Arab startups take spotlight at World Economic Forum

DEAD SEA, JORDAN — Digital startups run by young Arab entrepreneurs took center stage Saturday at the World Economic Forum, where participants said private-sector-driven growth is key to solving the Middle East’s stark economic problems, including 30 percent youth unemployment.

More than 1,100 politicians and business people came together for the forum’s regional meeting. Among them were EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, CEOs from the region and the founders of 100 startups from the Arab world.

The forum’s regional meeting was held as President Donald Trump, whose young administration is engulfed in controversy, began his fifirst international trip with a visit to Saudi Arabia.

Mogherini said that Europe does “not see eye to eye” with the Trump administration on major issues such as trade, climate change and funding of U.N. agencies, but can “easily” work with the U.S. on the conflflicts in Syria and between Israelis and Palestinians.

Europe’s top diplomat warned that threatened U.S. cuts in funding U.N. agencies or humanitarian work “would create a major security issue worldwide, including in Europe.”

The Syria refugee crisis has highlighted the link between aid and security. Hundreds of thousands of civil war refugees have migrated to Europe after facing increasingly diffificult conditions in regional host countries, where cashstrapped aid agencies have struggled to provide basic support.

I r a q i P r e s i d e n t F u a d Masum called on investors to help his country with reconstruction efffffffffffforts, particularly in Mosul, which was overrun by Islamic State extremists in 2014.

Masu m s a i d h e h o p e s Mosul will be liberated “in the next few days,” adding that “our country is open to all investors.”

He has described the scope of destruction in Mosul as “horrendous.”

On the business side, participants said the region’s governments and institutions must provide a nurturing environment for entrepreneurs, including access to fifinancing.

Khaled Biyari, the CEO of the Saudi Telecom Company, said the region’s young population — two-thirds are under the age of 30 — can drive the transformation.

Moving to a digital economy “can allow the region and the countries in thi s region to leapfrog,” Biyari said. “They don’t have to go back and do what other developed nations have (done).”

For some entrepreneurs from countries in conflflict, the challenges of doing business are much more basic.

Hussein Ahmed, one of the startup founders attending the conference, has begun exporting coffffffffffffee from warwracked Yemen to the U.S. through his company Mocha Hunters. But his efffffffffffforts are complic ated by frequent power outages in his troubled war-torn homeland.

“To process the coffee you need machines, and machines work with electricity,” he said. “Can you imagine running a business without electricity?”