The Arab world has a promising opportunity to promote youth entrepreneurship with nearly half of young Arabs in a recent survey saying they plan to start their own business in the next five years. This entrepreneurial zeal also reflects an increased preference to work for the private sector rather than the government.
These findings and more were revealed in the 15th annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey, the largest study of its kind on the more than 200 million youth in the Arab world. The study,commissioned by ASDA’A BCW, the Middle East and North Africa’s leading communications consultancy and conducted by SixthFactor Consulting, a leading research company.
The survey, which took place from 27 March to 12 April, involved face-to-face interviews with 3,600 young Arabs in the age group 18 to 24 in their homes across 53 cities in 18 Arab states, including for the first time, South Sudan. The interviews were conducted face-to-face rather than online, to maximize accuracy and to reflect the nuances of Arab youth opinion across the region as much as possible.
According to a World Bank report, youth unemployment in the region is one of the highest in the world at over 26 percent, with nearly one in three youth (32%) aged 15 to 24 not engaged in employment, education or training. The United Nations observed that the region must create 33.3 million jobs by 2030 to absorb the large number of young people entering the workforce, a daunting task that governments must take forward with urgency.
Exploring Arab youth attitudes on their future careers, the survey found that 42 percent of young Arab men and women would like to start their own business in the next five years. This desire was strongest in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (53%), followed by the Levant (39%) and North Africa (37%).
GCC youth were also more upbeat about their chances of going into business themselves, with 58 percent saying that starting a business in their country was ‘very easy/somewhat easy’. This compares with 79 percent of youth in the Levant and 73 percent in North Africa who said it was ‘very difficult/somewhat difficult’ to start a business in their country.
According to the research, tax breaks, reduced fees for startups, enhanced training and education, and government-backed loans would encourage more youth to become entrepreneurs. When it comes to their preferred industry for starting their business, 15 percent of the sample named the tech sector, followed by e-commerce (13%), the creative industries (11%), manufacturing (11%), real estate (10%), the food business (9%), and retail, hospitality and education (7% each).
The survey also showed an increasing preference of Arab youth for private sector jobs over a career in government. Compared to nearly half of all respondents in 2019 who said that they preferred to work in the government sector, less than a third (30%) feel the same now. Meanwhile, a third (33%) of Arab youth said they would prefer to work in business, a 13% increase from 2022.
Elaborating on the survey, President of MENA, BCW and Founder of ASDA’A BCW, Sunil John, said: “The fact that Arab youth are eager to start their own business is an encouraging sign, but it is also a natural response to the great difficulty in certain countries to find stable employment.
Policymakers and the business community itself must do more to support those young men and women willing to do it alone.”
“Meanwhile, the increasing diversification of the GCC economies is casting the private sector in a positive new light,” he added. “This is a promising trend for the long-term sustainability of the regional economy and a potential source of jobs and opportunity for Arab youth outside the Arabian Gulf.”
He added, “However, this growing interest in a business career must be matched by companies themselves, with recruitment and career development pathways introduced to empower the region’s rapidly evolving Arab national workforce.”