Events

On Saturday, September 8, the AUIS Entrepreneurship Initiative (AEI) hosted the Dutch Consul General in Erbil Willem Cosijn; Second Secretary of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Baghdad Martijn Groen; Senior Policy Officer of the Department of Sustainable Economic Development, Nathalie Gonçalves Aurélio; Policy Officer of Netherlands Enterprise Agency, Sabrina Waltmans; and Policy Officer of the Netherlands Consulate General, Aram Abdallah for a discussion on entrepreneurship, innovation, and private sector growth in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Participants included entrepreneurs, investors, and private sector advocates from Asia Hawala, Kurdistan Economic Development Organization, Five One Labs, Mercy Corps, Zain Iraq, and various local startups.

The conversation started with a question posed by Pat Cline, Director of the Entrepreneurship Initiative, about what is needed to sustain economic growth in the KRI and Iraq and how different institutions, including the government, academia, and private sector can contribute to growth. With specific regard to agriculture--a focus area of the Dutch Private Sector Development plan for Iraq--Daban Najmadeen, a representative from the Sulaimani Chamber of Commerce, commented on potential growth areas in the cultivation and export of Kurdish agricultural goods such as wheat, nuts, and pomegranates. He noted that the Chamber of Commerce has made efforts to contract international companies to develop the sector.

Ava Nadir, a representative from Zain Iraq, countered that while exports are important, there should also be efforts to have a sustainable domestic market, particularly in regard to food production. For example, despite the potential for trade between northern and southern Iraq, given the pomegranates in the KRI and fishing industry in Basra, there have been few efforts to promote intra-Iraq trade. In addition to the lack of investment in domestic production, there are a number of financial and bureaucratic barriers that deter innovation in agriculture, as well as entrepreneurship and small business growth as a whole.

The weakness of the banking sector deters both domestic and foreign investment, and the procedures for establishing a business are extremely lengthy and unclear. The registration process in particular requires multiple signatures from different ministries, and can be quite time intensive and expensive for entrepreneurs. According to Hussam Barznji of Kurdistan Economic Development Organization, there needs to be a centralized government agency or mechanism by which potential business owners can efficiently register businesses. Such a mechanism would increase the transparency and accountability of bureaucratic institutions and reduce the time needed to establish a business.

Furthermore, the discussion focused on the myriad of legal difficulties that exist beyond the weak banking system and difficulties of registration procedures. The system by which copyrights are enforced and intellectual property protected is weak and in many cases, nonexistent--a reality that contributes to a general lack of trust in forming business partnerships and bringing ideas to market. The discussion led to a further exploration of the many failures of the legal system to protect consumer rights in the buying of goods and food quality in the supply chain. The participants determined that in addition to legal reform in the registration process, there is a need for additional reforms to protect consumers and the quality of agricultural goods.

The discussion ultimately concluded with an assessment similar to that of previous discussions: that entrepreneurs willing to not only take the risk of difficult registration procedures and a poor legal framework, but also push for bureaucratic change at the local government level, are likely to drive positive change in Iraq’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.

On Monday, March 12, the AUIS Entrepreneurship Initiative hosted the event, “Assessing Women’s Entrepreneurial Potential in the Aftermath of the Kuwait Conference” as a follow-up to the inaugural IRIS Dialogues held the previous day. The event was designed to be an open discussion to share ideas about increasing women’s participation in Iraq’s entrepreneurship sector.

The discussion was led by Christina Andreassen, Business Development and Education Manager at WOMENA, a Dubai-based angel investment platform geared toward female entrepreneurs in the MENA region; Aziz Al-Nasiri, CEO of Noah’s Ark, an online initiative to foster entrepreneurship in Iraq; and Zahra Shah, Program Manager at Iraq re:coded, a humanitarian startup that trains conflict affected youth with tech and entrepreneurship skills. It also included input from a range of female entrepreneurs, including Hero Mohammad (Helena Hub), Ghareba Hussain (Nujin), Fatima Muhammad (Tech Teens), Talar Noore (World Wide Business Management), and Ava Nadir (Zain Iraq), in addition to representatives of NGOs and the private sector.

The discussion began with an overview of the entrepreneurial scene in the UAE and obstacles and opportunities to applying aspects of the model there to entrepreneurship and women’s participation in Iraq. The discussion fostered a debate about the unique challenges Iraqis and particularly female Iraqi entrepreneurs face and how they can be overcome using existing models or locally developed solutions.

According to the participants, female entrepreneurs in Iraq face a twofold challenge: one in navigating the issues that affect growth of the entrepreneurial sector as a whole and one in overcoming the gap between men and women’s participation in entrepreneurship. Despite high rates of education, especially among women, Iraq faces systemic issues including a lack of  middle class, limited use of the latest technology and an education system that fails to foster innovative ideas, brain drain, difficulties in financing, ethical issues such as corruption, lack of customized training programs relevant to Iraqi issues, and cultural issues such as risk aversion and hesitancy to work in teams.

One female entrepreneur sensed people felt a lack of trust toward women, and another noted that she had hired a male CEO because she thought he would attract more business. While some gender-specific issues impeding women’s participation can be alleviated through a variety of outreach and advocacy campaigns through media and education, the government and private sector needed to take active roles in making the ecosystem more amenable toward entrepreneurship broadly and female entrepreneurs specifically. In particular, reforms to investment laws, the establishment of venture funds and coworking spaces, and coordination between government ministries, banks, private sector actors, and chambers of commerce to improve private sector conditions could make a difference in the lives of entrepreneurs. In addition, requirements that entrepreneurs have a sponsor (kafeel) to start their own business and lengthy bureaucratic procedures to acquire a loan are just two examples of potential areas of reform.

Given the short length of the discussion, the participants decided that the best way to continue fostering a more entrepreneurship-friendly private sector with greater opportunities for women was to maintain a sustained dialogue in the aftermath of the roundtable.

Special thanks to Womena for partnering with us on their Women of MENA Campaign and raffling off tickets to two of our participants for the STEP Conference held in Dubai from March 28-29.