Why wait for reforms?

Yusuf Mansur

Economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa started almost two decades ago with little to show in terms of results or progress. Governance is still an issue in most Arab states, yet we still speak of institutional reforms and issue initiatives faster than the speed of thought while our knowledge components suffer from the numbness of the states.

It is time for a knowledge society and knowledge industries to take a non-state dependent route. Creative people, in Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world, enabled by the fast connecting digital world, should no longer wait for the reformers to reform; they must chart their own path, possibly via the Internet.

Let’s look at some facts: within the next minute, one billion people will use the Internet; 2,777,000 video clips will be downloaded on YouTube; the Internet society is the largest congregation of human beings ever; the world is sending 165 million e-mails a day; you can learn any discipline on the Internet, and mostly free, as some of the world’s best universities are putting not only their curricula but also their courses on the web; India’s major export is no longer gemstones and jewellery but human capital and its product; if each Indian working overseas sends $100 per week to India, the total sum will exceed one-third of India’s total exports; current students at universities will change jobs 38 times before they are 38 years old; and half of what students learn in their first year will become outdated by the time they reach the third year.

Now to our neck of the woods: in the Arab world, there are 320 million people, but only 1 percent of the Internet content is in Arabic; we need to create 5 million new jobs per year to maintain our current 15.5 per cent unemployment rate; the cost of youth unemployment in 11 Arab countries costs their economies $25 billion; half of Arab women can neither read nor write; the majority of Arab countries are unable to provide basic education; mortality of children below the age of 5 is 60 deaths per 1,000 births, while the average is 6 per 1,000 in the developed countries.

Information technology has brought about new means and mechanisms for obtaining knowledge. So if one has an idea, one no longer needs to wait for the education system to reform and for ailing budgets to establish libraries or learning centres. Sure, having them would be nice, but all the libraries of the world are at one’s fingertips.

Maktoob, Rubicon and Jeeran, among others, have showed us that we don’t need to wait for the guys at the top to act. By the time the leaders get their act together, we may be all dead, and by the time they finally decide to act, our children will be dead; and when they finally implement what is necessary, our grandchildren will be dead, possibly of broken hearts because the leaders got it all wrong, acted too late and simply didn’t know how to implement what they thought they understood.

So, if you don’t want to wait, start with an idea for something that people need, keep costs down, grow at a pace commensurate with the market and your strategy, work hard, learn from failures and stick with what you know you love to do for a long enough time to deepen your competitive advantage, and you will have a winner. In fact, you will one day come to compete with the big guys in the big-guy countries and never have to look back or attempt to elicit some reform from those who over promised and under delivered.

The best development theories call for increasing the productivity of labour and capital of the citizen. If the states cannot do it, one should be able to increase his/her own productivity. With the Internet, all one needs is a connection and the free world will grant access and engagement when one’s own country fails to realise that a knowledge economy requires first and foremost freedom of choice and thought, access and engagement. Hence, the new development paradigm can be customised according to one’s own development path.

Each of us can chart his/her own development path and reach any market without worrying about forbidding customs rules, taxation without representation, bankrupt monetary and fiscal policies, diminished competitiveness of one’s country, and complex, hardship-ridden business environments. The trick is not to wait. Do your thing and if you want the freedom to choose, go online!

*Published in the JORDAN TIMES on Nov. 3, 2009.