Sustainable Entrepreneurship Underway in the Middle East and North Africa

Authors

• Guy Morgan

  Former Director, Advisory Services, BSR

I recently had the opportunity to speak at a session on financing sustainable entrepreneurship during a unique “un”-Conference in Cologne, Germany, on future lifestyles and sustainable entrepreneurship. I joined experts from the socially responsible investment world, impact investors, and serial entrepreneurs to talk about availability of funds and how to mobilize more capital for the creation of new sustainable enterprises.

I shared our thinking on entrepreneurship coming out of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region—based on our recent study for the International Finance Corporation on sustainable investment trends in the region. While seven minutes was a short amount of time to talk about a complex topic, I was able to offer the following:

• The pool of capital in the MENA region devoted to sustainable investing is approximately US$17 billion, broken out across sovereign wealth funds, private equity, and foreign investments. While this amount is relatively small (approximately 0.67 percent of current assets under management) it is growing and will likely grow significantly over the next few years as sustainability becomes more mainstream. Indeed, this is critical given the issues faced by the region, including food security, water stress, climate change, and youth development.
• While it is difficult to determine the amount of money currently being funneled into sustainable entrepreneurship, it’s clear that the region is fostering growth in this area, particularly in the Gulf States. Governments are putting innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development at the heart of their national development strategies; newly built science and technology universities (such as KAUST in Saudi Arabia) include entrepreneurship courses;  companies are establishing R&D centers in free trade zones next to leading international educational institutions that teach entrepreneurship; and foundations are offering grants and running competitions with a social or environmental dimension for young entrepreneurs.

The indications are that the next few years will be an exciting time for sustainable entrepreneurship in the MENA region. The drive to create new, high-value jobs in the private sector and employ the large number of youth entering the labor force will collide with the very real sustainability challenges related to human, social, economic, and environmental development in the region. Those in the developed world will have an opportunity to learn from some of the sustainability innovations being tried, tested, and scaled by a cadre of youthful entrepreneurs. I will be watching carefully—will you?