Fadi Ghandour
The Age of Timidity Is Gone
Address delivered at the Skoll World Forum
Oxford, U.K.
April 1, 2011
For decades, bad news has crowned us in the Arab world, much like an epitaph on
a tombstone. And it is the very sad story of squandered youth that stands at the
heart of our region’s epic tale of failure:
• 40 percent of youth hugging the walls in Algeria,
• 24 percent in Egypt,
• 30 percent in Tunisia,
• 27 percent in Jordan,
• 39 percent in Saudi Arabia,
• 30 percent in Syria,
• 46 percent in Gaza…
And when they do finally find work, the pay is lousy, job security is nonexist-
ent, and the working conditions are dismal.
All this, and I haven’t even begun to pick at the other problems that plague us:
• Rich and poor living galaxies apart
• Endemic corruption
• Withering environments
• Deeply entrenched discrimination against women
• Pervasive abuse of civil rights
A people on the cusp of disaster, you might say, or revolution
Well, barely two months ago, I thought I would be standing here today to talk
to you about Arab civil societies in quiet action for change—a story I’ve been
telling for a while now to anyone who cared enough to listen.
Fadi Ghandour is the Founder and CEO of Aramex, a global logistics and transporta-
tion solutions provider. Ghandour is also the Founder of Ruwwad for Development, a
private sector-led initiative that is engaging youth to empower disadvantaged commu-
nities. He is a founding partner of Maktoob, the world’s largest Arab online commu-
nity, and serves on the boards of Business for Social Responsibility, National
Microfinance Bank Jordan, Abraaj Capital, Endeavor Jordan and S.S. Olayan School
of Business at the American University of Beirut.
© 2011 Fadi Ghandour
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Fadi Ghandour
As you can imagine, it was a hard sell. In the sight of a region that seemed at a
standstill, paralyzed by too many traumas and brought low by heartbreak, the ver-
dict everywhere against our civil societies seemed as fair as it was cruel.
Worn out!
Feeble!
Stuck!
And then, Tunisians and Egyptians spoke in passionate unison.
So, I actually do get to say it in my lifetime: Vindication at last!
Vindication because what we are witnessing this very minute, here and now,
did not actually happen on a whim. It happened because our civil societies finally
turned out to be more alive, more vibrant, more confident, and—yes—more furi-
ous than many of us thought they were.
Vindication because, of all the calls for change, the most powerful has been the
one for citizenship.
Vindication because behind the rage of it all—the collective cry for freedom,
for jobs, for better pay, for security, for dignity, really—behind this collective cry
for change stands the hard toil of Arab activists.
Activists of all colors, rich and poor, men and women, from within the labor
movements and without, professionals and vegetable vendors, bloggers and field
organizers . . .
A mass of activists who have shown us that the flipside of the famous Arab
deficits cited in the UNDP’s Arab Human Development Report is none other than
empowerment.
And if the youth in the Arab World have shown us anything in these past two
months, it is that pain and dispossession can beget change of the most dignified
kind, that when time bombs explode, the results sometimes can be unusually
inspiring.
They have shown us that they are actually avid readers and tuned in:
• 86 percent of them are connected to the Internet
• 65 percent are connected to social media
• 18 percent read blogs
They have shown us that women may have been left behind and out by the
Arab system, but that they are at the forefront of change.
They have shown us that they have an enduring desire for democracy.
They are also telling us now, as many surveys confirm, that they prefer to work
in the private sector, and that in fact half of those aged 18 to 24 intend to start their
own business in the next five years.
They are telling us that they have a growing sense of global citizenship . . .
We, in the private sector, are indeed very lucky, because we, especially the
entrepreneurs amongst us, know how to turn uncertainty into opportunity and
transform enthusiasm into tangible achievement.
We know that this fervor in the Middle East is just as much about societies
wanting a better life as they do better governance.
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The Age of Timidity Is Gone
And we know that our companies’ healthy bottom line is a sham if it is
divorced from our communities’ well-being.
But, truthfully, for far too long, we have been conservative, reactive, even fear-
ful, playing second fiddle to governments and walking in the distant shadow of
civil society. Almost always, we have been the most vocal apologists for the status
quo.
The age of timidity is gone.
The Arab world is at a cross-
roads and the choices we make are
of profound consequence.
The age of timidity is gone.
The Arab world is at a
crossroads and the choices
we make are of profound
consequence.
Ladies and gentlemen, on May
6, 1954, 3,000 spectators gathered at
the Iffley Road Track here, in
Oxford, for the annual match
the Amateur Athletic
between
Association and Oxford University.
A dreary, cold, windy day, a very
lucky crowd . . . for they were about
to witness Roger Bannister break
the impossible four-minute mile, a feat once deemed by the American scientist G.
P. Meade as beyond “the realm of reason.”
Bannister’s time: 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
Only six weeks later, his own record would be beaten by the Australian John
Landy, at 3 minutes 57.9 seconds. Since then, 18 new records have been reached.
Roger Bannister always comes to my mind when I think of the magnificent
power of role models and of activists and social entrepreneurs in our part of the
world.
Social entrepreneurs, like Maher Kaddoura, a businessman who, after the trag-
ic loss of his son in a car accident, worked relentlessly for safer roads in Jordan
rather than wait for the government to do so. In three years, the results are
astounding: a 32 percent drop in fatalities from traffic accidents and a massive 46
percent drop in serious injuries.
We have Yasmina Abu Youssef, who established Khatawat, a vocational and
academic school for truants in Izzbeit Khairrallah, one of Cairo’s countless hap-
hazard slum areas where close to half of the capital’s 17 million population live.
We have role models like Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury, who created
Maktoob, the leading Arab online portal, and paved the way for the Arab web
industry, inspiring a whole generation of web entrepreneurs.
We have people who have created networks for mentorship, like Habib
Haddad, who launched YallaStartup in Lebanon, a boot camp, which brings
together highly motivated developers, graphic designers, product experts, start-up
enthusiasts, marketing gurus, and artists for a 54-hour event that builds commu-
nities, companies, and projects.
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Fadi Ghandour
We have none other than Soraya Salti, who empowers through education. Injaz
al Arab, her organization, instills entrepreneurial skills and a deep sense of business
ethics in youth at schools and universities across the Middle East and North Africa.
And then we have us at Ruwwad, a group of business entrepreneurs who decid-
ed to venture into social entrepreneurship and bring our skills, resources, and net-
works to the Arab world’s downtrodden and forgotten. Ruwwad al Tanmiah,
Entrepreneurs for Development, is a private sector-led model that puts entrepre-
neurship at the service of community development and empowerment. A youth-
centric model at heart that offers education to economically and socially margin-
alized youth in exchange for community service. A model that taps into the
resources of the community itself, thereby unleashing its creativity and generosity
in finding solutions for its problems. A model that believes in people power and
nurtures grassroots leadership.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have shared with you tiny, wonderful vignettes of
Arab civil society hard at work in the service of the people.
I don’t know what life has in store for us around the corner. But I am certain
that we, the entrepreneurs of the region, must do our part in shaping it into some-
thing infinitely better than it was in the years that, thankfully, are now behind us.
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