Startups in MENA are ready to take up critical challenges
MENA (Middle East and North Africa), at the crossroads of major challenges
The increase of the population of MENA from 127 million in 1970 to about 355 million in 2016 explains that today the youth represents about 30% of the population.
The implications of the demography in this region are critical and raise huge challenges, including:
- Employment. The job market struggles to absorb this new workforce and the unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world. In some countries, more than one young out of two young people, especially recent graduates, are without job. Therefore the need to create new opportunities is critical.
- Services. The infrastructures and “basic” services such as water management, electricity, education and health have faced very fast growing needs.
Startups are ready to deal with these challenges
In order to tackle these challenges, some young people have created their own jobs, using the Internet and new technologies to have a strong social impact. SeedsStars Summit, world’s Biggest Startup Competition in emerging Markets has selected some of them.
In addition, it is enthralling to notice that most of the competitors have decided to deal with some basic services by finding solutions in Edtech and Ehealth.
Even though health and education can be sectors with high barriers to entry, the young innovators have imagined new ways to innovate in these fields, through sustainable and inspiring models which have concrete impact.
What are their startups?
Ed-Tech, digital platforms to improve education
Tutorama, in Cairo, is an educational platform to connect parents with pre vetted tutors. It gives them the opportunity to schedule and pay for sessions. In addition parents can monitor their child’s progress online.
In the United Arab Emirates, Asafeer is an Arabic digital library and platform with quality cost efficient and trackable resources for reading in Arabic. It allows the monitoring of pre-school and primary stage student’s readings by giving a track of the progress and problems faced by school students.
E-Health, new technologies to serve health system
In order to overcome basic communication barriers between deaf and non deaf people and improve the independence of the deaf community in our society, Mind Rockets from Jordan develops assistive technologies. It uses avatars to deliver text and speech to sign language translation services on smartphones, smart TVs, Youtube Plugin…etc. Mind Rockets won the public vote award at Seedstars Summit* in 2017.
In Algeria , Dalil has developed an object recognition and navigation system for visually impaired people. It is composed of camera linked to a mobile application that allows blind people to detect and recognizes objects.
Democrance, from United Arab Emirates, aims to democratize insurance by making it accessible to the lower-income population of MENA via their mobile phone. This service is based on the observation that the population that needs protection the most has historically been overlooked by insurance
In Qatar and all over the MENA region, doctors struggle to build patient base and brand awareness due to the turnover in the healthcare systems because of the numbers of expatriates. To resolve this issue Meddy proposes an online platform for patients to find reviews on doctors from other patients. Moreover, doctors can advert online to reach the relevant target.
B-to-B services with high value proposition
Alongside these startups in EdTech and E Health, SeedStars Summit has enlightened new services such as MakerBrane, a physical and digital platform that lets anyone design, build, and sell nicel toys using stuff they already have.
In Tunisia, Evey offers an online survey/votes platform that helps engaging, understanding audiences in real time with advanced decision analytics.
2nate is the leading crowdfunding platform in Iran that helps social activists and entrepreneurs to raise money for their goals.
An ecosystem with a high potential: the cultural challenge
MENA enjoys a strategic geographic location between Europe, Africa and Asia and has a more and more trained youth. The start ups mentioned above are the proof that the the scope of possibilities of this ecosystem is huge!
Nevertheless, according to SeedStars Index Methodology in 2015, when it comes to quality, maturity and future potential of its ecosystem, MENA has the 2nd lowest result of the 5 regions (CEE, LATAM, Asia, Africa, MENA). Indeed, there are strong cultural barriers and a strong fear of failure. For instance, as Kamran Elahian, innovation catalyst, underlines in his talk at SeedsStars Summit, young people are facing big family pressure.
Moreover, the investors are still more likely to invest in traditional and offline businesses.
That’s why initiatives such as Seedstars which strengthen ecosystem and raise awareness among investors to trust these new entrepreneurs are crucial. Innovations have the opportunity to tackle a part of the challenges of our century. Consequently, time to notice that:
“The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.” (Malek Zuaiter, Mind Rockets )
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*Seedstars Summit 2017 took place on April 6 and gather 70+ startups from the fast growing startup hubs around the world compete for equity investment of up to $1,000,000.
Article written for We_Start
Fanny Dauchez
@Fanny_Dauchez
Sources
http://www.worldbank.org/en/region/mena/overview#1
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/news/18iht-oxan.0118.4250941.html
