Baghdad's "Irrational Optimists"

Where do you see Fikra Space in the next 5 years?

In the next 5 years we hope to create Iraq’s first accelerator programme and we want to have a group of startups and graduate at least 10 startups per year, and see them through to becoming successful Iraqi companies. To seed those ideas, not to own them or create them ourselves, but to help people that have these kind of ideas to get started and get on with them and develop them further.

In the next five years we will see a range of successful start ups, we will graduate at least 2-3 batches of start ups, and show people abroad who might be interested in investing, that it is possible and there are things to invest in. We want to show people that Iraqi youth are very ambitious and want to create opportunities for themselves. And we want to harness that ingenuity, because we think that Iraqi minds are brilliant.

From each bad situation there is a good outcome. Why? Because Iraq has been through decades of bureaucracy, sanctions and war, but it has also made the people more resilient and innovative, tackling challenges themselves. So we think if we can just give the youth a little push, they will be able to do great things.

If you go back say, 10 years, you see suspicion from some segments of Iraqi society towards the internet. No doubt some of that is still there. But are attitudes changing?

Yes. If you go to any place in downtown Baghdad everyone is connected to the internet, everyone is on their phone. There was a recent Gallup poll in March 2015 and it showed that 50% of the respondents have access to internet at home, 40% of respondents had used the internet in the last week.

So attitudes are changing--nowadays it is not new anymore, everyone is on facebook, everyone buys a smartphone. People pay a lot of money to have internet access at home--and very bad internet access. It is crazy what I am paying for what I get. But people pay because of the demand. And the Gallup poll said that social media and the internet is rising up the rankings to the third main source of news. So people rely on it.

My aunts, in their late 50s, are all on Facebook. In Ramadan, my aunt asked me to find her favourite tv show for her to watch on the Ipad. I was shocked, but the mentality is changing. My 65 year old neighbour asked me why the internet is so slow.

And I think from a religious and political point of view, the clergy in Iraq used to warn against the internet. Today, they are not warning against it, because it is so entrenched in society, they are warning against internet addiction. So they have accepted that it is there and not going away, and they have adopted it. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has a Facebook page, and that is where his followers find out if it is Eid or not.

Regarding Fikra Space, there is a growing acceptance for what we do, such as free training and workshops, and people realise this is very helpful. A couple of ministries have approached us. But we treat the government like we treat the general public: we don’t expect anything from them, we want to show them our success and let them come to us. We want to build up Fikra Space as a 100% private entity.

We are realistic though: we realise not everyone we work with is going to become an entrepreneur. Even in the West, the percentage that succeed is very small. But we are trying to create the Iraqi leaders of tomorrow. Right now, the big Iraqi telecoms companies have expats in the key positions, and I find that sad. Of course, there are many reasons for that, education, the legacy of a socialist, centrally planned economy. But we are trying to give people the skill sets they can use to become the future leaders for Iraq.

Find out more about GEMSI, Fikra Space and the hackerspace concept here:

http://fikra.space/

http://www.gemsi.org/