It is hard to believe it has been already 5 weeks since I am here, time really flies. I am almost half-way through this experience and that is a hard thing to comprehend. These five weeks have been incredibly rich in terms of work, of meetings outside work and attendance to events. On June, 20th, I attended the Digital Mashreq Forum, organized by the Jordanian Ministry of digitaleconomy and entrepreneurship and the World Bank for Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. This conference was a great opportunity for understanding the national strategy set to position Jordan as a regional hub for the digital economy as well as public policy plans of countries like Irak and Lebanon. The Government of Iraq for example announced its commitment to further advancing the digital economy by ensuring access to high speed internet, by doubling access to broadband to 54% in 2021 and 90% by 2030, by establishing a more friendly regulatory and policy framework for digital payments and by developing interoperable digital payments infrastructure; the Government of Jordan committed to further developing access to internet broadband to reach 100% penetration rate by 2021. On digital payments, the Government of Jordan committed to increasing country-level cashless payments from 33 to 50% by 2020 and to digitizing 80% of government to citizens payments by 2021. On developing digital skills, the Government of Jordan plans on launching a national skills development initiative to train 35,000 people on coding skills as well as to extend those digital skills training to public schools curriculums to train 300 thousands students by 2022. For a more friendly business environment for entrepreneurs, the Government of Jordan also committed to launching a regulatory reform process in 2019, following a participatory approach with ecosystem representatives. I had the chance to participate in the same exercise that took place in Tunisia in 2016 under the leadership of the Tunisian Ministry of Technologies. This exercise that brought together more than 70 public and private sectors organizations led to a law called Startup Act, adopted by the Tunisian Parliament in 2018 and that improved the regulatory framework for tech entrepreneurs and startups by, for example, easing their access to capital and foreign currency and improve their relations with public sector organizations. More information on this initiative can be found here. Finally, the Government of Lebanon’s plans to double the knowledge economy’s contribution to GDP and double the employment in this sector by 2025. The plan includes reaching 100% broadband penetration rate by end of 2021, developing and executing the digital transformation of the public sector and its services, with 500,000 users signed up to the government digital platform by end of 2021, providing a supportive regulatory framework to help grow the Fintech industry and facilitate digital payments, launch a new national digital currency by the end of 2020, and launch an Electronic Trading Platform (ETP) to improve financing for private sector activities in 2020, leveraging its pool of skilled and entrepreneurial talent in Lebanon and abroad to build a digital economy focused on innovation and private initiative, increase the number of start-ups fivefold and double yearly venture capital funding by 2025 and finally, addressing the existing skills gap by preparing the youth for the global, digital jobs of the future through launching a national training academy by 2021. This conference was a great opportunity to understand the change in economic development policies in the Mashreq, in particular with regards to policy frameworks and skills development. For decades, many countries in the region were relying on either non-renewable natural resources, remittances and/or low added value industries. The development of new policies oriented towards digital economy signifies profound transformation for the entire society, including education, banking sectors, private sector and the public sector. These transformations will have a long-lasting impact on these societies and on the region overall. As a student in public Administration with a focus on youth, it is a really valuable experience to witness how different governments handle these societal transformations and be able to link them with the reflections occurring on the various projects for youth at UNICEF.
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