Dubai, United Arab Emirates – On May 4th and 5th of this year, the Arab Business Angels Network will host an entrepreneurs/investors workshop and matchmaking event at the Dubai International Financial Center.
The event is being described as a chance to explore both entrepreneurship strategies and opportunities with up-and-coming businesses in the region, with speakers ranging from Anthony Clarke of GLE Growth Capital to Michael Blakey of Avonmore Developments Ltd. A key part of the happening will involve the actual entrepreneur pitches.
Angel investing is a relatively new phenomenon in the Middle East, and it will be fascinating to see whether or not the concept takes off.
Certainly Dubai, with its present position as the financial capital of the region, appears to be the prime location for such an event.
One of the most common criticisms of the annual World’s Most Influential Arabs List is how deliberately apolitical and therefore unhelpful the exercise is.
It’s an assessment that goes to the root of modern critiques of capitalism: the idea that money is power and if you don’t have it, you don’t matter. However, I need to point out that ranking political capital in the Arab world is not particularly inspiring or exciting, if the news are to be believed.
When I was studying in the United States, I noticed that many people who criticized capitalism did not have a concrete alternative to offer, unless “let’s live in a commune, grow our own potatoes, and go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground” counts as an alternative. In the Arab world, by contrast, critics of capitalism are too ready to jump in bed with religious fundamentalists.
Suddenly, an outhouse sounds more and more appealing. Read More »
I was quite happy the other days to have received a call from a long time friend whose news I had not had for at least a year. After the usual exchanges, he switched to a slightly more ironic tone and said: “The main reason for my call is to shake you out of your pessimism about the evolution of world poverty. According to the latest figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the world poverty rate has fallen dramatically. You should rejoice.”
Indeed, there is nothing that I would have liked better but for my suspicion about how international institutions, dominated by ideologues, interpret data; although the IMF is not the worst of the lot.
The first questions that came to me were: How was “poverty” defined, by how much had the rate fallen, were the numerous pockets of poverty in rich countries included, etc. Of course, the need for answers drove me straight to the figures to which my friend referred.
Read More »
The international community has grown accustomed to the fact that economic growth between countries and regions will always be unequal, yet it is more and more uneasy with the “gap” in average incomes between rich and poor countries. That gap also bodes only embarrassment for the proponents of globalization.
So, they would rather stress a diminution of the “proportion” of the world poor. Indeed, they remind us at every opportunity that, contrary to the claims of the alter-globalizers, the world economic situation has never been so good, because world poverty is retreating. The issue as to whether or not world poverty is decreasing or increasing must now be put in the proper perspective, if we do not want to see it buried in linguistic conundrums. Read More »
January 1, 2000 – 4:40 am
Call me old fashioned, but I believe in Arab unity. Yes, I know all the counter-arguments that are the norm these days in every dinner party in every corner of the Arab world. Arab unity, many “pragmatist” Arabs love to proclaim, is just a dream that was shattered by the failure of the Pan-Arab project in the 1950′s and 1960′s, culminating in the defeat of 1967, and, more recently, by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. here are a multitude of responses that can be made to such claims. I can point out that Arab unity is not some fancy idea that blows in the direction of every passing political event; it is an issue of identity rooted in language and history, two of the most important constituents of nationhood. But, more importantly, the pitch for Arab Unity in the 21st century must be economic. Read More »
