 Good morning everybody. And welcome to our session about embracing disruption in 2017 at the World Economic Forum. We have a good audience, but I was going to say come as close as you can so we can open up the floor to questions and say the last 15 minutes. It's extraordinary because I've been involved as many of those on the panel this morning as well within the World Economic Forum community, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, for the last two decades and it was about a dozen years ago that we were talking about the need to foster an entrepreneurship culture in the region and what the government can do in collaboration with the private sector to create jobs and foster small and medium-sized enterprises. Is the education system that we have say in Jordan and in other countries in the region supportive of that concept? And as I was suggesting to this esteemed panel in our green room discussion beforehand, in my mind something clicked about three years ago where all the different forces have come together. Now the challenge is, and I just chaired the Islamic Development Bank meeting in Jeddah three days ago and they see it very well because they're looking at the broader Islamic world where they have a population of 300 million youths below the age of 25 growing to 340 million by 2020. So the birth rates continue to move rapidly higher. Governments have been scrambling to converge with the private sector and the IGOs of the world, but at the same time nothing stops. Disruption takes place both on the governmental side from a geopolitical standpoint and of course from the global players that now look at the Middle East and North Africa as a big giant market of 300 million consumers. We have a superb panel. I don't think I need to introduce them all with applause, but let me introduce one by one who we have around the table. Ms. Neuer Al-Hassan is the Chief Executive Officer of Tarjama. She's Jordanian based in Dubai. Abdullah Elas is the founder or co-founder of months with others of Karim, the ride-sharing service. Dr. Khaled Biare is the Chief Executive Officer of Saudi Telecom. Philip Le La Rue is Executive Vice President and CEO of the IFC based in Washington that spends a great deal of time in the Middle East and North Africa. Maurice Levy, Chairman Chief Executive Officer of Pooley C's group in France and Mr. Eref Naqvi is the founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of the Abraaj Group based in Dubai, a group that was focused only on the Middle East and North Africa, but it's fair to say it is a emerging growth company, financing companies in Africa and stretching to Latin America as well. And Eref, I wanted to start with this premise of whether the elements of youth, innovation, entrepreneurship, and I'll add one other pillar, education have actually come together to click. In fact, I had a driver last night says, you know, what are you guys doing in the Dead Sea? You come in every other year, you have these conversations, and we don't see a change coming out of it. But in fact, I see change. Have these elements come together to build enough momentum to continue our homegrown disruption, if you will? Thank you, John. I think, you know, I think it's fair to say that the four pillars you just mentioned, the genie is out of the box. And I'm actually feeling quite optimistic because this event, the summit is the first time that youth, entrepreneurship, and innovation have come together on a platform of this scale in this region and being talked about openly as being the agent of disruption, the driver of change. And I think that there lies the essence and start of collaboration as well. Before we get to disruption, I think the region is embracing collaboration. Governments are beginning to understand that all these statistics that you mentioned earlier, these are all very interesting, but we've known them for a long time. We've known about unemployment. We've known about the youth. We've known about the consumer opportunity. But they're beginning to evaluate for the first time that perhaps the traditional way of looking at things is not working, did not work. And therefore, we're seeing a lot more willingness from government. And we have to remember governments in this region are overwhelmingly important because they're between 60% to 80% of the employment cycle in the region. And they are not only in the business of governance, they're in the business of management, they're in the business of investing, and in there in the business of effectively everything. And in order to give up some of that, they're going to have to find that the people who are taking up that slack have the efficiency and effectiveness to do so. And that is actually the private sector. And at the heart of the private sector is the fact that entrepreneurship, small businesses, these are all the elements that are beginning to come to the fore. And I have to say, when we look at this region, we sometimes forget that Casablanca is closer to New York than it is to Dubai. Okay, this is a big region. And it is also a region which is dominated by cities all over emerging markets. We are seeing the role of cities become more important than that of countries. And that's just a fact. And these cities are growing often at the rate of double the rate that countries are experiencing. And within this region, cities and six cities in particular, which are Cairo, Tunis, Casablanca, and Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, account for 40% of the region's GDP. That's massive. And 160 million people out of the 350 million live in cities. So we are going to have to look at disruption, innovation in the context of making these cities more efficient. And in the course of that, I think governments will begin to realize that they can step back and the private sector is vibrant enough to take it up. You raised a very interesting point because Ludinolian, who's a familiar face to this community, at the Saudi U.S. Economic or Business Summit that I was involved with yesterday in Riyadh, said something very candid. Everybody said, well, this is great that we had the 2030 plan and the Deputy Crown Prince is disrupting business as usual in Saudi Arabia in a very big way. But she said, be careful that you don't transfer too much responsibility to the private sector without, to Arab's point, the right infrastructure. So Dr. Bihari, is this a challenge as we see Saudi Arabia looking to reduce the burden of government that they didn't get it right the first six months? We had an off the record discussion there and the government was very candid with the private sector. Yes, we started too fast. We tried to transfer too much into your hands and we have to listen and calibrate. How would you describe what's taking place? Well, let's look at the positive side. I think the vision that was embraced by the leadership in Saudi Arabia is an incredible piece of work when it comes to the different dimensions it touches. Towards the vision, there was what they call the National Transformation Program, the 2020 program, which really looks at very specific areas, especially in the economy side. Now, the line between the government responsibility and the private responsibility was not very clear. And I think what the comment you just mentioned indicates that the government is embracing change in a very positive and in terms of in a dialogue nature. So there's lots of dialogue taking place in the country across all the different projects within this 2020 program. But also to be fair to the government, I think the government is moving fast and faster than the private sector, in fact, in terms of what they want to achieve. The change does require a different plateau, a different foundation. So let me take, for example, the digitalization of the economy. That's clearly a very huge task. This requires not only a change and the regulation, which is definitely needed, but also it requires a comprehensive infrastructure that the government needs to ensure that it's there. So I think the government now have taking steps. And I'll just give you an example. For a digital economy, you need a broadband infrastructure. And what the government did is talk to the telecom operators in the country on that issue. And in fact, signed a major deal a few weeks ago that gives incentives for the operators to go and deploy broadband. So there are lots of steps being taken. And I think the success of any program is the ability of the leaders to change course or basically readjust as they move. Yeah, in fact, very quickly, if I can, because I think it's an important follow-up for the rest of the discussion here. With so much change taking place, and you have a budget deficit there, 17% of GDP, kind of shock therapy down to 10% of GDP this year, half a percent growth used to grow six, seven percent. Will the people stay on board if they don't see kind of instant results from this disruption by the new government? I think the people are leading the disruption. I think the societies in this region are embracing the disruption more than government and more than businesses, by the way. So large businesses, let's say. Now, I think the consumer in this region and more than almost anywhere in the world is really adopting to this digital revolution. And we see it in the telecom, we see that. Because you can see the traffic that goes into our network. It's just incredible. And if I tell you, maybe people would not realize that. But the traffic that goes into STC mobile network is equivalent to the traffic that goes into China mobile network. We have 7.5-bettabyte a day. This is incredible. So people are connected. People are embracing the new technology and the new way of doing things. I think it's up to the government to, again, adopt as fast. And for businesses, especially SMEs, I think in this region, has not been fast enough in terms of adopting to the change. And if they don't change, they will be changed. I think the digital stuff that we have now and the fact that a whole business now can be collapsed into a smart, into an app on a smartphone is really changing the rules of the game for many SMEs. And therefore, I think there is clearly needs by government and governments to create for the infrastructure, make sure those SMEs are aware of what's available in terms of cloud services that can change totally the way they operate. Great. Philip, I think it leads perfectly to the point that you've had on your roadmap, if you will, for the IFC. And that is, what is the correct ecosystem that the ecosystem is not supporting the culture? We have two startups, which you're going to go to immediately after your comments. But is it important that you get the support? Because capital gravitates to where there's opportunity. We have a Jordanian that's working in Dubai, a case in point here, right? You need capital to go. But beyond capital, the ecosystem that the IFC is focusing on? No, you're absolutely right. The ecosystem, the way I see the ecosystem is kind of a ripple in a pond. So you have the kind of narrow ecosystem to find the finance. And this is a region where finance has not gone to the private sector, not gone to the SME. Only 8% of bank lending goes to SME, which accounts for most of the employment outside of government. So there's an issue of finance. So having new platform is critical. So we need VC capital, we need angel capital, and we're investing more and more into that. But you need more than that. You need a support system, which is what we call an incubator or accelerator. But you need more than that. You need regulations. I had a breakfast meeting with some of the young entrepreneur that the startups that we brought to this wave. And one of them told me, I mean, the problem is if I fail, because of the bankruptcy law, I can end up in jail. So that's quite a disincentive. So regulations do play a very important role. We talk about infrastructure. I'm fully in agreement. But also the regulations, I'm not sure that the government follow the trend. We need to accelerate. I think there is a in government, a different country have different approaches. But this is critical. We need to review key regulations to enable this entrepreneurship. Because if you're an entrepreneur and you penalize for it, I mean, you know, it's chances are, if you are really an entrepreneur, you go somewhere else. Let's bring in our startups. Noor Alhassan has Tarjama, which is just a brief description, a translation service and much more. The only female in our panel, but you are certainly an advocate of employing as many females as possible. We lose a lot of GDP from women sitting on the sideline. And you're out to change it first and foremost to what Philippe said here. Difficulty raising money when you wanted to start this and to Arab's point, the city state, if you will, is very powerful. And when it comes to accelerators and incubators and raising financing, is that what took you to Dubai? No, actually, I'm just gonna give a small brief and quick one about Tarjama. So Tarjama is a linguistic solution company. We focus on translation, content creation, editing, and we employ females. So we have a very unique model where we take work to women to work from home. We started 2008, we've been in the business for nine years, we're in eight countries, and we have over 60 full time employees and 350 freelancer. What took me to Dubai was not the capital actually, the company self funded so far, and its revenue generating. But what took me is access to markets. So Dubai was a fantastic place to basically attract a lot of businesses. The business is is quite big there, which took us as well to Riyadh last last year. So we went to Dubai just because of the accessibility of the market and to be able to acquire more business. There's a challenge in Dubai because there's been so much momentum behind it. And if you can jump in as well, Abdullah would love to hear your thoughts. There's been so much momentum behind it that the cost of operating as a startup is not quite as simple as it was, and I'm being generous here five years ago, right? And others want to compete to take some of their market share. This is why we have this business model where we hire people from home. And we have offices across the region, but our back office is in Jordan. So the majority of the business happens here. Great Abdullah, I think you'd have to be living in a cave not to see what Kareem's done as a disruptor if it's the the DNA of our panel absolutely perfectly. The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia decided to put three and a half billion dollars into Uber very far away, hoping to get some of that transfer of technology from Silicon Valley. But I want to discuss the ability to create a homegrown talent that can build momentum being closer to the market and having the group of co founders that understand the market even going into Manasseh into South Asia, Middle East, North Africa, South Asia. Give us a sense of why you could compete and actually excel over an Uber in our turf, if you will. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. Actually, when when you look into the this conference, it's being embracing startups from the region and young talent in the region. Before the official program started on Friday, we have met the 100 most exciting startups in the region. I think the change which is happening here, which leads towards a convention, a conviction that Arabs or in general, local scan, local scan actually built amazing companies in the region and change. It comes through three dimensions in my mind. The first one is through talent. The second one is through the ecosystem, which is changing as well. And the third one is through success stories, stories which we are seeing now more and more. And on Friday, the people we have met, when you look into the profiles of these people, they are very similar to each other. Most of them are actually locals who have roots here in the region. But they have studied abroad. And after studying abroad and after being educated outside and maybe even working for a couple of years outside, they have taken a decision to come back, which is something new we're seeing today. A lot of these this talent is now nowadays coming back with a strong belief that they actually can come back. They can build something big and meaningful here in the region. So that's number one. It's a change. And even if I look into the profiles of the co-founders in Kareem and the people we are bringing on board, it's mainly this type of a profile. People who are roots here and who are highly talented and educated abroad and coming back. Now, when it comes to the ecosystem, we see that there is some great change happening as well. Because at the end, every founder and every team needs an ecosystem which is empowering. And here it was, in our case it was STC as a first institutional investor who came on board, bet on a local team to actually compete. And it was not the case that back then in the days, we did not have that competition with very deep pockets. But this was a local institutional investor who actually believed in us being able to build differentiators in the region. Because we understand the market better and we are more flexible to actually adopt our product to have a great product market fit. So this is happening and alongside with STC, then other regional investors and even international investors then came on board. And when it comes to the success stories, as a last point, when it comes to the success stories, we are seeing today that there are a couple of which are showcasing actually that this is happening and this is possible. The SUQ acquisition is a very famous, very recent topic. But when you look into unicorns, tech unicorns, what do you think, how many tech unicorns do exist worldwide? There are only 189, it's less than 200, 189 tech unicorns, which are there outside our region. And now we see actually that there are two which are which are brought up in the region. So this myth of tech unicorn can only be built in Silicon Valley. This has proven wrong now. And I think with this, there is a lot of other myths up there which are coming and which we will prove wrong going forward. So one of those unicorns is Kareem, of course, who being very modest. I'll bring Eric back in because you're an investor, am I correct? Yes. In SUQ. Maurice, your thoughts on, and I've covered this for Marketplace Middle East and our other business shows, you know when a story actually reaches its momentum when our shows in New York say, that's an interesting deal, Amazon taking SUQ.com. Wow, we should start really thinking about the Middle East, North Africa a little bit differently. What were your thoughts when you saw the acquisition by Amazon, Maurice? And then, Eric, please jump in. This is something that was not so much of a surprise because Amazon is moving from the original e-commerce side that they had to become a strong players in many areas of the new economy. They have been able to become a leader in the cloud. They are a leader in many different areas. So the fact that Amazon is starting to acquire operation outside the US, which they have done in the past already, is something which is just a confirmation of their strategy. Yeah, but it's a little bit different. What we're talking about here is the first time planting a flag in the Middle East with the brand that people didn't think could spring out of the region itself. And does it actually get the might to grow? I think that's quite substantial, don't you agree? No, absolutely. But it is part of the strategy that we have seen developing with Amazon since a few years. It's not something which is coming out of a hat. And suddenly, it's something which has been built over time. And I think that you will see more of those acquisition by Amazon. If you don't mind. And Amazon want to be a not only a leader, but a dominant leader in many different areas. Great. Let's bring in Araf and then Salih. This is right up your out of your alley, as we say in America, you should jump in. So I hope you don't mind me unwrapping a few home truths here. Okay, and being slightly controversial. So, you know, the one thing that we have to understand is this is not the first time a foreign company has invested aggressively in this region. Okay, the region is a region of contrast. It's a region of dichotomy. We have some very successful foreign businesses that have done fantastically well in the region. And at the same time, there has been an element of protectionism in the region that has restricted free markets from operating. Now, the comment you made right at the start about the panel you had in Saudi Arabia speaks directly to this point because you know who is most scared of disruption is the big businesses in the region. Okay, they are terrified. And because of that, although I completely agree with what Khalid said, which is the consumer is driving change. The consumer is then turning to government, which is actually embracing change. It is big business that is restricting change. And the reason for that is very simple. Access to market up until now was largely controlled by big business. The beauty of the young entrepreneur is that in this region, they are borderless. Okay, and that is what has changed more than anything else. And speaking to Abdullah's point, I'm sorry, Abdullah, I disagree with you because your company was founded by a Pakistani, a Swede and a Saudi. And you're operating across this region in 14 countries, quite a few of which are not Arab. So the point about being local is not that important anymore. It is about understanding the local positions. Okay, and the borderless nature of the entrepreneur is exactly what Noor exemplifies. She's in eight countries. She employs 350 women across markets that sit at home and do work because they understand what the local nuances are. And I think that's what we need to embrace. The excitement of the fact that these young entrepreneurs are breaking down access to market. These apps have the capacity to create the consumer as an empowered individual. And that is what the region had lacked because we were fixed. We were fixated with the fact that we had access to product at fixed prices that were usually exorbitant compared to the rest of the world. These new businesses are breaking down those barriers. They have absolutely no desire to be limited. And that's why people like me come up with a simple realization, which is today's peacock is tomorrow's feather duster. If as a private equity firm, I sit and only worry about bricks and mortar businesses, I'm done. I might as well retire and practice my profession on the beach. The reality is that is where the future is. And all of us, doesn't matter big or small, we have got to embrace this change and understand that money and capital does not need to flow from government. It needs to flow from the private sector. That is the most efficient deployer of capital. The government needs to create an enabling environment. We need to invest more and more into our region, into these businesses that are going to become tomorrow's unicorns. Well, there's a couple of interesting points. Thank you. Brought up. One was suggesting the sovereign funds, the public investment fund. I said going into Uber. Is this just kind of window dressing, Philippe, to say we're connected to Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley will give back to us? Should sovereign funds be supporters of SMEs or to Eruf's point, the private sector is the most efficient way to roll? I think the private sector, I mean I totally was a riff on that one. And I listened. I think that on the world's fund, I mean we've been trying to work and it's true that there is a realization that part of the assets should be deployed more locally, into local talent. I agree completely with Arif that in the role, I mean, this disruption, we talk about disruption. I mean, you know, having a supermarket in the 60s was disruptive. So it's true. So disruption has been the story of humanity. The car was disrupted. Absolutely. And the horse before that. So it's a long continuum of disruption and that's a story of humanity. What I think is different is this new technology, talking about accelerators accelerates that. At a point where government of difficulty sometimes following up or big business, I agree. Sometimes it's the same structure. And I agree with Arif completely. I cannot stress it enough. The enabling environment has to be there. Because again, the talent is here. And we're so happy that in this web here today, we brought these startups from the region because it gives a lot of, first of all, it's changed the narrative a little on the region. We use it in the narrative in the region, frankly, it's about conflict. It's not about creativity. It's not about dynamism. It's not about entrepreneurship. So if we can kind of send this story out. And if only that for this Amazon is a good thing. And having the young entrepreneur talking to each other, exchanging cards, talking to the finances, the government in one platform is great. And they all said, why don't we repeat it? Because it cannot be one off. So I think this energy is there. The key is, how do you nurture? How do you multiply by hundreds, by 1,000 in the next 10 years? And this is the enabling environment. I cannot stress it enough. And this is what we said, infrastructure, regulation, access to market. I think the government can lead the way to help to facilitate a bigger market. And this is something that we can, we have to engage again and again, one country at a time. I'm going to come back to Maurice Nour. I'd like to get your thoughts. We saw at least 200 billion maybe over that spent on military equipment. I'm not too sure which war we're fighting with that sort of level of spending. But as an entrepreneur, when you see that much money going into military hardware that benefits the U.S. apparatus, you kind of wonder why this money doesn't go into creating jobs directly? Absolutely. And if I just highlight some statistics on translation, if you look at the MENA region, we spend $1.2 billion yearly on translation. And this is relatively a sizable market that nobody probably knows about. Even thinks so? No. This is the market you're tapping is what you suggest. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to disrupt our own business, like the offline model by launching today actually happens to be the day when we launch our marketplace, which is the first editorial marketplace for freelancers, content writers and translators and editors. It's only specifically on editorial services. And to be able to scale today, like just one year ago we used to receive hundreds of thousands of words only for translation. Today we're receiving hundreds of millions of words. And if we don't automate the whole process and marry the machine with the human to be like just to do the post-editing, to be able to cater to a bigger market, we'll be probably unable to do the business so small agencies can't do what a platform or a marketplace will be able to do. Right. I still see amazed in a place of Zarafusene, like Abu Dhabi which has grown and transformed itself in the last 10 years. You still see the mom and pop shop on the corner with the fax machine and doing the translation of your documents, the notary services. So this is all going to be disrupted by companies such as yourself. Actually what we're trying to do is we're inviting all these small agencies to come to the platform. So we'll push business to them. We'll equip the whole translators with state-of-the-art technologies, translation memory tools and machine translation. So we help them to gain more business. Good. Maurice, your thoughts of what you're hearing here. Yes. I thought that listening to the region and what's happening in the region regarding building an ecosystem, I think that the recipe for that is well known. You need to be close to the universities, to VCs, and to help entrepreneurs. And the role of government, as I see it, is to remove the obstacles, to encourage and to stay away, far away from the entrepreneurs and give the ability to them to start-ups, to be entrepreneurs, to be free and to go with their own ideas. And if you rely on government and sovereign funds to help these start-ups, you are, I believe, missing the point because this is something which is a bottom-up process. It's not a top-down process. And if you have the weight of the government weighing so much on this company, they will be very quickly taken breathless and they will not be able to really build their operation. Governments have to help remove the obstacles and stay away, certainly not to interfere and let the young entrepreneurs with their ideas, their talent and getting the money pitching for and fighting to get the money, showing that they have really ideas and they believe in their ideas. If they are just receiving the money because there is a sovereign fund, forget about building an ecosystem. They have to fight and they have to show that they are entrepreneurs. Good. Are the legal structures adapting quick enough? Abdelah, you're in the different market. So let's, to Maurice's point, the government should get out of the way but Philippe brought this up earlier. So the laws are not homogeneous throughout the region, which is a challenge. What sort of obstacles does a kareem face when it goes into different markets, different legal standards, different regulations even for a licensed taxi and I know you say you support various economies that go in. I don't think anybody just doubts that but there's a lot of family trading groups that own the taxi services. So to Arab's point, they don't like a lot of competition with a player like you knocking on their door. So the business we are in is highly disruptive in its nature. However, we believe from what we've seen, from what we've lived and experienced, disrupting governments is not the way we want to play in this game. We have actually, when we went into countries, we have, yes, disrupted the way transportation is being done but we are actually opening our hands wherever we go with the governments directly to embrace the change and to change regulations. Our sell is quite obvious. We are making ground transportation safer, faster, more efficient, cheaper. We are enabling women, for example, to go to work. There are two million females in Saudi according to the Ministry of Labor who are not able to go to work because lack of two million, because of lack of ground transportation. So there is a huge amount of awareness in the governments we are working with and so what we have seen so far is working best is when we really go to the respective sites and that we are working together with them to embrace the change. And I give you a couple of examples. I think you're being very politically correct. I ask a pretty direct question. When you go into a market, try to open up a market, it's not like for like regulation. And in fact, in the UAE, they had security issues and registration issues with Uber, for example. Are they adjusting fast enough to disruptors or are they gonna wake up and say, wow, this is just too much disruption for us? So there are two models we've seen so far happening and in some markets we are going into, there's no regulation at all for car hailing. So whatever we were doing was not regulated and then the regulator caught up with putting this in place. Soft touch or like a hammer. Give us a sense of what it's like. Yeah, so it happened for example in Saudi through the journey until then, you know there was a lot of communication happening with the regulator and in the beginning there was a lot of mistrusts for sure. What are you doing? How do you operate here really? What is that? Will it work with Saudis? For example, that's a social change as well, right? Will a Saudi be able to actually do ground transportation and have a female Saudi being in the same car with this work? Now over time we are, and numbers are showing that very, very clearly there's a high pressure to solve the mobility crisis we are in. When you look into global rankings of vehicles sold per capita, you see that for 1,000 inhabitants, there are 800 cars sold in the US. In Saudi it's 300. In Pakistan it's 18 and in Egypt it's 50. And we have a lack of public ground transportation, right? So this puts us in a high crisis mode for ground transportation. Lack of mobility is lack of productivity and hence there is a pressure and people are now embracing this change and understanding that actually car hailing is a model to leapfrog this change. We don't need 800 cars. We simply don't need them. We need way less. We've done a study for Pakistan where we've shown for an investment of 700 million US dollar, you can build buses and out of those you get 180,000 daily rides and 2,000 jobs. With the same amount of investment you get 1.5 million daily rides versus 180,000. 1.5 million daily rides on a car hailing app and you get instead of 2,000 jobs being created, 100,000 jobs being created. So numbers talk, numbers convince and we have been not in the easiest position actually to sell this in the beginning but today we are in a much better place actually to convince governments to work with us. In 30 seconds and we have 20 minutes left and we have to cover media with Maurice and Dr. Hollad in front of me. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't cover the media disruption. But flying taxis, I grew up in the 1960s and 70s and I loved the Jetsons, the cartoon and they actually had the flying taxis but it's not pie in the sky anymore, right? You guys are experimenting with it. Give us just a taste of what you're planning. So yeah, the industries which are disrupting are actually paranoid of being disrupted themselves, right? And self-driving cars are coming clearly. Flying, we're not. I wanted to leap a generation to the flying taxis because it's fun but you're correct. The driverless car is coming. It is coming and the way we are preparing ourselves for that is we are at the moment running at high, high space, a pace to actually create still jobs because it will come a bit later into our region than in other regions. So we are creating, we have already created 250,000 jobs in our four and a half years and we are continuing that journey to reach one million jobs by 2018. However, at the same time, we are creating a foundation, Karim Foundation to actually take care for those drivers once it is needed that they take a different role in the job market. And third, we are partnering with companies who are in the space of driverless cars, like for example, the NEXT and the Silicon Valley and others to adopt the technical change as well we have to bring forward. If I can just ask our dear organizers to raise the lights and then just let me know where the microphones are. I'm gonna do a couple of rounds on media. I promise it with Holland and Maurice. But can we get the lights up and then just, can we bring one or two of the microphone, you have one there, perfect. And just one on this side of the room, I see you standing in the back. If you can move forward with the microphones so we can have them near the front, perfect. That's excellent. So when we talk about disruption, Abdullah brought it up with how connected everybody is in Saudi Arabia, it's a phenomenon actually that this is a market of 30 million and they're really connected. Your standpoint about how STC adapts to the media world, Turner or CNN is adapting in a very different way. Maurice sees it from the advertising and services side. How do you adapt and survive, Holland, as a telecom operator? Are you nimble enough candidly? I hope so. Telecom are bringing the services that are disrupting all other industries. I mean, our data services are enabling this digital revolution. And therefore I think it's very important for us to embrace the disruption. So STC have started a journey of transforming the organization into what I call a digital enterprise. Let me just try to elaborate on what a digital enterprise means. We're short on time, so that should be really direct on the path forward. The way we present our services to our customers is now taking a completely new approach. We have introduced a digital brand a few months ago called Joey, which provides the customer with a complete new way of interacting with the telecom operator. It's an app on the smartphone where the customer basically does all his or her things on the app. They don't need to come to an office or even call a call center. Complete revolution in the way telecom services are presented. So dealing with the customers in a completely new way. But however internally, you have to embrace that digital creates a complete new way for you to do efficiencies. So the way you procure, the way our networks are structured, the way our human resource is being managed is completely taking now a new approach. Third is the human resource aspect. We've started and we will be actually commissioning an STC Academy over the next two months where all of our staff will basically be retooled for the digital age. I think these three aspects are very important for any enterprise to basically ensure that they embrace the disruption or otherwise basically be disrupted. And I don't mean this as a criticism. I see a lot of these training programs both in the kingdom and throughout the Middle East and North Africa is at the right path. I mean, you don't have a choice, but how do you know that the training is gonna adapt people fast enough to our point for the last 45 minutes? There's so much disruption. Who are the teachers in this training process? There's sometimes a decade behind. I agree. I think this is something that we've been discussing on the way we design our academy. We just don't want to be a traditional academy that just have very structured courses. And I think it will be a completely different way of training where it's gonna be more of a dialogue between people who have been through disruption. So I may bring Kareem to the room and then start basically a dialogue so that people start thinking differently from the traditional way of doing business through their functions. Okay. Maurice, you're such a thought leader in your industry and you've had to go through major adaptation over the last five years in particular. How does it apply to the Middle East and North Africa when they're so engaged with their smartphones today, sharing information, taking video clips, the revenue on the digital platform, on the mobile platforms not there yet, but the companies are being created. How do you go from traditional television, traditional print, still surviving with depth, but trying to adapt the revenue model to succeed? We had to do it in all the countries of the world and we are adapting in this region as well. And if the mad men of the 60s were coming to an agency today, they would look at this and say, go, what the hell is this agency? You have technologists, you have engineers, you have data, they had no idea what the data was in those days, so the creative part is still essential. It's absolutely essential, but it is only a small part of what we do today. We have to deal with the technology, we have to deal with consumers, and as Khaled said it, they are leading the way. They are telling us what they want and how they want, they are empowered simply. This is something which we have seen a few years ago in the US and it is contagious in all the place of the world and this is not a region which is immune to the consumers and I believe that in the future, democracy will be led by the consumers. That definitely, because they are unstoppable. So how are we adapting to this? We are creating an agency where we are unleashing all our assets and where we are using all the talent from IQ which is the intellectual power which is helping us for the strategy. The EQ because the bond with consumers is essential and you need to be emotional if you want to create an ad which is speaking to the people. TQ because it is technology. BQ because, sorry to say it here, we have to move bloody quick and all this is powered by the Creative Caution CQ and this is how we work today with people who are working all on the same platform. Everything is powered by technology and the creative part which is, as I said, essential is only a small part of what we do today and the role that we are going to have tomorrow is already started in the US and in Europe and we have a few clients in Dubai where we are starting to deliver this kind of service is transformation, helping our client to transform themselves because we need, they need to adapt to the new world and we need to help them to transact and to change the way they are marketing in the new age. So it is consulting. Very fascinating. Okay, let's get some hands up here for some questions. We had one here and one there. Can we just go ahead and get the mics distributed? So we'll go first here and the gentleman, can you raise your hand again and make sure the microphone? Do we have a third from the floor as well and one there with the lady here? So after you're done with yours, you can just pass it down the row. Sure thing, John. Great, very quickly. Lara from the Decidual Ahmad Group. I had two questions. Now just one question, very quick, Lara. One question. One question. Thank you, yep. Let's not have a one minute negotiation about the question. Let's just get to the question. First of all, the comment that government shouldn't get involved in, okay, but if we took at the United States and other areas, it is the government that has always through research and development, pushed the private sector into new. So your internet came from government, autonomous driving vehicles came from government, et cetera. Last thing, blockchain, okay? We talk about disruptors today, but blockchain will disrupt the Ubers of the world and the marketplaces of the world because it will allow peer to peer, okay? Direct markets and direct dealings and it's even gonna disrupt governments and so forth. So when we're talking about disruption today, why don't we get into that as well? Excellent, two great points. Blockchain, I'm sure, and Philippe, you wanna jump in quickly both? Good. No, I'll just quickly address the first part of your question. I never understood blockchain and I'm a financial journalist. And you probably won't, but it'll take over your life. But just to answer the first part of your question about how the US government put in money and created the internet, you have just put your finger on the pulse of arguably the biggest philosophical question in this space today, which is five companies, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, the big five, today are spending $60 billion a year on R&D, and artificial intelligence. Whereas the US government is spending $1 billion a year on the same space. Back then, they could do it, now they can't. It's the private sector. And that means those companies are going to channel that money towards their commercial products. We can argue that's good or bad, okay? But you know what? Unless you start looking at these companies as utilities and start thinking about how to regulate them, you have an unchecked process of R&D that is gonna be channeled into a very particular direction. Blockchain, strap in, it's coming, you can't do without it. Philly? Two words on the... I think that Arif is right. I think that the research is moving. And the government will still have the public good part which is fundamental research. I don't think that a big electron accelerator will be financed by the private sector where you have 20 years of experiment before you can have one theory validated or not. But that's important. That's upstream. So there is a movement, but it doesn't flush out the key role of public sector. You have something called public good and it has moved, but it has not disappeared and it's critical. Because this is the head of the fountain, if you want. You know, atomic research was a government thing. It was not private. It enabled everything we're talking about today. So that is clear. Blockchain, I'm with you. I'm reading a book about it. I understand it's a ledger. I'm still trying to understand, but I feel intuitively I have not finished the book, so maybe in the next year. There is, it can be revolutionary if this book is right. But again, I'll tell you the summary next year. Arif just said, Philippe, do we have to accept that it's gonna take over your life? So read quickly is my advice to you. We had the mic there, please. Very quickly on the... It'll come up, don't worry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Hi. Hi. Odia Kanoba from the Africa Export-Import Bank, a frozen bank based in Cairo. I think Philippe made the point earlier that only about 8% of bank lending goes to SMEs, right? Now, what comes to mind is... In the region. In the region, in the region, yes, absolutely. So I wonder if there's an opportunity to start to review credit assessment frameworks for SMEs? Yes. Is that the case, or is it the case that only 8% of SME opportunities are investable? I was warned yesterday not to use the word bankable by Arif, so investable. Okay. Thank you. Great question. Philippe, go ahead. But very quickly, I think you have the answer is embedded in your question. I think that we are doing a lot of work now with the banking sector to change their processes so that they can think differently and assess the risk. It's all about risk, but assess it differently as opposed to the traditional, I buy a treasury bond and I do a letter of credit and I go to the big corporate because there's also a problem of taking guarantees here and there. So there are solutions. We're working on credit lines with banks and a lot of the value added is on the training. So it's a two-way street. Maybe it's a supply issue and on the demand side it's very hard to estimate, but if we compare it to other regions, we can say that the demand is there, a priori, but we need to structure and we're doing it. We're doing it quite successfully, but it takes time and it's one bank at a time. I remember interviewing Andy Groven in the early 1990s and he said that only the paranoid survived because this applies to disruption. He was the co-founder of Intel, right? And Moore's Law and how rapid the chips and power change. Hallad, you don't want to become another Nokia, right? Nokia's doing well by now. It's revamped, yes, of course. Needed a little help from big brother like Microsoft, but am I correct? How do you avoid making sure you're not obsolete? I think adaption, I think reaching out, understanding what the customer wants, making their life easier, going to businesses, going to SMEs, giving them cloud services that will change and improve their efficiencies, being relevant to them, going up the value chain instead of just living off the network infrastructure, going and doing the platforms that would enable all of these services, cloud, IOT, cyber security, and partnering with all the different stakeholders and the different verticals. I think this is the model we have been putting to work and it's working beautifully for us. Quick question, how many competitors are in the big Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the telecom space? So there are, in the mobile side, there are three plus two MVNOs and you have another company in the fixed and another company, so it's a crowded space. Is it? It is a crowded space. Because in Bahrain, they have seven, I think. I think we have seven also in Saudi. Okay, seven is good. But in the U.S. To Arab's point, is it really a competitive market? Arab, would you say it's a competitive market? You're going to get me into trouble with Khaled. Very competitive. But the answer is no. Okay, thank you. Let, let, let. I think it's pretty competitive. We have the largest economy in the region. There's three players. I'm one of the three. I'm pretty happy. I don't want to talk about competition. And I say, this is where disruption is going to happen, Khaled, because you're going to enable more and more people to be created by yourself with what STC is doing through STC itself and STC Ventures, and you'll create opportunity. But if I may, what I'd like to say is that if I could pretend for a second that I was an economist and that my university degree was actually helpful, I'd say that there are two curves that we face in this region. One is the demand curve and the other is the problems curve. Okay? The demand curve is pretty simple to deal with. The private sector should deal with it. And it is where the consumer is king, where the opportunity is to serve the consumer across the board. The other is the problems curve. The problems curve is real. This region has enormous problems continuously and they include things from access to market, to access to, you know, to just starting businesses and so on. We talked earlier about government as if it was a monolith. John, it's not a monolith, okay? There are different governments in this region, some of whom are incredibly efficient and some of whom are actually brutally bad. And it is the incredibly efficient that are leading the way. There are countries like the UAE where the, in fact, government disrupts itself on a continuous basis. So we have excitement happening in that sector, but rather than looking at anything else, that problems curve is where governments should focus. They should focus on creating the enabling environment through infrastructure, hard and soft. Healthcare education, which is crucial for governments to provide. If we don't disrupt our education space, we are up a pretty bad creek, okay? And it is in the education space that we'll create tomorrow's entrepreneurs, give them the talent tools, give them the opportunities, and focus on that. Don't worry about investing in the next big office building through a sovereign wealth fund, focus on that opportunity, and I think we'll all be in a much better place 10 years from now. Thanks, I'm glad you touched education as well. Philippe, and then I wanted, she's been very patient with the question, go ahead quickly. I wanted to, again, to give a slightly different twist. I mean, why are we talking today? This is very powerful. And one thing that we believe in in IFC is social inclusion. And in this region, it's particularly critical. Inclusion. Now, it's true that disruptive technology, and that's why we're in it, can do miracles. When you have access to finance, that is a problem, that we did the big cash in Bangladesh. I mean, in over two years, I mean, they had 10 million customers, all of a sudden they had access to finance, payment, basic stuff, but powerful. Woman empowerment. Madam, you just met the case. You met the case. So you have a thing that didn't exist, opportunities for women. So it's very powerful from a social perspective. But it's not all, it's disruption cuts both ways. Then when you have a taxi driver that will disappear, you have, that's not social inclusion. So what do you do with that? So again, the government has to rethink how to use disruption to further progress, to further social inclusion and cohesion. And at the same time, deal with a problem curve. I'm adopting a brief term now, because it will be there. And the problems may be generated. Sometimes it has a kind of a side show of the good things, but it's there. So I think that again, this public-private partnership redefine, we thought is a critical element going forward. That's my personal. That's a very fair point. Final question from the floor. Just a second. Can we get their microphone up, please? Go ahead. Natasha Kinkali Foundation, Saudi Arabia. I wanted to ask how do we use disruption for youth unemployment in the region, for those who are not able or interested to become entrepreneurs? You have youth with no skills for today's marketplace, who big companies and small don't want to employ local youths, so they employ expats. So we have high unemployment, unskilled youth, and then they're unable to find jobs. So how do we cause disruption there to find a solution for those who are not necessarily going to become entrepreneurs? Education. Yeah, in fact, this is an amazing point. I don't want to interrupt you. I interviewed a guy in Jeddah who worked in appliances and construction. He was 35 years old, and there was an app that was linking people to doctors on their iPads or smart devices. Just training, education, more education, more focus on that. Let's get this region into the 20th century. But if I can add, it's not education the old way. You go, you learn by heart, you basically regurgitate, and then you get the good score and you move on. We have to rethink education also, because it's about skills more than education. Yeah, soft skills. Soft skills are critical going forward, and that's true here, that's true in Paris, that's true in London, that's true in Washington, that's true everywhere. Okay, let's be honest. This is a conversation that we've been having in this environment for the last 15 years, so the disruption's taking place. But this is one thing that the government is probably not doing, nor the private sector, in terms of what do I need, right? Maurice and then Holladieu said you wanted to make a point. Yes, I think that disruption is something which will create a lot of issues when you look at all the countries of the world. It's not only Saudi Arabia, it's something which will happen in France, which will happen in the US, and skilled people will have problems with artificial intelligence, the robots, everything which are currently being created, and which will create a very difficult environment for labor, and this is a question that has to be taken extremely seriously because when you look at the trends, we may have a lot of people out of job, so the first solution is clearly education, and education has to be spread in different ways that's what we see currently. The second aspect is to help the people to be auto entrepreneurs, self-entrepreneurs, and they have to build their own businesses because the large companies will no longer be able to create jobs, and when you look at the current situation, you see that the net between job creation, job destruction is equal when you come to companies, and all the jobs which are created today are with startups and self-entrepreneurs, so this is the only way to build the job for the future. Okay, Holladieu, 30 seconds and we have to wrap. 30 seconds please. On education, I'm an educator, this is very close to my heart. I think it is the key. I think we need to redefine literacy not in terms of ability to read and write, but the ability to quote. I think youngsters need to jump and leapfrog in terms of their ability to be able to cater for the new era. I think we need to re-look into our curriculums in a completely new way that will embrace the digital economy. Okay, we've had that conversation though, what is holding it back? I see some, even the private schools are doing it, but it's not fast enough to the pace of disruption. You'd agree, right? Completely, it's happening. I mean, there's some pretty cool things out there, but it's still tried and error. There's a lot of experiments, which is on one hand extremely exciting, but you're right. The problem, it has not replaced the old system that was kind of for everybody. So it's bits and pieces, but the problem is speed. And the speed of the program, that's different today, what I was trying to say earlier, between disruption today and disruption only 30 years ago, is the speed and the human capacity to adjust to that speed and the government capacity to. And this is critical, and that will have social implication, some good, some bad, but the government will have to take that because the private sector alone, in my view, will not be able to deal with it. Go ahead, Irfan, if you can wrap it quickly, that'd be great. Sure, John, look, I'm an optimist, and I believe that the glass is always half full, not half empty, and therefore I can say, in my opinion, a lot of clarity to young people in the audience and around the region, capital is coming. And the reason capital is coming is because there was a handful of businesses that were providing capital into the startup space and doing a pretty good job in the absence of commitment from large investors. I think that space is changing. As I said, right at the outset, the genie is out of the box. I think that entrepreneurship, innovation, and the opportunity that that creates is now forefront, and I think more and more young people are realizing they can take their future into their own hands. It is not about just defining an entrepreneur as someone who starts an app. And entrepreneur, please remember, is also the guy who is a hawker, is also the guy who has a corner store, is also the person who starts a small business. This is where the opportunity is, and if more and more people do that, and if more capital is available to help that happen, then I think you're going to see governments begin to also take a sigh of relief because when people have money in their hands and in their pockets, they tend not to be disruptive on their own as well. Which is on the problem column, if you don't feel with it. Nice round of applause for the panel and for the questions from the floor. Thank you.