Entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa: Opening the Floodgates

Abstract

value and jobs. It is also clear that no more critical a goal exists in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region than creating stability and common prosperity through the long-term employment—and positive deployment—of youth. Studies make extensive connections between entrepreneurial activity and economic development, and a 2010 report by the Kauffman Foundation makes explicit the role of start-ups in job creation. The study specifically states, “Startups are not everything when it comes to job creation. They are the only thing.” Related Kauffman studies from the U.S. (see Kane, 2010) provide conclusive evidence that start-ups account for a substantial proportion of all net job creation. Mapped onto domestic and/or regional recession, further evidence suggests that job creation in the start-up segment remains consistent in economic downturns, whereas larger businesses are more adversely affected by the cyclical economic factors typical to the boom/bust cycle. Finally, in a 2009 study by Litan and Stangler, Kauffman concludes that two-thirds of new jobs come from firms that are between one and five years old. It is clear that emerging and developing economies are impacted by similar dynamics, based on evidence from Brazil, Jordan, and other entrepreneur-centric economies (Ali et al, 2010; Castanhar, Dias, and Dias, 2008), in that entrepreneurship stimulus and growth metrics in such places supersedes even the pace of startup activity in the U.S. Mapped onto the above dynamics, it is also possible to gain insight from studies such as the Startup Genome Report (Marmer, Herrmann, & Berman, 2011) as to how and why start-ups succeed, thereby creating an effective framework to facilitate such success. Projects such as Oasis 500 in Jordan have (with some early suc-