An additional 100 million young Arabs will be cast onto the international job market within the next 20 years, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Arab youth should be looked on as an economic asset and a potential agent for positive change – it’s certainly how they see themselves.

Currently the Middle East region is experiencing an unprecedented “youth bulge”, with around 32% of its population between the ages of 15 and 29 years of age, representing over 100m people and the highest ratio of youth to adults in the region’s history. These young people face a unique series of challenges to secure a stake in their society but perhaps the greatest test they will confront as a group is that of securing employment. A series of regional and global initiatives are aiming to ensure these challenges become, rather than an excuse for hand wringing and despair, a real opportunity for progress in unleashing a Middle Eastern-generated dynamism that will propel the world into a new and exciting era of change and development.

The international community as a whole is confronting the challenge of meeting the employment needs of present and future generations but the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region must start from the back, given that it already has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the world. Creating sufficient jobs over the next two decades to allow young people to participate fully in their society – as members of the national workforce, as husbands, wives and eventually parents providing for families of their own – is the most difficult challenge the region will face in the early decades of the 21st century. True, the prospect of mass unemployment in the region is a daunting one but the other side of the same coin presents us with a demographic window of opportunity. Economies that elect to enable policies in support of young people now could find themselves supporting sustained economic growth in the years ahead. As Europe and the West confront the prospect of increasingly ageing populations, the reverse will be true for the MENA states.

Fortunately, Arab governments have been efficient in identifying the key issues and setting in train a series of programmes and initiatives to aid the progress of future development to meet the challenges as they arise. The World Economic Forum has given its wholehearted backing to supporting a series of global education initiatives and the launch of regional programmes by The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (UAE), Silatech (Qatar) and various others, are recording impressive progress. A meeting held in Doha in June 2009 marked the first anniversary of the launch of the Silatech organisation with the publication of a report, in cooperation with Gallup, and a conference to track the organisation’s achievements over the past 12 months and outline its aspirations. Its co-founder – with husband, the Emir Sheikh Hamed Al Thani a key supporter, and Qatar’s first lady, Sheikha Mouza Bint Nasser al Misnad – welcomed over 300 participants to the Qatari capital for the event.


SkillsInvest 2009
A lively and informative one-day conference organised by The Middle East magazine and held at Dubai’s Knowledge Village in mid-June drew panelists and speakers from around the world to debate the hot topic of growth through education in the Arab World. The Qatari influence was in evidence here too in the presence of Sheikha Aisha Bint Faleh Bin Nasser Al Thani , a member of Qatar’s Supreme Education Council – the country’s highest education authority – who gave a keynote speech on the role regional youth would be expected to play in the future and the importance of readying them for the task.

The SkillsInvest event – sponsored by Dubai Knowledge Village, Dubai Internet City, Shell and the Dubai School of Government – included an eclectic blend of speakers from men and women representing government, the public and private sectors, corporate think-tanks and academia, as well as successful entrepreneurs. With lively debate the order of the day, the topic of ‘Entrepreneurs: Are they born or made?’ was guaranteed to become a heated one. The words of Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, were noted. Schwab said: "Entrepreneurship and education are two such extraordinary opportunities that need to be leveraged and interconnected if we are to develop the human capital required for building the societies of the future. Entrepreneurship is the engine fuelling innovation, employment generation and growth. Only by creating an environment where entrepreneurship can prosper and where entrepreneurs can try new ideas and empower others can we ensure that many of the world’s issues will not go unaddressed.”

Another topic, among many, on which panellists and participants locked horns, was the issue of the mismatch of skills that exists in the Middle East region. It is often felt that too much emphasis is placed on the more traditional degrees in subjects, for example, such as medicine and law and not enough on more contemporary disciplines such as IT or even the acquisition of skills that would fall into the category of vocational training. “What good is a society in which there are three trained doctors to every patient but nobody capable of fixing the plumbing?” demanded one eager member of the audience. This point was enthusiastically addressed by Dr Simon Jones, director of Abu Dhabi Men’s College, who pointed out that as long as Arab society was fixated on earning the more traditional type of degree, individual students would remain so. And, Dr Jones went on, it is for the individual to set the level and direction of his or her aspirations, no one else. SkillsInvest also looked at the role of technology in education; the energy sector; ICT and issues pertaining to banking and finance.