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  • Top 10 Trends of 2015
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Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015   Regional Challenges: Middle-East & North Africa
Home
Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015   Regional Challenges: Middle-East & North Africa
Home
Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015 Home
  • Report Home
  • Top 10 Trends of 2015
    • 1. Deepening income inequality
    • 2. Persistent jobless growth
    • 3. Lack of leadership
    • 4. Rising geostrategic competition
    • 5. Weakening of representative democracy
    • 6. Rising pollution in the developing world
    • 7. Increasing occurrence of severe weather events
    • 8. Intensifying nationalism
    • 9. Increasing water stress
    • 10. Growing importance of health in the economy
    • Immigration in focus: an overlooked trend?
  • Regional Challenges
    • Regional Challenges: Middle-East & North Africa
    • Regional Challenges: Europe
    • Regional Challenges: Asia
    • Regional Challenges: North America
    • Regional Challenges: Sub-Saharan Africa
    • Regional Challenges: Latin America
    • Tension points: Assessing the state of geopolitics
  • Global leadership and governance
    • A call to lead: the essential qualities for stronger leadership
    • Global Leadership Index
    • New governance architecture: strategies to change the way we lead
    • LGBT: moving towards equality
  • Future Agenda
    • Synthetic biology: Designing our existence?
    • Brain-computer interaction: Transforming our networked future?
    • Deep sea mining: The new resource frontier?
    • Emerging nuclear powers: A safe path to energy security?
    • The evolution of monetary policy: A new era for central banks?
    • Mapping the future: The future of education
    • Mapping the future: The future of work
    • Mapping the future: The future of the internet
  • About this report
    • Welcome
    • Introduction
    • Making the Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015
    • Acknowledgements
  • Browse by Topic
    • Africa
    • Asia-Pacific
    • Brain Research
    • Climate Change
    • Corruption
    • Decarbonizing Energy
    • Economics and Finance
    • Economies
    • Education
    • Emerging Technologies
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    • Latin America
    • Middle East and North Africa
    • Migration
    • North America
    • Nuclear Security
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  • Top 10 Infographics
  • Download as PDF
  • Download Chinese language version as PDF
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Middle East & North Africa | Europe | Asia | North America | Sub-Saharan Africa | Latin America | Tension points: Assessing the state of geopolitics

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  • Economies
  • Middle East and North Africa
  • Employment, Skills and Human Capital

Author

dashti

 

Rola Dashti
Chairman of FARO International, and Vice-Chair of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and North Africa

Author

dashti

 

Rola Dashti
Chairman of FARO International, and Vice-Chair of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and North Africa


The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the region of superlatives: though its workforce has grown at the fastest annual rate in the world (2.7% in the past 10 years), youth unemployment is also the highest, at around 25% of the population. The latter is a persistent problem, and has been identified by our respondents as the biggest challenge MENA faces, alongside the management of political transitions and societal tension.

Dr Rola Dashti, former Kuwaiti Minister of State Planning and Development Affairs, attributes youth unemployment to a dysfunctional education system, inherent skill mismatches, labour market rigidities, and a growing labour force.

“Unfortunately, this demographic asset has become a demographic burden,” Dashti explains. “We need to start working on lowering that growth rate because it’s not going to be affordable
– not only in terms of job creation, but also in terms of the quality of life.”

quoteleft

Our societies are becoming more fragmented, and this needs to be targeted in the form of social and political reforms.

quoteright

Reforms have so far failed to target a more dynamic private sector to jump-start the economy; state institutions currently employ most of the region’s youth. In Jordan and Egypt, the public sector accounts for about 35% of the workforce. In Dashti’s assessment, adequate reforms should ensure sustained job-intensive growth, refocus education and training,
and enhance labour market flexibility.

 “You need to create opportunities for entrepreneurship and be more supportive of small and medium enterprises,” she says. “We need to have policies that support the growth of private sector investment and ensure this growth is distributed to the masses.”

Key Challenges

Highlight

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MENA’s authorities must find a way to foster entrepreneurial spirit

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MENA’s authorities must find a way to foster entrepreneurial spirit
MENA’s authorities must find a way to foster entrepreneurial spirit – but to do this, the public must be convinced that they will directly benefit from a healthier private sector. As things stand, many citizens believe that private sector growth will come at their expense.

“In general, the people of the region are not seeing a bright future. They’re seeing a lack of opportunity to succeed, lower strands of quality of life, and then this is causing society to become more broken.”

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There may be a direct correlation between social despair and the rise of sectarianism across MENA

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There may be a direct correlation between social despair and the rise of sectarianism across MENA
Dashti further believes that there is a direct correlation between this social despair and the rise of sectarianism across the region.

“Our societies are becoming more fragmented, and this needs to be targeted in the form of social and political reforms that need to be worked in conjunction with policies of economic reform.”

While countries across MENA have their own specific issues to confront, Dashti also notes the tendency for problems in individual nations to spill over and affect their immediate neighbours, as seen recently in Syria and Iraq. She is therefore in favour of complementary region-wide initiatives encouraging socio-political stability and regional trade.

“While internal reforms remain an important issue, regional investment trade and projects will help support the stability of nations. Projects that are shared among regional countries are important because these are huge investments which can prolong and create jobs at the same time as creating mobility of wealth and resources.”

These initiatives could ultimately create the stability that MENA needs.

“We’ve already seen revolutions in some countries, and others are at stake,” says Dashti. “If we do not take serious actions of reform, social unrest will follow.”

Governments and businesses ranked Persistent youth unemployment lower than other stakeholders: 



The number one challenge for the business sector is managing political transitions
The number one challenge for the government sector is societal tensions

Source: Survey on the Global Agenda 2014

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