Arabian Bytes
MEV provides analysis in Monocle magazine’s article, Arabian bytes.
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The rocky crags of Jordan may be better known for Petra and the Dead Sea than they are for technology start-ups, but Amman, Jordan’s capital, is on the edge of a tech boom as the internet takes off in the Middle East.
“Jordan is ripe with talent, as its entrepreneurs are tech-savvy, cutting edge, and are blessed to be forced to focus on competing in regional and global markets as the local market is small,” says Emile Cubeisy, managing director of IV Holdings, a venture capital firm.
The greatest success so far for Jordan has been Yahoo!’s acquisition, this summer, of the Amman-based internet firm maktoob.com. The high profile buy-out is expected to lead the way for a wave of western investment in the city’s nascent internet industry.
Jordan began investing in ICT (information and communication technologies) 10 years ago and it’s gone from having virtually zero internet access in 1999, to having one of the region’s highest internet penetration rates today, at 26 per cent, according to the Jordanian Ministry of ICT. Funds have been pumped into universities, a corporate park and a start-up incubator and Princess Sumaya University for Technology, in Amman, is now the Middle East’s leading technical university.
The ICT sector is also contributing meaningfully to Jordan’s economy, with revenues of $2.1bn (€1.4bn) in 2008. Nowhere in the Arab world does ICT contribute so significantly to economic growth as it does in Jordan. It’s a case of having decided to make the best of its lot. Located between “Iraq and a hard place”, as King Abdullah II puts it, the country has one of the smallest populations in the region (6.3 million) and one of the lowest GDPs per capita ($5,100/€3,470). By no stretch of the imagination is Jordan a wealthy Arab nation. But its strategy of making up in brainpower for what it lacks in hydrocarbon reserves is just beginning to pay off. Watch this space.
