovative, let me say entities, small medium enterprises, innovative people that have started up in Tunisia itself. Can you share with us some of the challenges and opportunities that you have foreseen from your experience as well in Tunisia? Thank you again Adel. I'm very pleased of course to share with you what we've been really experiencing in Tunisia. If I start really with the challenges, in general for techno entrepreneurs, the first big challenge is the size of our market. Tunisia is too small. Despite the fact that we have a free trade agreement with EU and the access to EU is really how to say offered to most of the Tunisian products. But still I mean it's a big challenge. I mean, you cannot really export let's say unless you prove yourself in your local market. So I mean the local market is too little. I mean 12 million is nothing. The second challenge is the foreign exchange law. We have a very old foreign exchange law which cannot really, which is really hindering. I mean whatever transaction is I mean with outside. So it's something that we are really pushing really that it can be really reformed. But still I mean so we are, of course we are really managing. And we are managing slowly with the authorization and all these kind of things and which is not it, which really making lose and lose competitiveness because it's really wasting time really for the SME for the company and even for startups. The third challenge, as has been mentioned by by by Dr Aziz is the access to finance. The fact I mean the fact that Tunisia is really now making an excellent initiatives I mean really to to overcome I mean this problem by still access to finance is is a big problem and for for SME for start up and you know so it's it's and also know is this is not reserved to Tunisia this is access to finance this is worldwide. I mean for I mean for Africa for Middle East and North Africa for this is. Some countries are really trying to solve we are really trying ourselves and we can be later. And there is one another issue which really is quite difficult as we are really helping I mean start up or SME really to grow. But once they grow, sometimes because of the access to finance is not really available for them to grow. They go outside really to raise their funds, so they leave the country and this is a big dilemma. I mean, in Tunisia sometimes you have the feeling that we are encouraging the company to grow and then we offer them freely I mean to I mean developed countries really to to to accept them so this is a really big issues. You've been really mentioning about digital digital itself is a challenge. It's a culture. It means it means it is an infrastructure. You know, COVID raised our attention I mean for its for its importance the importance of digital. And this is why some countries like what I've been really hearing now Mauritania and others have been really creating a ministry for digital transition and everything so this is the same case of also in Tunisia. We've been really have to say putting this I mean on table and orderly to be able to prepare I mean the country for the what we call the new normal. The most COVID is now is really called the new normal, new normal atmosphere or situation other. So the probably the opportunities that's really and by a positive note is for the opportunities of course we are really happy that we are creating a new project called startup Tunisia, probably I will give some hints. Not later but this week also does an opportunity because it respond to a burning need. You know it's what respond to burning need both in terms of infra both in terms of access to finance, both in terms of coaching I mean both SMEs etc. So this is, I think it's a really good thing. In fact, I mean smart capital is managing one fund which is called the innovative. One who is almost 50 million US dollar. It's really meant to help SME adopt technology to face. I mean the digital divide to face the digital gap to let them in this SME get ready for a better competitiveness. I mean, worldwide and giving it's I mean a comparative advantage. I mean, as compared I mean to both local company but also regional regional company. So these are challenges and opportunities that we are really how to say living I mean these days in Tunisia. Thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Alayya indeed these are important challenges and I don't believe it's only in Tunisia. It's across the world. These challenges are faced by many. And they're very important that they're addressed by stakeholders in the industry as well. Now, referring to Dr. Saoud, Dr. Saoud, building on what we have discussed so far. Again, does Oman's young face other challenges or have other opportunities based on your experience? Could you share with us what goes on in the Sultanate of Oman, please. Thank you, Adil. Thank you, Adil. I mean, as you said, these are general problems faced by all innovators or entrepreneurs. But I think among the most is the lack of trust. Most of the industry they do not trust the entrepreneurs at their early stage. They have to I mean to go through a very difficult and long process to get a place for the proof of concepts even because that will show their successful and the adaption later on. Some industries that they have their own incubation or innovation lab, they develop their own innovation internally and then they provide the environment for the proof of concepts. But in many, many innovators, they face that difficulties. But the second, I mean, of course, the government has tried, tried, but they can, I mean, they don't want to force the industry to accept the innovation as it is then the innovators have to find their own way to prove it and to commercialize it later on. And a common challenge that has been highlighted by many for the entrepreneurs is the access to venture capitalists. In the country here, in Oman, I mean, they try to facilitate this by developing certain funds dedicated for the entrepreneurs. We have previously a fund called RFT, in which anyone has a business ideas with a proof in business case, they can get a government loan for certain period until they show that is very, that is commercially viable. And then the return will take place. We have Oman Technology Fund, which is purely VC fund dedicated also for entrepreneurs in which they can go and they get incubated inside. And until they develop and we have several initiative spin off this fund. We have the most famous company in Oman called E-Mushrif. Now, I mean, it's working beyond the boundaries of Oman Alhamdulillah, it works in several UCC and Arab countries with proof in successful business cases. Also access to expertise in many of our countries in order to access these countries, I mean, in the Arab countries, we have to hire consultants. Accessing to those consultants, especially for innovation applications is quite expensive for the new entrepreneurs. Of course, the government and especially the MTC, IT or the research council, they try to facilitate this but with certain limitations. So this is another yet challenge facing the entrepreneurs in Oman, beside the challenges that has been highlighted. And as I said, the government represented by several agencies here tried to facilitate this but again limitations, especially since the economic crisis and corona came, the national priorities been shifted to something else. And the profiling feces for entrepreneurs became very competitive and everyone has to show the, I mean, the competitiveness of the business case that they want to get from the government. Yeah, that's it. Thank you very much, Dr. Saud. Indeed, access to venture capital is important for entrepreneurs and absolutely you touched on an important base with the access to expertise, which again is another very important aspect. With COVID, I do believe that COVID has negatively affected some of the sectors and some initiatives at the global level. However, with every challenge we build back a better comeback as humans and I think that's that's the lesson that we've learned from all the challenges that we've been facing so far. I mean, I would like just to emphasize that the challenge of trust, the industry is not easily trusting those entrepreneurs from, I mean, and give them enough space for their profile concepts. This challenge being highlighted by many whom I have interviewed or met, they said we would like to get an environment where we can improve our concepts so we can commercialize it later on. But that is one of the key challenges. Thank you, Dr. Saud. If I may go to the last round of questions that we have before we can open the floor to a question and answers that we've already been seeing on the chat. Mr. Aziz, your excellency, maybe if I can ask you about any new mechanism or initiatives are needed to accelerate the sectorial transformation using the whole ecosystem approach for Mauritania. Where do you think we can focus to move the industry forward? Thank you again. I think that despite all things and reforms, though, we continue to focus in Mauritania to post low rates of creation and success of new firms, particularly national firms, which probably explain why growth are volatile, depending sometimes on price markets of natural resources like Mauritania, we have iron and maybe in Gulf rabbits, we have oil. And that goes probably to low diversification of our economy. And today, I think small dynamic and digital firms are largely recognized as the main pillars of economic growth. Promoting the creation, survival sometimes. I think Mr. Alaya mentioned that before. So the survival of factories and the growth of search firms by providing macroeconomic stability and business environment will probably be a key pillar. I think that a new generation of proactive regulation and programs is also fundamental, I think, including financial and educational institutions and maybe target incentives. Education and infrastructure remains also very very important barriers that have to be broken. So in Mauritania, we want to promote, as I mentioned before, access to finance for SME platform, platforms of co-creation and citizen consultation. Stafford's Act, because we have a very nice example in Tunisia, for example, Stafford Act implementation with an inclusive approach and participation of the ecosystem players. In procurement platforms, open innovation also approach to create innovative solution for the public sector. And the development of e-gal services, the new market for entrepreneurs and mechanisms of digital transition for the public sector and citizen. Digital apps also are asked in innovation, center for entrepreneurs and the world ecosystem will be also very interesting. And skills, education will be very important. Thank you very much. Thank you, Your Excellency. Now if I may just remind our panelists we have less than 10 minutes to go. However, Mr. Alayya, we've heard about the startup Tunisia initiative. I think it's a good opportunity if you can just give us a quick brief about what this initiative is and how does it help the innovation ecosystem in Tunisia. Thank you, Adil. In fact, this is indeed something I'd like really to share with all our panelists and particularly the participants from around the main region and Africa. Is that indeed I mean since 2016 through I mean they have to say the evasion of the many talents I mean from Tunisia because of the small market as I've been really saying because of many things which were hindering. I mean the entrepreneurship initiative in Tunisia that lot of how to say efforts has been done by the public, the private, the social civil society in order to create a mechanism and the mechanism has been really called startup Tunisia. It started with the startup act. Everything started with the law just to inside and to encourage those talent really to take initiatives to emerge to go out from the height and to show their talents and so we have really to give them initiative to give them some fiscal financial whatever advantage really in orderly to appear and to show us what they can do. You know, so startup act is indeed that I mean it gave incentives, both financial fiscal whatever I mean to the investor to the entrepreneur in fact to the entrepreneur first then to the investor and then to the startup itself and these these mechanism has been really well structured with what we call the immediate immediate mechanism that mean whoever is really talented with a technology with a scalable product, you know, it can be labeled we call it label it can really be certified as a good startup with a good technology with a scalable potential, etc. And today, since April 2019, till today, we reached 600 startup labeled 600. I mean our objective is to reach by the year 2024. That means after four or five years to reach 1000 labeled start up. We have already reached. I mean the half of it before I mean within two years. This means that many there is a lot of potential that being has been really raising. I mean in Tunisia and people are really showing get up. Of course, we cannot really rely only on low and incentives, we have really to put I mean financial mechanics that mean we have really to encourage. I mean, these labels start up to get to grow and to have to say to expand to grow nationally, regionally, and even international international. And this is why we create the fund the fund fund the fund is an excellent mechanism, and it is unique in Tunisia unique also because it's also, it's labeled in Europe. It's not in dinner. So it gave the opportunity for the start up, not only to develop and to expand but also even to open offices. I mean international in Africa and Mina and in Europe, etc. And as I said, it's start up invest, which is the final financial mechanism. It's a, it's a, it's a fond of fun. The third is ecosystem, and I will finish with this. I mean, no single country in the world succeed on its startup policy, unless it support. The supporting structure incubator accelerator startup studio, or this has been within the startup Tunisia as the third pillar to help I mean the the ecosystem both the start up the investors etc. So this is in general, I don't like it more time I know the time is really running very fast, but this start up Tunisia is a new mechanism and I'm extremely proud to announce that we've been really awarded the first world of it you I mean in as the most, I have to say comprehensive and encouraging equals start up ecosystem program in Africa and I'm really, very proud to really to share this news with you today. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we congratulate you for that and we also look forward to your active participation in our Arab innovation and entrepreneurship network, which is an initiative by the regional office. For the Arab region so we welcome you that and congratulate you once again. Thank you. Dr. Sirud, over to you in terms of accelerating the take up of innovation in, in, in Sultanate of Oman. Again, we've seen some success cases. How do you see that the government has enabled these in Sultanate of Oman and accelerated the sector transformation. Yeah, yeah, yes, I'm with you. The government has taken various initiative to accelerate the digital transformation or the digital innovation. At the at the first it comes the national direction. As I mentioned in the digital economy program we identified the areas of focus for the digital transformation. So all entrepreneurs, after they know that there is, there are focus area for the government, they can also focus their efforts and invest in those areas because the adoption later on the application of those innovations will be easily for them. Leaving innovation without any national directions will be, I mean, driven by curiosity of individuals which later on will face the difficulty of adoption, maybe there is no enough demand in the country, and it will be difficult for local innovators to access regional or global market. So, identifying the direction in terms of technologies that will be required in the coming five years or in the coming 10 years is highly beneficial and efficient for the tech innovation, the tech innovators. Secondly, also access to fund and expertise. As I said, providing venture capital to entrepreneurs will definitely accelerate the innovation ecosystem. Because without it, many of the interviewers, especially the local or university graduates or they are still students, some few who have enough, I mean, self financial resources, but majority require venture capital that will give them the trust for some times. And also access to expertise. I think bringing international experience from wherever it is to the local startups, to the local innovators will help them understand the local requirements, but also the global trend. Also, a package of incentives. We cannot treat the startups or the yearly, the small companies in the same way we treat the big companies when it comes, for example, the tax payment, the utilities cost, and many things that can be given to them as an incentives. That incentives not only will help the local startups but also will help to attract investment and startups from outside to come and make the country as a base or as a hub for them to grow from. Bringing also the international startups will help into knowledge transfer and experience sharing between the local and the international. These are some of the things in my mind that will help accelerating the digital innovation. Beside that also access to infrastructure and capacity building, whether at institutional or individual infrastructure may need the ICT connectivity. And as I mentioned, the utility, the utility bill for the ICT services has also to be considered for the, for the individuals or for the early startups. And finally, I would like to mention demand stimulation. Once they see there is a demand for their innovations, once innovation is driven by demands, then that is a key success for the innovation. That's all I did. I leave the floor for you. Thank you very much, Dr. Sirwood. As we're completing exactly on time, I would like to first of all wrap up on some of the few important elements that we talked about today. The connectivity has been a key address throughout all the speakers interventions. We also addressed the important role of governments in encouraging and supporting the innovative ecosystem, both at National and also exporting, enabling it to be exported outside the country. Finance is indeed the key important enabler, both at National. And I do believe that as we're talking about innovation, financial aspect is not only limited to the country, but finance could also come from outside the country. And that's something we encourage innovators to also try to seek in terms of financial support. Last but not least, I think a topic that maybe we did not mention, digital inclusion. The inclusion or enabling women and their involvement in the innovation ecosystem and supporting women in this is something that we at ITU always encourage and support. And we actively ask our membership and the innovative ecosystem across the Arab region and globally to always make sure that we have all aspects of the society included with us. By that, if I may conclude this session, once again, thank you very much to all our panelists, His Excellency, Mr. Aziz, Mr. Olaya, and Dr. Saud. Thank you very much for your interventions and for your time today. And I would like to ask the viewers to stay tuned for the next session, which is about mechanism for partnership to mainstream entrepreneurship. Once again, thank you very much. And I hand over back to Kareem. Thank you very much, Adil. It's a pleasure for us to participate. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much to the distinguished speakers in the previous session, as well as, of course, the distinguished moderator, Mr. Adil Dalwish. Clearly, an excellent start to the Regional Innovation Forum. We appreciate very much your presence. And now we shall start with the next session titled, Mechanisms for Partnerships to Mainstream Entrepreneurship. If I may kindly request that the speakers for the next session, if they can kindly open your cameras. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. So, as they open the cameras, I want to welcome you all again to this session on Mechanisms for Partnerships to Mainstream Entrepreneurship. We will be hearing from experts from the region on the type of support that entrepreneurs need to successfully take the innovation journey and the type of partnerships that we need in the region to support them. First, however, we will play a short video on what the value of death teaches entrepreneurs. May I ask the moderators to play the video, please? Celia, can you kindly please play the video? Again, our session will start after an hour. Just the same video. Okay, so it seems that we might have a little technical glitch with the video playing, but in any case, we shall move on. So, our panelists for this session, of course, were being joined by an array of distinguished panelists. Mr. Mohamed Ali Ahmadi, Director of Investments Tamkeen, Government of Bahrain. Mr. Mark Benubsi, All-Iraeans, Egypt. Ms. Somaya Tembal Malik, Director of Investments Planning and Projects Africa City Technology of Sudan. Mr. Mahdi Mohamedi, Co-Pounder and CEO of Freelance Network. And, of course, Ms. Sagar Abdul-Khadir Ali-Shik. Sorry, just one second. I'm just having an issue with the displaying the full title of Ms. Sagar, but I would ask her maybe to introduce herself fully when the time comes for her current intervention. So, let me start by Mr. Mohamed. In your opinion, Mr. Mohamed, what is Tamkeen doing to help entrepreneurs to pass through the entrepreneurial journey? Please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Bismillah Rahman Raheem. First of all, thank you very much. My name is Mohamed Ahmadi. I'm representing Tamkeen, the labor fund. Tamkeen actually play a vital role in the ecosystem as an enterprise development fund, working very closely with the entrepreneurs from different aspects. First of all, working as a supporter through the grants and the programs that we offer. Secondly also, we play a vital role in offering the non-financial and the financial support as well through the partnerships with the banks, through the finance scheme, like for example, which is more catered to small and medium enterprises. And also finally, the establishment of the investment line of business in Tamkeen that gave us a better connectivity, let's say, and became closer to the entrepreneurs and their expectations through Al-Wahaa Fund-to-Fund, which is an important pillar in the ecosystem, helping entrepreneurs work very closely with the offices through Al-Wahaa through the venture capital teams that brings vital experience in terms of fundraising, as well as working also with the startups and the early stage challenge through the accelerators and the incubators and the co-working spaces that we also support with our colleagues and the ecosystem of Bahrain, which is branded as the startup Bahrain. Thank you. Thank you very much for that introduction and answers the question. May I ask perhaps the same question to Mr. Maddi in your opinion, how can entrepreneurs pass through the entrepreneurial journey? Mr. Maddi, the floor is yours, please. Hello, everyone. This is Mehdi from Tunisia. I'm the CEO of Freelance, a startup based in Tunisia and working all over Africa. So first of all, I would like to thank you for the invitation. I'm very happy to be here. So as we all know, failure is the scariest thing of starting a startup and is the main preventer for entrepreneurs to enter the entrepreneurial journey, especially for the ones who are starting their journey now. So the fear of failure can even hold us back from even entering, as I said. Therefore, I believe that the decision makers in the region need to actually have a say in this by working on creating the risk-taking and dating entrepreneurial culture within youth, I mean, at the very early stage, by creating internal partnerships within the local ecosystem. For example, I will talk about regulatory entities and educational entities together by introducing and incorporating entrepreneurship in the educational system, regardless of the field, of course, and with different degrees of importance, of course. And give the future of potential entrepreneurs, aka students now, the opportunity to practice and fail early, if possible, and give them the opportunity to learn how to solve entrepreneurial problems by using the different available tools and build necessary confidence to actually start. And since I'm coming from Tunisia, I'm very glad to see the implementation of such partnerships that yielded the programs like the Student Entrepreneur Law, that allowed students to legally participate in the economic growth by creating their own legal entities at a very early stage and without going through the hustle of creating sophisticated businesses to allow them to unleash their creativity and test their ideas and allow for failures and learning opportunities to happen very early at their career, which finally leads to semi-experience graduates later on that are kind of ready to actually start their own journey, well equipped with knowledge and experience to create hopefully more unicorns in our region. So this is one of the things I believe is necessary to help jumpstart the entrepreneurial ecosystem in our region. And there are many others that can help sustain an exponential growth as well. Excellent. Thank you very much for that. It's actually interesting to see the experience from Tunisia from the last session and from your experience as well as an entrepreneur. So hopefully we can draw maybe later on in the session about more about Tunisian experience because I think it's an interesting experience in the region. But going forward to maybe the next distinguished speaker, Ms. Sumaya and we appreciate very much you joining us in spite of the circumstances in Sudan. I hope that you're staying safe. But maybe the question to you is the same. How does the city technology of Sudan help entrepreneurs to pass through the entrepreneurial journey? Please the floor is yours. Hello, everybody can hear me. Perfect. Salamu alaikum and the situation is really terrible. I had to do a lot of stuff to come here and find it. And thank you for the opportunity and I wouldn't miss it for I had to fight to do it. And thank you for everybody to have us and to have presentation from ACT. ACT started by a help from the government of India. The name wasn't ACT before. It was Electronic Sudan City in 2004. After that became Africa City of Technology in 2008. And from the beginning, the mandate for ACT is to work on the field of incubation, innovation and entrepreneurship. And on our mandate from the beginning, we give you provide the financial support for incubators and innovation and entrepreneurs through the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education. And that will be by you provide your project. After that, there will be expertise to judge that project and to finance it until it became a pilot project. And also the other part, we work on gift training nationally and internationally for the innovators and entrepreneurs. Also that we have also some programs and international programs to help our colleagues in the field of incubation and entrepreneurship. And also we in the side of training because we get training from other countries like India and China and Turkey. And also the other part, we have our own laboratories. And that's also we go on funded projects and program so we can have our, we have our own lab to do our because we in the side for incubators for each incubators, we have research and development lab. So because to do the scientific research and to make the product to go to make a better of it. So and we always work on fundamental international fund so you can support our system. And recently we are planning to do some sort like 2020 Exibo Dubai where we have the building provided by the Turkish corporation Tika and our government also supporting on that. It will be the operators and maybe in the near future. We expect by the beginning to 2022 to have a city Exibo Sudan. I don't know because I didn't prepare anything since we are close but I don't know if I'm clear or not. Thank you so much. That's perfectly clear. We appreciate this excellent progress in Sudan. And we hope that we learned more about challenges and other items in the next round of questions. But going to our next distinguished speaker, Mr Mark Manoob, who I have the pleasure of being here once again I think he participated in a challenge that before organized a couple of years back decoding And so it's a pleasure to meet you again, Mark. So can I ask you, how is your organization helping entrepreneurs on their entrepreneurship journey? Please, the floor is yours. Thank you, Karim. Likewise, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for hosting us. And it's a pleasure to be here. Very grateful for that. So this is a great topic. And from our side, what we do at ERISE is we help companies access AI and data engineers and scientists faster. So we do that by enabling companies outside the region, the Arab region specifically, North America, in Europe, to have an access to top talent here in the region. The way we help the entrepreneurial spirit is that we empower our talents, these AI and data experts, who are very niche, who are very difficult to find. We really empower them by giving them access to all the resources they need to, first of all, work in their dream jobs to focus on what they actually want to do. There's a story of this software engineer who attended one of our bootcamps that we launched in Cairo, was the first AI and data science bootcamp in Egypt. It was inspired by the MIT bootcamps. And this launched really empowered a lot of software engineers to look into different skill sets like AI. And that engineer, he joined one of our advanced programs that he wanted to work in the field of football, of soccer, in end data science specifically. So but he was struggling because he had pressure from his family to work and generate revenue. He had pressure from his colleagues. And he was going to sacrifice something that he really wanted to do to work in another domain. So that's where Lerai's helped him to connect him to the right opportunity. And that's what we believe is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, by definition, is creating value from taking extra risk and creating outstanding value. So that's what we believe. We believe that we empower our talent network to work in their ideal jobs. And that's how we empower entrepreneurs. Excellent. Thank you very much, Mark. That's quite interesting, in fact, which I think gives a segue to I want to go back to the video that we tried to play earlier on in the session before we move on to the next one, because I think it provides a little bit of context to the parallel discussion that we're having here. So if I may request the IS moderator to play the video. There is a commonly held belief that behind every great idea, every great product, and every great service ever created, there's always a story of success. Well, the truth is that innovation cannot exist without failure. Every entrepreneur must be prepared to face multiple steps in the creation of their venture and also be prepared to cross what some have called the valley of death. All new products and services must pass through this strenuous stage before they reach the market. Many come out of the valley of death successfully, but others never make it. The valley of death is especially renovators. Numerous obstacles might scare off investors and threaten the viability of a great idea, as well as the resiliency of entrepreneurs. But out of that process, there are always important lessons to be learned. Falling into the valley of death is an important experience for entrepreneurs. It teaches them essential lessons on failure, resourcefulness, and on innovation itself. To get through the valley of death, entrepreneurs need collaboration, venture capital, incubators and accelerators, support services, skills training, and public procurement, and a wider net of stakeholders and support. Are you currently stuck in the valley of death? What lessons have you learned? What are you doing to help entrepreneurs get across successfully? Excellent, so as you might have seen at the end of the video, there are a number of factors that may help entrepreneurs to overcome the valley of death. I think some of them touch upon the issue of partnership relevant to this session. So with that, I want to maybe ask Somalia what mechanisms can fuel partnerships in the ecosystem to mainstream entrepreneurship and particularly to help them overcome the valley of death? Sorry, you're muted, Somalia. In our experience in ACT, we have some sort of, we think that it is most promising modern mechanisms. We actually, we work a lot in training programs, and we have one of the region-wide training programs to help potential incubators, innovations and interbearance to gain the skills needed to achieve their business goal. One of these project is called BAN Africa Project. It is a long training program to get in the business field and financial field marketing. And on that field, because most of them, they come from a scientific background or from the community or youth or from universities. So unless they are skilled on business to some level to have that scope of the business, they cannot see because at the end of any innovation it have to be marketed, it have to have an economic value. Unless the person who is work as an innovator or choose to be an entrepreneur, unless he has been skilled on that region, I think he will always, he's always be like in danger on falling on the valley of death. Also we have also some sort of technology training for innovator, technology innovation program. And we work on that program with the Chinese government and it's called China Arabic Center for Technology Transfer and Technology Training Programs. So they can be more skilled on their innovation because most of the people we work on the innovation side with us are coming from university. We are open for like for the youth and women and community but most because we are also near the center of lots of universities. So most of the people who come in as an innovator or interviewing in Africa City of Technology, they have a background of scientific background, scientific and technology background. That's why we train them on that field as well. Also we have this sort of capacity development building programs to transfer them from the innovation to the environment, to the local environment. So they work according to their needs, the economic needs. And we have also this program is still working. It will end that next year, beginning of next year, work with the Turkish government and they are also there is technical wise, infrastructure and business wise. A lot of, and even there is facility for providing equipment. This is the main way of fighting, falling in the valley of this for innovation. We hope you could succeed on that but it's really, it's not an easy job. Thank you so much. Definitely not an easy job but focusing maybe on some of the partnerships that you made on capacity building. I want to maybe ask Mahdi from as an entrepreneur probably in Tunis. What kind of partnerships are you seeking to overcome the valley of debt? Are they different than capacity building and training or are you seeking other forms of partnerships in your context? Thank you. You're muted as well please. Sorry. So for us in Tunisia it's a, I would say it's a combination of both because I think with and without the other I don't think it's gonna be very helpful if you have way too much training. Like you have training and you don't have the rest of the infrastructure to help you grow. I mean you just take your training and you do it somewhere else. So what I think, what I can talk about is our Tunisian experience which I consider our ecosystem is an early stage ecosystem overall. However, it's very promising and unique because we see many partnership initiatives locally that helps startups to flourish and reach growth stages. We didn't even see a few years back. And one of the most important ones is a partnership between the public and private sector. And here I'm talking about the initiative called the startup Tunisia or some of us may know it as the startup act which allows for startups to make use of a set of privileges to help them make it to the safe side and survive the value of death and hopefully start competing internationally. And we at Freelance we are already part of this program and it is helping us enormously. And such partnerships allowed for many and rapid changes in the ecosystem like the appearance of angel investors and growing the average investment ticket from funds into startups. And another similar partnership is the partnership between the Inovie fund which invests in other entrepreneurship enabling entities which help to investors to become more interested in the Tunisian ecosystem and help startups to benefit from a wider variety of programs. Even at the ideation stage and here I'm talking about the open startup Tunisia pre incubator in case for as an example. And so this public private sector partnership are nowadays I feel they are essential in the success of the region's ecosystem and one of the countries that I see is doing very well here is the United Arab Emirates where the public sector is opening its real life problems to the startup ecosystem to come up with innovative approaches and create value for both parties. So this kind of partnership it created the opportunity for the training to exist and for the infrastructure to help the startups flourish. Excellent, that's quite insightful. Thank you for that, which actually is an excellent segue to see what a different stakeholder perspective is. Particularly Mark and D-Rice. So I'd be interested to see if you have different partnerships that you think should be formed to help entrepreneurs overcome the value of that from your experience. We talked about training capacity building and public private partnerships as two forms of partnerships but from your experience, what else can be done? That's a great question. From my side, I see definitely expanding on what Mehdi was saying in Tunisia, I see also the ecosystem is very nascent in Egypt, but it's moving at a very fast pace. I think on the investment side, I think we can see more of that in terms of the not only private entities but the government side of things. I think there are a lot of big funding capital investments allocated in Egypt from the government. I think more of these private partnerships can accelerate the ecosystem. So having the government partner with private VC funds, which I think that there could be more of that, that is something that can help. On the other side and Karim, I think you can also agree with me but I think more of these discussions, I think this is very important. The mindset is so important to bring all parties together to brainstorm is something I think should be something we do more regularly to foster ideas and stakeholders. So I think more of these types of discussions. So I'm not sure if we could position this in capacity building, but it's more of the narrative and the mindset and the perspective and strategy. Finally, I would say more ease of access towards resources, especially coming from the government. So how can we access a partnership with the government? How do we standardize this? So this is something that we can see more of that. That's in my opinion here in Egypt. I think we're doing a great job here in Egypt. I think the startup ecosystem is exploding and I'm looking forward to expand on that together. That's quite insightful actually. Since you're saying it's exploding like Adam said in his opening remarks, the first unicorn from the Arab region originates from Egypt, which I think is a testament to the ecosystem in Egypt. So that's a great point that you mentioned regarding the point on which is organizing more forums or knowledge sharing experiences. I would say it's not capacity building, I would say it's more of knowledge sharing and best practices among the region. And the ITU certainly is trying to spend more time on this, particularly on the national level assisting countries to establish ecosystems and establish those dialogues with all the relevant stakeholders. And we started with Oman this year, like mentioned earlier on, but we're hoping to expand to three other countries, hoping to one of the countries, hopefully will be Bahrain next year, which brings me to the next speaker, Mr. Muhammad, about the kind of partnerships that fit within the Bahraini context. Are they similar to what the other countries are facing? I know in the Gulf, for example, the issue about access to capital might not be as a big of an issue as the other countries, but maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. Please, the floor is yours. Yeah, thank you, Karim. Actually, let me talk from my experience. The good and bads, let's say. What Mehdi said, Ms. Sumayya Mark, is definitely part of what's happening, but from our perspective, I'd like to complement on the clustering activity, which is related directly to the vibrance of the ecosystem in Bahrain. Leadership is really important because of leadership. You will be able to run the ecosystem in a more engaging way, let's say. I'm talking here about all the agents, all the economic agents and the ecosystem. They are all competing, definitely, on a scarce resources, but we have to make it in a more complementary, cooperative way. This is really important for the success of the ecosystem and also for the government when they try to even calculate the return on investment or kind of a touch base on the impact on the funds that they are allocating. So leadership is really crucial. And also the complementarities and substitutional kind of interrelations among the economic agents is really important and vital. And it should be inclusion. I mean, it should be kind of including all the parties participating, talking about the segments, talking about the type of institutions. And from my perspective, I was very close to the accelerators being supporters of such a nature in Bahrain, at least. I found the pilots, to be honest, when we pilot those services through the innovators or the game changers, let's say, we try to give the government kind of a sense of what does innovation that business means. Like, for example, it was really astonishing when we exercised some pilots with the Ministry of Works in Bahrain or with the Ministry of Agriculture in Bahrain through an ag tech solution or even with the higher education when we tried to show them the claims of an ag tech solution. It was quite astonishing. And the reaction of the regulator was also positive. And definitely, we are increasing the awareness of very important players that can play a part in the ecosystem. Excellent. That's actually a very good point regarding the cross government partnerships that may be required as well. Maybe at this stage, instead of moving to the last round of questions, which may be focused on the recommendations, which some of you already touched upon, we will still come back to it. But I want to maybe see some of the questions that we received on Swapcard. And again, this is a reminder to the participants that if you want to interact with the session, please relay your questions on Swapcard. We have a question from Devin Clark, who is asking, in terms of financial versus non-financial support, what ratio would you attribute to their needs to create an entrepreneur and to sustain an entrepreneur? Who would like to tackle this question? I can maybe jump in from my perspective. Coming up with a ratio, to be honest, definitely is required. But maybe it's going to be very subjective, let's say. But both are important. Both interventions are really important. The non-financial in terms of quantity and quality as well, like the quality of mentors you have in the country as a reflection of your matureness, let's say. Sometimes you find people who are really instrumental, but they can't provide non-financial support for youth, like for example. So now we will face a challenge of coming up with a framework that can help you give value in the right way. The financial support, too much money is also a challenge and a barrier for even success. But teaching entrepreneurs how to talk to venture capitalists is really important. How can they source? How can they filter those strategic funds that can help them get at least feedback, to come back in a more stronger way, more convincing way, let's say. Being connected to the region, being connected to the world is also equally important. Like, for example, I'm connected with Egypt. I'm connected with even Tunisia through a regional player in Bahrain or a global player in Bahrain, flat six labs, or talking about Brinkvitalco. So we have talent from Tunisia. We have talent from Egypt trying to access the region through Bahrain. So this kind of connectivity and network, and I think it's important to systemize such a platform to help us get connected in the right way. So you mentioned two points in your intervention, Mr. Hamid, which I found very interesting. First of all, you said too much money can be a barrier to success. Now, if you were not talking about entrepreneurs in life in general, many people might disagree. But for entrepreneurs' sake, I think it is quite relevant. And the second point that you touched upon that I think is quite interesting, are partnerships required to tackle the Arab market fragmentation issue. Like you kindly touched upon for an entrepreneur to succeed widely in the region, they probably have to open branches in different countries to access different resources. So for example, they can open in Egypt to access human capital resources. They can need to open in the Gulf to access financial resources probably. And maybe even they can need to open another branch in Saudi Arabia to access the market resources of the big market in Saudi Arabia, which is, I think, a model that many entrepreneurs are facing and maybe suffering from. So maybe I can ask this question. I know this is not in the script, but it interests me to know your views from the different perspectives of the different stakeholders. How do you view, what would you suggest, how can we tackle this market fragmentation issue? Do you think it's an issue? Maybe it's not an issue. But from your perspectives, maybe in Tunisia, as the entrepreneur in Egypt or in Sudan, do you face this issue? Anyone want to tackle this question? Maybe the question is not clear for me. I couldn't hear it well. You said market fragmentation or something like that. Yes. Yes, so the idea being is that if you have an entrepreneur from Sudan, for example, who wants to succeed in the region at large, they would need to open branches physically in other countries to access the resources, such as in the UAE, for example, to access market capital or in the Saudi Arabia to access the Saudi market and so on and so forth, as opposed to having one branch in Sudan that can expand regionally. And that's an issue I think that some entrepreneurs are facing to expand regionally. So the question here is, do you see this issue as a big issue to facing entrepreneurs to expand the region? I think it depends on the need of the market itself. We have an experience before with one of the interveneurs. And it was at the corona time at the beginning of the corona. And we have some of the natural Sudanese food products. And our scientists work on it. And they found that have high sort of vitamins, especially vitamin C. And we work on it here until it reach our own market. We work on it at ACT. And we added some that I have the name in Arabic. I'm not sure about the name in English. It's called Sudanese. It's called I forget the name even in Sudanese, but they may be ascended. It's sort of natural powder coming from a fruit. And we added some Arabic gums and we added some natural products. And we sell it in the market as a violent product. And it attracts one of the Sudanese who work in Sudanese-American who work in Chicago. And he called it something Africa City Chicago, something like that, the name. And it finds really a big row in USA. So it's just like something started here suddenly. And I think something like that, especially when we're talking about in the field of food or something that is kind of interest, it can interest different market, especially where it work on the health side. This is only my opinion. No, that's quite interesting. But since you have the floor, Ms. Sumaya, we have a question in the chat as well directed to you. Basically, the question is from Lydia from Algeria. And she's mentioning training is really a pillar enabling factor to mainstream entrepreneurship. As you have just mentioned, international training are being provided, such as from China and Turkey. However, I am wondering whether the design training program considered the digital readiness and the actual status of Sudan in terms of infrastructure, awareness, as well as other factors? Yes, there is especially on the capacity developed the project reverse linkage between Sudan and Turkey. There is work on the ICT. We have training and we have equipment on that field. And also for the infrastructure of ICT infrastructure. And also they work with us also through our training, two types of training we have. One of them is a governmental with the university called Yuletek and also another training program with the people who work on the private sector in the market. It's called Martek. This is only the small names for Marmar or something. It's a long they have. This is just a briefing name. And also that work on the infrastructure and the training for people. And also we have their own. This is the people who work in the business in entrepreneurship. This is the company called Martek. They're working still with us on our own designing and infrastructure for ICT. Also, they did work also on the guide line. Help us on the guide line and our own business. Business analysis and business, I mean like theoretical part. This is also what they are working with us. I don't know if this is the answer to the question. Well, if it's not clear, I think perhaps Lydia, if you want to write in the chat if the answer is satisfactory to you or if you have a follow-up question, we can try to tackle it if there's some time. Also, I think we have a question to Mr. Mohamed Al-Ahmadi. Would you consider the interrelations to include knowledge share through data with ecosystems or would you keep such entities data-specific to themselves as the ecosystem leader? Yeah, thank you for this. To be honest, we're now really excited. We're working on a skills initiative that will eventually change the skills landscape in Bahrain. And at the heart of the initiative is data, to be honest. You know, data is linked to culture, is linked to awareness, is linked to technology as well, definitely. And I think data dissemination and or knowledge dissemination is naturally linked to data. So I think the only reason for us not being open and transparent maybe as the lack of exploitation, exploiting such an important asset, you know, based on the activities that we do with the partners or ourselves in a more proactive way. So I can disagree. This is really important and a crucial aspect. And now we're working on it, let's say from a design planning perspective when we construct such an intervention like the skills Bahrain initiative like, for example, which tackles, you know, the talent, you know, utilization on a more sector focused way. Excellent. We also have another question from Rudain Rewan. I hope I'm not pronouncing it wrong. Does mentoring or coaching have a role in creating partnerships to mainstream entrepreneurship and how would it be applied? Mark, you want to tackle this one? Yes, sure. Thank you, Karim. Definitely expanding on what the previous speakers were saying. I agree with them. I think also on what Hamad was mentioning about the split of financial and non-financial support, I think it's a very key question. And also it's not a matter of, I think of, you know, what, but when it's more of a matter of the chicken and egg problem for me, it's, so if we have a lot of money and we invest them in a infrastructure that are in an ecosystem that is not well-educated on the topic, so does not know what leadership is, is not transparent and open sharing their data, is does not know how to create a sustainable business and fundraise and create, be resourceful, then this is a recipe for a problem, for a catastrophe later on. So I think one of the key roots of the ecosystem and this discussion itself as entrepreneurs is the education, is the mindset. So I think a big focus is to focus on that, focus on leadership like Hamad was saying on education, how to create, how to be a leader, how to be transparent with data, how to lead by example, how to fundraise, how to be resourceful. I've seen cases, Karim, and it's really rare, but I've seen entrepreneurs that, you know, went through all the odds because they had the mindset, because they knew how to be resourceful, how to be abundant, how to create wealth, how to generate so much value that, you know, resources were just coming right to them, right? Find capital in its essence is trust. But I think that's what I wanted to share. I wanted to share that mentorship is so important from the people who have done this before to access these younger generations in the ecosystem and educate them, teach them, give them everything they had for the greater good of the ecosystem. And I would love, Karim, that the ITI could enable and empower more of these connections. They're very little ecosystem partners or entities that create these links towards other members, other potential members. And yeah, I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity and to see more of that, inshallah. Excellent. So my ITI, I mean, I think you mean ITU, but hopefully we will take that on board. Definitely, these are the types of connections that we're trying to build across the region and nationally, like I mentioned, which brings me maybe to Mahdi, which I want to ask you, what kind of partnerships or connections across borders do you think you as an entrepreneur may need to expand? I mean, some of these elements were already answered by other speakers, but I think from your Tunisian experience, you obviously want to ideally expand beyond Tunis. So how do you think that can happen through partnerships? Please. So, since nowadays, since the word is became really smaller than we think it is, opening to the international markets and partnering with other international ecosystem became a necessity, especially for our region where we are still at this early stage and growing fast, extremely fast. And becoming truly a part of the international ecosystem will be only beneficial for us. And I believe if we continue, unfortunately, like we are now kind of isolating ourselves, there is, there will always be the risk of stagnation because we are locally growing extremely fast. However, at some point, the startup that grew that big locally will only have the, what to say, will only have or get forced to leave the ecosystem local ecosystem and move to other, to more open ones where they can actually reach higher level of growth. So we don't want that, we don't, we want the ecosystem to be, how to say, inclusive and open for international growth and to allow them to stay with an ecosystem and serve the international market from within the ecosystem itself. So because we really have very good programs and infrastructure to help the local entrepreneurs and all. But from my experience, I think it's very good to grow locally, but if we continue like this, we will reach the stagnation point where we cannot exceed that and become beneficial to the ecosystem itself. So I think it's a matter of survival now. We have to be open. Excellent. It's a matter of survival. We have to open up to expand beyond that. So that's an excellent quote, I would say. So we have a question from Devin Clark, CEO of Piltek Group. He was basically to Mr. Ahmad. He's thanking you and he appreciates your comments. He's saying, this is what we are looking for to incorporate in our ecosystem at Piltek Business Academy is having a data-centric model that incorporates government agencies, corporate and entrepreneurs to create an open market that invests itself through. So it's not really a question, it's maybe a comment. I appreciate that Devin, which actually brings me to the last maybe segment of this session. We have around nine minutes for all of you to, basically, I want to give the floor to each of you to mention what is the key recommendation that you would make or take away that you would bring to all the stakeholders, maybe to a specific stakeholder that you would want to suggest to promote partnerships to establish the digital innovation ecosystems. So I'll go with the order on my screen, Mr. Mohammad and Ms. Sumaya, then Mahdi, then Mark. So Mr. Mohammad, please. Sure, thank you, Karim. From my side, from my perspective, I'll be a little bit open. I won't restrict my message to the country, but I'll leave it, I mean, linked to the region because we all face the same challenge. We are in an early stage challenge, let's say. I think it's important for us to continue and learn from this important journey with full engagement and participation. This is really important, attracting everybody that can contribute in the journey of problem-solving innovation-led type of business. And I think this is a crucial platform that can help the government upgrade the economy in a more, let's say, systematic, sustainable way. This is from my perspective. Excellent, thank you very much, Ms. Sumaya. Your key recommendation. I think I always believed in people have to work together. And I believe we have to have, we need the power for a multinational business network. Something, it's a part of my training. When I went to China before, they have this modern silky road project. And the Chinese, they want to invest in Arabic countries and also in African countries. If we are here together, African and Arab countries, I think we should do that. Not Chinese come from there and with this long way, to build that long way road to invest in our countries. So I think we have the capability to do that. Also, I need to make like a comment. The importance for developed countries in Arabic countries, I think it is always good to invest in less developed Arabic countries and not to be scared of that because more opportunity and more wealth will come from that. Also, I think that building economic modeling program for all Arabic, and I always add African because you are built that sort of program because that program for inter-Middle East and maybe North Africa to partner and foster a stronger economic landscape. And by using high performance super computers and computational cloud system, that will be like a storage for big data and collection and analysis. And we could share the information for stronger business in the future. Also, I'll come back to little point that we have because we have problems now. We have to create different mindset or make a change on mindset so we can enrich our government and our ministries. So without that, we cannot go further and this is only my share on that. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. And I mean, you touched on a very important point there, particularly the hot topic about foreign players or stakeholders and their investments in the Arab region as well, which actually brings me to a comment raised by Devin Clark also in the chat. It was actually directly into Mahdi, which we will go to next. He was saying that the ecosystem should be able to transcend the region itself to create impact in like ecosystems abroad. This will also assist in the facilitation of entrepreneurs to open gateways of collaboration and trade, which I think is relevant to your previous comment Mahdi as well. So Mahdi, what would be your key recommendation that you would want this session to take away? Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank you again for the invitation because this opportunity, this is an opportunity for us to build bridges between different international and local regional ecosystems and strengthen the overall entrepreneurial ecosystems by getting the chance to meet and maybe collaborate together. And since I already talked about the importance of government's input, I would like actually to direct my message to all the entrepreneurs in the Arab region out there. Let's learn how to become self-sufficient and depend on ourselves as well. And be the chance that we want to see in our country as well. So thank you. Thank you very much. Be the change that I want to see in our countries. I think it's relevant to the quote of Elon Musk behind Mark. I could either watch it happen or be part of it. So Mark, what would be your key recommendation? Would it be the same or let us know your opinion? Yeah, definitely. I love what all the speaker here has said and the content is very rich. I, to expand on this, definitely thank you, Karim and everyone for having me here. Definitely a great opportunity. So when I was just thinking about, I want to leave you on these thoughts, is first of all, start with why? Why are we all here? Sometimes, you know, each part in the ecosystem, as entrepreneurs, as government entities, as private sectors, et cetera, we would think, okay, why giving our time to such events? We can focus each one on what they're doing, but I think the big aspect of this is to look at really what develops an ecosystem. And I think a big part of this is giving, is like Mehdi was saying, it's first self-sustaining, first making sure that you're doing the right thing and then helping others. I see an image of in a plane when there's an issue or it tells you first, you know, grab the oxygen, breathe, make sure you're self-sufficient and then help others. So I think today, what the key learning for me and what I want to leave with others is, first, let's all look into the future of this ecosystem, of the Arab nations and the Arab regions. Well, let's envision it together. Let's look into the future together. And also, second thing is let's lead by example. Let's actually be that change, like Mehdi was saying, let's lead by example. And finally is let's learn, let's educate ourselves and let's teach what we've learned to others. So yeah, this is my part on this. No, that's the perfect note, I think, to end this session. I really appreciate all your inputs. Mr. Mohamed Ali, Ms. Sumaya and Mr. Mehdi and Mr. Mark. I think you provided a lot of unique perspectives to this issue on partnerships and to entrepreneurs or the general topic about how entrepreneurs can engage with the ecosystem, how we can establish ecosystems in that regard. So really appreciate it. I want to maybe invite all of you and all the participants to maybe network with each other on a swap card. Swap card I think is an excellent application where all the participants can interact with each other. So hopefully you can network and find more value in this innovation forum, certainly on our end at ITU next year, we're planning to organize more of these national and regional forums to try to establish these ecosystems across the region. So on that note, I want to thank you all once again, thank the distinguished participants as well for enriching the session. And I'll hand over the floor to the next session titled Development of the Arab States, Regional Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystems to my dear colleague, Mr. Kamal Brada, Program Coordinator in the ITU office for the Arab States. Thank you again and Kamal, the floor is yours. Thank you, Karim. So Kamal, you can start if you want. Okay, thank you very much, Karim. Thank you, dear colleague. Welcome to the development of the Arab States Regional Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystem Panel. This session will be brought live to you in SwabCard. Use the chat to command Q&A box and connect to each other directly. Use our hashtag rediscover innovation to join the conversation. If you wish to listen only in one of our other language, other UN language, click on the link below. Remember you can only ask questions on SwabCard and in English, please. We'll be hearing from members of Arab Innovation and Entrepreneurship Network, IN. IN is an ITU affiliated NGO that develop and share expertise between business incubators, manager and stakeholder in the Arab region, unifying ecosystem effort in science and technology and applying localized practices. IN provides a platform to knowledge sharing and co-creation and engagement, support business incubation and acceleration, smart networking, internationalization of SMEs and innovation for sustainable growth and the new opportunity for entrepreneur. During this session, we'll hear about the challenges and opportunity of business incubators and accelerator in the Arab region and vision of IN and its contribution to ecosystem development and the experiences of its member. Let's meet our panelists. Dr. Bassem Hassan, could you present yourself, please? Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Bassem Hassan. I'm the general manager of technology, transfer and commercialization as king of the city for science and technology in real Saudi Arabia. So in the last three years I've been involved in a lot of activities and projects regarding governing and strategizing for innovation and innovation facilitation at both institutional and national level. I also worked on several projects to support tech entrepreneurs and technology commercialization. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bassem. Mrs. Rania, could you present yourself, please? You are muted, Mrs. Rania. Good afternoon. I'm very happy to be here with you today. Thank you for your presence in the Salat and for organizing this event and the big event. I'm happy to be part of this session as we are going to discuss the role of the system in the Arab world. I'm Rania Jaber from the Salat Ministry of Palestine. I work as the general manager of the Technology and Technology Center in the ministry. I work as the general manager of the Technology and Technology Center in the ministry of finance, technology and technology. I work with the companies and the entrepreneurs in the ministry of finance, technology and technology. At the same time, I'm interested in the promotion of the technology and the development of the technology in the industry, the companies and the companies. Thank you very much, Mrs. Rania. Mr. Abul Latif, could you present yourself, please? Peace be upon you all. Thank you to all of you who are watching this program. My name is Abul Latif Ibrahim Al-Qadri from Libya. I'm the co-founder of Libya. I'm the head of the Ministry of Finance and Technology. I'm also the head of the Ministry of Finance and Technology. I'm the head of the Ministry of Finance and Technology. The issue of innovation in the Arab world is very important and I have to be sure of it to establish the rules of the knowledge economy which is considered one of the main features of the economy. Because the economy of this system depends on the natural system. This is why we focus a lot on this program, on the contribution of the environment and the ecological aspects that help innovation and help support the economy in the Arab world, for example. Thank you very much, Mrs. Abul Latif. Mrs. Sagar, could you present yourself, please? Yes, I just wanted to say thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I am the Chief Strategy Officer at Iftin Foundation. Iftin Foundation is an organization based in Somalia that has supported over 1,000 entrepreneurs and we work on implementing youth employment and entrepreneurship programs. My work focuses really on youth economic integration as well as wellness, youth wellness. And we currently co-manage the Center for Youth, Wellness, Employment and Excellence, the University of Moqtushu, and we are currently working on developing a business incubator. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Sagar. Mr. Samar, could you present yourself, please? Good evening, everyone. I am Mohandes Samar Al-Aswad, a professor at Iftin Foundation. I am the Chief Strategy Officer at Iftin Foundation. I am the Chief Strategy Officer at Iftin Foundation. I am a student at Iftin Foundation and I want to say that I have been working with both NGOs and UN agencies that are working on it. I would also like to share a piece of news from the network that we have in the region to share the experience we had with the current young people. Thank you very much, Mr. Samar. Mr. Basim, could you tell us what are the challenges and opportunity incubator and accelerator that we are facing in Saudi Arabia, the ecosystem. In my opinion, the major one is the human capability and skills. So this covers both sides from the incubation and from the interpreters themselves. So for example, let's talk about the incubator and accelerator, which they meant to support the creation and development of startups, but they themselves lack the capability and skills to achieve that effectively. In my opinion, that's because the staff that's working in these organizations that comes with little or no experience in entrepreneurship. So they come usually from big corporates or governments. Also, from the other side, I think entrepreneurs lack the major skills that help them in being creative or manage their startups. And here also comes the role of incubators to upskilling the entrepreneurs and their skills. The second challenge I think about is that the majority of the incubator and accelerator in the kingdom, they are fully funded by the government. And the private sector is struggling to sustain whatever, for example, private incubator or accelerator, they are struggling to sustain themselves. And I think here is an opportunity to have hybrid programs between like the private sector or private incubator with partially supported from the government. I think this one more challenge I want to talk about is networking. We have a good networking, but most of them comes from individual level. We need to have more organized connections and networking, which will open more, especially government entities, which is, in my opinion, the most resistive part. So if we have this organized networking, more government entities will be forced to open and help the ecosystem. Regarding opportunities, I think the kingdom is going through major changes and transformation and they have now clear objectives, especially when we talk about digital economy. These objectives capitalize entrepreneurship and innovation. And that led to the creation of a lot of initiatives to support the entrepreneurship ecosystem. And we started seeing the impact. For example, some of the impacts are how we, the fund or the investment raised by some companies are hitting record amount. For example, and some startups are now going to be going to make it like to their IPO. Thank you very much, Mr. Revet. I'm very insightful. Thank you. Mrs. Rania, what about Palestine? Could you tell us about your experience? In fact, we have more than 35 fast-paced organizations in Palestine. Now, in general, the system in Palestine, we have organizations, governments and organizations, all of which have the same goal of having a complete system, and we have a traditional way to meet the needs of the Palestinian digital industry. The challenges in the organizations have many challenges. There are many challenges in the organizations themselves. If they have a business model or a business model, at the same time, how do we implement them as a method of choice? If we have, let's say, the leaders in a group of leaders and leaders, and if the organizations have thought about implementing a method of choice here, it's not possible. So, we can imagine that we have to have a full-fledged method of choice, and we have to change the idea of the leaders, by training them from schools, universities, or by incubation programs, because we have to think about the fact that, when the services are complete, the idea can be made financially and economically accessible to the market. There are other challenges outside of the Palestinian market, especially when we are in the interest of it. There is a market in the market, so we have to think about the products that are available at a certain level in the world. We are also experts in the field of business and investment. If we are experts in the field of investment, we are also experts in the field of investment, and at the same time, we need a high level of education and a high level of education in the world. Thank you very much, Mrs. Rania. It's very interesting. Mr. Abdel Latif, could you tell us about your experience in Libya? Yes, of course. Actually, there are many challenges in Libya in the face of business and investment. I spent about four or five main points of view. In the beginning of the negotiations, in the end, the negotiations helped me to create an ecological area and help the inventors and investors. And now, of course, we have created the government to enter the region and the ministries. The name of the committee is always the committee, and I am in charge of this committee. We are trying to prepare the products to be launched in the near future, God willing. The vision, of course, you know that Libya has been in the last few years in an unusual situation, the revolution, and the attempt to change the dictatorial system to a democratic system to promote participation in people and people and other activities. So, of course, this program caused instability in the situation that exists, and some things that do not have good decisions and a complete vision. There are some groups working on it in the 20s and 40s, and it will be the economy that we know about the capital. The culture of the revolution, of course, has become, in recent years, just a general public, in universities and in educational centers, in the middle of Libya, and in cooperation with some international organizations to spread this culture. We come to the other point, which is the support of logistics, of course, there are no restrictions for the youth, so there are a lot of competitions in Riyadh, and the local organizations in cooperation with international organizations. But in the end, for the first few years, we have been participating in the competition for the first and second, and even after five years. There is no start-up, because there is no regular ecosystem. Now, the social institutions in the city are working well in this area, but they need help from the authorities and organizations that help the banks, they are working and providing loans to small and medium-sized companies. Of course, all of this brings back to me the educational system. Honestly, the educational system needs to be reformed, needs to be changed. Now, we are trying to work with some international organizations, the Bank of Europe, the Bank of the State, in the drawing, to change the educational situation a little bit, so that there is improvement in the expenses, in order to stand up for the work market and help the employees, the employees, there is a value for the education, honestly. This is a very important issue. The Libyan universities, the closed universities, they don't have any ecological system to help the economy, and to help young people. Therefore, the social responsibility is very important. There are many companies who have been working for the last two months. We can help them now, hopefully. We have opened a research center, we have opened technical companies, we can open some of the centers related to technology, like Microsoft Innovation Center, Oracle Academy, Cisco Academy, all of them. Thank you very much, Mr. Abdel Latif, Mr. Sagel, could you please tell us about the challenge in Somalia, please? Yes, thank you. In terms of incubators, challenges and opportunities in Somalia, first I will start off with the key opportunity, and that is that there are many young, talented and innovative startups and entrepreneurs in the country. So, incubators and accelerators have emerged in recent years to support these entrepreneurs, but the key challenge for post-conflict society and stabilization efforts is that there is a need to rebuild the business ecosystem and the information technology infrastructure for these entrepreneurs to thrive, and there is also a need to work to address the impact that conflict has had on the entrepreneurs and the strategic approach to supporting entrepreneurs, in which we are not only working on helping entrepreneurs thrive within their business ecosystem, but we are also working on individual trauma healing for the entrepreneur, counseling entrepreneurs and building a network of business mentors to support the entrepreneur in navigating the business ecosystem and working on the community trauma healing and reconciliation and building trust. When we are able to address conflict trauma across the social ecology, not only are entrepreneurs able to function better, gain their trust and support of the local community, but they are also able to build these good relationships with the business community so that their businesses can thrive and the entrepreneurs and their communities can become more resilient. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Sagil. Mr. Samar, could you tell us about the situation in Syria? Thanks a lot, Mr. Samar. Alright, Mr. Sagil, thanks. Let's start with the first question. We are working on an entrepreneurship initiative, which is located like a concert and is another project in Syria for the next six years. I don't know what you are able to do with experience from other countries in the area. But what I can say is there is a new initiative but it was a lot of work and there is a lot of work to be done on it. I will start with the challenges that I face. When I was in Libya, when I spoke to you before, I had a lot of details about Syria. I have a lot of details with each other. I have a relationship with the first, with the legislation and the law, which is not available at all for work in Syria. I want to encourage companies to support them, so that they can go to the government, then you can go out. I would like to find an accelerator that supports the lack of funding for these essential parts There are a lot of challenges in the ecosystem, not for an ecosystem. When the work needs are being langaged, there is a lot of difficulty. Code, and funding. Now that they are working on the land and the power, I will also go back to what I said earlier in Libya, what the NGO or UN agencies have done, that is under government law. Many are working on a project that I called Bankosan Riyadh O'Aimal, which is supported by small or end-of-the-year projects. The small project that we call Micro-Projects is far away from the ecosystem of the work environment. There are a lot of resources for this kind of project. There are a lot of support for small or end-of-the-year projects. But the problem is that it is being used at the same time as an end-of-the-year project. The end-of-the-year project is a small or end-of-the-year project. It is a business project that helps the family to live. There is no end-of-the-year project or end-of-the-year project. We don't need any organizations, we don't need mentorship, we don't need to work together with the company to make growth and exit. All of this is not understood. Unfortunately, as long as it is good for support in a certain place, as long as it is being used in many other places in the real ecosystem and the construction of real work, and the contributions that have been made in many ways. There is another project that we talk about as challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the lack of security in Syria in general, which is the lack of security in schools, private sector, and even if there is a hub or a safe space for the youth, they can work with it. There are a lot of these projects. Mr. Samar? Yes, he is a strong man and he is the latest in the field. Hello? It's okay, it's okay. Yes, could you wrap up please? Sorry? Could you wrap up please? Okay, sorry. We do not hear you, Mr. Waiz. We do not hear you, Mr. Waiz. Go ahead, there is some cut in your... Sorry, sorry. that we are seeing in this life now. Exactly. Okay. We can talk about the positive side of the Syrian refugees, who may have a great experience, who have connections, who are able to make support in this ecosystem. We can work on awareness. Mr. Samar. Thank you. Next question. We'll speak about how we'll get better of this ecosystem. Mrs. Rania, could you tell us how we can better support the growth of change makers, folks on digital entrepreneurship in Palestine? We can start by telling you that we have a chance for refugees, and we have the same time for refugees and for the refugee sector. We have a chance in general that every year we are facing a digital strategy. We are in Palestine. The government realized this and worked very close to the private sector and the academic sector. It has been developed. We are working with the national agencies. It has been developed. The national strategic strategy is based on technology. We also have the opportunity to have the Ministry of Rural Affairs. In addition to the most important initiative, which is the Umbrella initiative in Palestine. It is based on the 22nd or 25th strategy. This is the initiative. We are working with the Umbrella initiative to improve the development of the system. We have a new economic law two weeks ago. The law is also new. We are developing a law for the national companies in Palestine. We also have a program for the work groups, especially the refugees. There are information on technology based on the fact that we want to support the strategy of changing the number especially in the tools of innovation and intelligence. The government has to support the digital industry. It supports innovation and the new technology. We encourage the refugees to develop smart services in all sectors, especially the services based on the tools of innovation. We are making a launch on the platform of the open data that is related to refugees and refugees. We have also made agreements with the Bank of the World in the two development programs for the development of technology and support the sector and companies to develop the development. We are focusing on the development of Palestine. in Palestine, in order to develop the companies themselves, and at the same time, to support the efforts and training in this sector, to enable the foreigners to develop products that are available for production, and to open global markets. The second project is to support the construction of connectivity, and to support government services, and to launch an electronic payment system. We in Palestine, maybe in two months, we can launch an electronic payment system with 10 government services. Here, in the meantime, we have worked on the policy of AI, and now we are developing with Esquia a national AI strategy, based on the fact that in 2020, we will start with the implementation of the government recovery process, which is part of the technological development center, and we will develop smart services between universities and private sectors of the government, and promote research and development in universities in order for their products to be available for production, in order for it to be built on modern technologies and provide government services. So, here we have reached the end of this phase. We have made it from the hands of the people, and we are going to continue in the same time that there are many programs that are not enough for the technologies, especially the technologies of work and digitalization, because if we are at the age of the fourth industrial revolution, we must start with the technologies that we think of in the next 20 years, as we want to be. So, we are a program in which we have launched the initiative of the million farmers, that is, we give them technologies that are not enough for the farmers and the representation of the age of six years, at the age of 22 years. So, we are thinking about how the new generation, the generation of farmers, how they want to develop services that support the development of the world, and especially we are going to talk about ordinary services, we are going to talk about smart cities, we are going to talk about services based on IoT, on smart technologies. So, here we hope that all the players in our system in Palestine that we can make a real change. We may, I don't want to say, in some countries we are in the beginning, but in some countries we are walking in it. And we hope that the technologies that we have, that we can develop them and walk in this way. Thank you very much, Ms. Zirania. Ms. Arafat Latif, could you tell us about how you can do that in Libya? And the last and the fourth in the southern region. Of course, these books will be in industrial areas, industrial zones. So, we are going to talk about the ecological areas that support the development, and it helps to make it possible because it will be prepared for the work and for the young people, the young people, and there will be even educational hubs in these areas, so that the universities can work in these areas. We really need support from the network, from the ITU, from all international institutions that are involved in this field. Because the real time, this is a very important time, and we need to be in a safe place, and we need to practice so that we don't get lost. If we don't get lost, as you said, the Qadrani, Al-Hatifa, appear to me, I said to Mr. Tuan Sayedourli, that Palestine is the one that is liberated, and we are the ones that are occupied. Because in the Arabian and Arabian countries, there are some countries in the Arabian Gulf, and there is a good step in this field and in this direction. We are going to work on the Arabian-Saudi side, in the network, because the reality is, that is, we are very successful in this field, and we have their expertise, that is what we are doing, and there will be a variety of information, and a variety of technology. The idea that I saw here in Turkey, of course, is that we are working in a consortium in around five international markets, such as the Bank of Europe, and the Central Bank, and other groups. We are in the KPIs, and we are focusing on the banks, the financial cities, and the provinces, so that there are more than 25 countries. All of them have centers of technology and knowledge, the first is the transfer of technology, the transfer of offices, and this helps the reality that we know, and it has a big role in the ecosystem itself, because on its way, even the national system, the IS, the IP, the intellectual property, all of them are present in this system. In other words, our communities are open to these centers, which should be present. The other points, which we are focusing on, are very popular worldwide. As I said before, the IR4.0 is focused on technology. We had a Zoom conference about a week ago, and a friend from America was there, saying that the young people who are now in schools, when they go out and work at 65% of their jobs, they are not involved in technology. So, we are ready for the next generation. So, this is in our hearts, that we are involved in creating these areas, and in supporting governments, so that they will be able to promote their laws, that is, to help families in this area, in the real world. And, of course, for Libya, the international community and the international community, are the ones who work, honestly. The government, we have not seen any work, I mean, a simple support, a simple job. In the future, if we make, for example, companies that explain to the government that there are very important things that need to be done, we have to force them, to do an action. And this is the situation we are in right now. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Ratif. Mrs. Sagar, could you tell us, please, about how you could support a changemaker in Somalia? Yes, thank you. I would definitely say that we are having digital transformation across the country, and it's led by small and medium enterprises, mostly, and young entrepreneurs. They are more willing to take risks and try new business models. And there are many apps that have been developed, and more people use mobile banking than commercial banks, especially areas where banks are not around, physically absent. So there are a lot of opportunities for digital changing makers, but they need mentorship from entrepreneurs globally that have developed similar technology so that they can learn best practices and fine-tune their technology. And also, local educational institutions and incubators, they may not have the capacity to support the development of their technologies. So really, I agree with earlier speakers about the need for information and technology exchange, and the need especially for exchange between regional and international incubators and educational institutions to boost opportunities for the digital changemakers, as well as access to investment opportunities. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. Mr. Semmer, could you tell us how we can support the changemaker in Syria? He's focusing on the new tech, for small-scale industries, for permaculture competitions, for hacking competitions, for robotics competitions, for 3D printing, or VR. He's focusing on new technology for small-scale industries that can give people the opportunity to have a new generation or to have changemakers who can make real changes in the future. In general, even in the past two years, we've been trying to do a small-scale program with small-scale industries, with technologies for 3D printing, for VR. So we're working on what we're seeing in front of us. What we're doing here, with Hain Up, is to give support. Hello? Hello? Yes, very, very good. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, okay. This is what makes support for this generation that we're looking forward to. In the future, the ecosystem has improved, the centers have improved, the real industries have improved, the private sector has improved, or banking has improved. You can do a seed with these technologies and you can use them for the future in this domain. We can talk about this domain in a way that is better than the future. Mr. Samar? It's okay, I'm done. Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Bassem, could you tell us how we can support ChangeMaker for industrial innovation in Saudi Arabia? Yeah, of course. So Saudi Arabia also is going through really fast transformation, especially in the digital technologies. So I think, in my opinion, the first thing we need to support is raising the level of awareness and the culture of entrepreneurship. We, for example, adopt entrepreneurship education in various different levels of education. We also, I think, we need to support or need regulations to stimulate the private sector. And also to let them participate in any innovation or entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial activities, as well as raising the capacity level of these SMEs and the private sector to absorb technology. Also, I would like to talk about the importance of effective coordination and collaboration between all enablers and stakeholders in the ecosystem. They should work on shared objectives, like toward innovation, for example, and how they enable the innovation ecosystem. Especially universities, for example, and research centers, where they are the source of the human capital and the technologies that come, that spread in the country. Finally, I think we need national champions. We have several in Saudi, but we need more national champions to advocate and support the digital entrepreneurship in Saudi. That's all my point. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Besim. And then the last question. How can I assist the member country in their path to innovation, entrepreneurship, and leading to digital transformation? I think one of our attendees asked this question. Mr. Abul Latif, could you give your answer? Many of the participants have past experience and best practice. If the subject of soft landing is done, it will be a bigger effort for us, to connect with and share the experience from the last place. The network should be the year-end program and be clear to all of them, because there is a country like me that is not in the national system of entrepreneurship. There is a network for it, in addition to the WIPE and other international institutions. Because before any work, there should be legislation to protect this work and help it and provide it with the appropriate resources. The network should work on several projects, such as the promotion program, the logistical program, and the cooperation program with the international institutions. There should be a strong existence for the network in this network, because as I said, the situation in Syria is in Libya. The international institutions are the only ones that work and exist on the ground. Unfortunately, the support is very small. This small support doesn't exist in the companies. It could be a fund, but you have a good relationship with it, and it has a bigger support. I think that from the countries that have international institutions, there are almost more countries that are participating in the international institutions. We will see the last thing that is the basis of the technology. This is the basis of the innovation city. It is a great example for the international community. The focus on technology is on the mechatronics, and it is an unusual model. I didn't see it before. This is all related to the cooperation program, how the cooperation program and the international institutions work, because there are a lot of resources in the countries that have companies and companies that pay for it. This is an important point that I would like to focus on, Mr. Kamar. How can we make a contribution to the initiative that we have a financial project? The training requires a lot from the international community. How can you convince the initiative that you have a financial project? How can they be your partners? There are a lot of things that you need to focus on, and there is a lot of work to be done to help the community to try to make a good use of it and to benefit from it. Thank you very much, Mr. Abdul Latif. Mrs. Sagil, could you tell us about what you expect from Aine to support you in Somalia? Thank you very much. I really want to thank the Network for their incredible initiative and efforts to improve collaboration and learning. We are often so focused on the entrepreneurship work we are doing in our respective countries. We don't really have the opportunity to link with other incubators and entrepreneurs across the region. I believe the best way that the network can assist members and member countries is to provide a platform for members to share lessons learned on digital entrepreneurship and best practices within the respective countries, also facilitating information and technology exchange. And we are especially interested in forming partnerships with incubators, accelerators, and educational institutions across the region. And lastly, having access to the training and skills building for the incubators is also very beneficial. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Sagil. Mr. Samar? I am very concerned about the work that we are doing. I imagine that we are the most supportive of the company. Maybe we are the most supportive of the Arab countries. We call it the two levels. The countries that come out of the shell, that have something to do with education and money, or spaces that they have. And countries that are learning or are now new in this domain. So maybe we are the leader of the level one to level two and it helps to develop. The issue is not that there is a huge difference between the new incubator that came out in Syria and the incubator in Dubai or in Saudi Arabia that came out in 10 years. So there will be no benefit for the two parties. I think this story can be described as a beginning. Maybe we should start doing the training online because I think it will be one of the things that the Syrians think that they will be able to get to other areas. I don't know at what stage there could be even the gap between the two areas. So if you go to another experience and you come back to it, and if there is even a level of incubators that can be available for 6 months in a state, like in some countries, it can be available at home. There is an action plan that we work on. For example, a specific strategy. This can also be used a lot to provide services. Thank you very much, Mr. Samar. Mr. Bessam, could you tell us about your vision? Well, I think N is a unique opportunity that will create collaboration between different stakeholders in the region. Like it links governments, links invaders, techno parks, investors, universities, entrepreneurs. This is, I think, it's the first time happening in the region, which will strengthen the ecosystem, like the whole region ecosystems, and also will facilitate the knowledge and experience exchange. As you just, my colleague mentioned, we have different levels of maturity between countries. So that will help transferring the experience and the practices from those with high maturity to those with lower maturities. Also, this will lead to building and strengthening the human capability in business and incubation management, for example, and other capabilities that's needed in the ecosystem. Also, I envision AIN will enable the effective and efficient sharing of resources. In addition, of course, the opportunity that AIN will provide for startups to globalize, for example, and expand to other Arab nations through soft landing. Thank you very much, Mr. Bessam. And last and not least, Mrs. Rania, could you tell us about your expectations? This will take experience and learn from it. At the same time, we benefit from the experience and mentors, the leaders. Because the leaders need mentors a lot. And at the local level, it may not be that the experience in a specific way is enough, or that the specific experience, especially if we are talking about advanced services that are suitable for manufacturing and globalization. This is an opportunity to have a network for experts and engineers. Another opportunity is to invest in these products. The Arab network is following this, but the soft landing program is a bit of a challenge. If there is a specific country in the Arab world that needs products like money, or products in agriculture, or products in health, it is necessary to invest in the Arab world to be able to invest in these products. This is a training for the tourists. Of course, it is necessary to find a variety of resources from universities or even schools, so that they can develop this idea. The idea of the tourists is that they go, not to the situation, but to ask them to think from a young age that they want to have a private project and to encourage this idea. Thank you very much, Ms. Adrania. If I can add something, Ayn is a network of its members, and we try to help you to network, to know each other, to collaborate among the network, and we are a platform that helps to discover opportunity and help to develop a new network. We are a platform that helps to discover opportunity and helps all the members in the Arab country to discover different opportunities and to give you the support we can, as we can help, we will try to push as much as we can, but we will not, let's say, replace the government or other things. Create a bridge between all of you to create new opportunities for our entrepreneur. I hope the soft landing program will create a very important success story for this network. We have some questions from our attendees. First, Mr. Besim. We have a question about the support initiative of Entrepreneurship Ecosystem. It's from the government side, or that it's expanded to the stakeholder? Excuse me, can you repeat again? About the initiative to support Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, it is from the government side, or it expanded through the stakeholder? Okay, from what I understand, the question is about the initiatives in Saudi Arabia that support the... Exactly. Is it from the government or from the private sector? Is that correct? Exactly, the other stakeholders. Okay, so here in Saudi, most of the initiatives that support for the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem comes from the government. Still, we have a few initiatives from the private sector, companies like, for example, Aramco, the big companies, but still most of the ecosystem here depends on the government heavily, depends on the government in many things, including entrepreneurship. Muchaat is the authority for small and medium enterprises. It's working very hard. They are the one, for example, pushing the ecosystem very hard with a lot of programs, a lot of funds. They also founded Saudi BC, for example. Saudi BC is trying to stimulate the investment ecosystem here. Still, the private sector needs to participate more. Thank you very much. And this is a question from Mr. Nehel about the measurement of the return on investment of the activity program and project implemented at the level of innovation in your countries. What indicator do they measure and how? Just for 13 seconds, if any one of you want to give his feedback about the return on investment of the measurement taken by your country. Okay, let me participate here. So it's very hard to measure whatever initiatives you are launching now or in a short period of time. Some of the initiatives takes very long. Like, for example, here in that tax, we had Bader since 2007. And it talks more than seven or years to have, to see the return on investment. And still, like, how you measure also the return on investment, Bader, I think, talked the ecosystem to a different level, but still we have a long way to go. To, for example, reach the goal here we are seeking. Have I answered the question? Thank you very much, Mr. Pesum. And thank you for our attendees and we are above the session now. Thank you very much for all of you, our panelists, and thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.