Thirsty for Innovation: Arab Countries Tap Alternative Energy Sources to Quench Water Demands

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Saudi Arabia Opens World's Largest Desalination Plant Just over a year ago, Saudi Arabia turned on the largest water desalination facility in the world. With a price tag of $3.4 billion, the Jubail II desalination plant produces 800,000 cubic meters of water daily. The plant’s opening made it the 28th desalination facility operating in the country. Its output is the lifeblood for Saudi Arabia: Fully 70% of the freshwater used by Saudis is generated by the desalination facilities.

But it comes at a cost. The Saudi government estimates that running all the desalination plants consumes 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, given that the current process of turning seawater into tap water depends heavily on energy. That’s why the oil-rich country is now looking to another natural resource to fuel desalination: the desert sun. Together with IBM, the country is developing solar technology for trial use at a plant serving 100,000 people.

This is just one experiment in the region, where increased demand, rising oil prices and dwindling groundwater resources have made finding more efficient and less costly alternative energy sources a priority.

According to the International Desalination Association (IDA), the Middle East and Africa now account for nearly half the world’s global desalination capacity, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) alone accounting for nearly 30% of installed capacity.

The desalination boom in the Middle East was fueled by growing water demand and the availability of cheap energy. Desalination is an energy-intensive process, with energy accounting for up to 50% of production costs. Countries without access to cheap energy have therefore found it prohibitively expensive. But for the hydrocarbon-rich nations of the Middle East, desalination has been the obvious way to address their lack of freshwater.

Demand aside, Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s largest emirate, can be credited with setting the trend that saw the exponential increase in desalination capacity over the last decade. It was the first country in the region to use private capital to finance the construction of an Independent Water and Power Plant (IWPP) in 1998. The model was based on the BOOT (Build, Own, Operate, Transfer) framework commonly used in project finance and had a simple premise: Instead of buying power and water plants from engineering contractors, utilities agreed to buy a certain amount of water and power from the developer, who in turn got a guaranteed flow of income and minimal risk.

The IWPP model has proved popular across the region because it guarantees the lowest possible cost for power and water production. Christopher Gasson, publisher of Global Water Intelligence (GWI) and long-time advocate of private sector participation in the water industry, recently wrote that in the Middle East, desalination plants that were procured with public finances on a traditional EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) basis have, on average, been 10%-30% more expensive than those that were privately financed.

This new finance model combined with rapid population increase and sustained economic growth in the last 10 years means that global desalination capacity more than doubled between 1999 and 2009, with the Middle East and North Africa leading the charge.

Bigger Every Year

Lisa Henthorne, a director at IDA, says that plants have also become bigger every year: From 300,000 cubic meters of water daily a decade ago, plants have nearly tripled that output. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are home to the world’s 10 largest plants, with Shoaiba 3 currently holding the crown, producing 880,000 cubic meters of water a day.

Even the current economic downturn doesn’t seem to have dampened the region’s appetite for desalination. Many economies remain buoyant, with growing populations and industrial needs. In Water Market Middle East 2010, GWI forecast that the region would double its desalination capacity at a cost of $61.3 billion between 2009 and 2016.

Jarmo Kotilaine, chief economist at NCB Capital, says the sector only suffered a couple of temporary setbacks — namely a change in the procurement of two flagship IWPPs in Saudi Arabia: Ras Azzour and Yanbu. The government had to rescue the deals after developers struggled to secure funds from shrinking financial markets. But Kotilaine says that if anything, the financial crisis has increased governments’ interest in private sector participation because of their own dwindling resources.

This is particularly true of countries such as Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan that don’t have the financial resources of their oil-exporting counterparts. “Desalination has traditionally been a last resort because it is expensive,” says Henthorne. “But the sheer lack of alternatives and a greater availability of project finance means that desalination is becoming more accessible.”

What is surprising is that despite hosting and facilitating the development of desalination, the Middle East has, by and large, remained an importer rather than a provider of this technology. Most desalination plants have been built by multinational companies like Veolia, Degrémont, Befesa, GE and FCC. “There is so much talk about the knowledge economy, yet here is a concrete regional need that’s not being locally filled,” says Kotilaine. “Why not help create supply and possibly export it, too?”

Resolving Water Sustainability

Shannon McCarthy, deputy director of the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC), echoes Kotilane’s comments. MEDRC was set up in 1996 as part of the Middle East peace process to resolve water sustainability issues in the region. The institute was a pioneer in desalination research at a time when the technology wasn’t as widespread as it is now. “A lot of facilities are being built, but that’s not to say that there are experts in every country who can operate them or make informed decisions about desalination technology,” says McCarthy.

It is to fill this skills gap that MEDRC is planning to build a training center in Aqaba, Jordan. The institute has already provided many hours of training to engineers across the region, but the training center will epitomize its peace mission: Classroom learning will be done in Aqaba, and practical training at the desalination plant in Eilat, Israel, just across the border from Aqaba.

As well as capacity building, MEDRC is focusing on another growing area of interest: the use of renewable energy. This development is particularly important for two reasons: First, renewable energy would provide an alternative to hydrocarbon-poor countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Second, it would help reduce desalination’s substantial carbon footprint.

Organizations such as MEDRC have dabbled with renewable energy and desalination for years, but efforts have always stumbled across the same problems: Because of its cost, renewable energy would make desalination even more expensive than it is. From a technical point of view, wind power and photovoltaic cells would not be able to produce power continuously (if the wind drops or night falls) or in sufficient quantities to sustain a large desalination plant. They would also fail to produce the single most important element in desalination in the Middle East: heat.

The process of removing dissolved salts from water to produce freshwater is ancient. Aristotle first mentioned it in 320BC, and explorers such as James Cook relied on desalination during long sea voyages. It’s only after WWII, however, that technological breakthroughs allowed the application of desalination on a much larger scale.

There are two main types of desalination processes: thermal and membrane. The thermal process uses heat to generate steam and distill seawater. Membrane processes are mechanical and use ultra-high pressure to filter dissolved salts. Thermal desalination is a more mature technology; it’s also more robust and has traditionally produced better results on the Gulf’s highly saline and turbid waters. Thermal desalination plants, therefore, dominate the field, which also explains why IWPPs proved so popular in the Middle East (the power plant produces heat that can be used in the desalination process).

But with the advent of Concentrated Solar-thermal Power (CSP), a form of solar energy that uses lenses and mirrors to trap the sun’s rays and create heat, renewable energy could become a very serious option for desalination. Franz Trieb, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, recently told a gathering of 150 experts why: MENA’s CSP potential is huge (sun exposure and terrain conditions are ideal), it could create heat and power on a continuous basis thanks to heat storage and — because the materials required to build it are relatively cheap — its cost is forecast to decrease substantially over the next 10-15 years.

Trying Out Renewable Energy

The conference attended by Trieb was organized in Rabat, Morocco, by Morocco’s bulk water provider Office National de l’Eau Potable (ONEP) and the Observatoire Méditerranéen de l’Energie (OME, Mediterranean Energy Observatory). Morocco has ambitious plans to develop CSP for its electricity production, and ONEP is planning to build a 9,000 m3/d pilot desalination/CSP plant in Tan Tan in the south of the country.

Other countries, too, are trying out renewable energy: Tunisia’s water utility SONEDE is considering solar power for a series of small brackish water desalination plants in its southern provinces, and Saudi Arabia has just announced the launch of a 30,000 m3/d solar-powered desalination plant in the city of Al-Khafji. The plant was developed by IBM and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), and features a new, energy-efficient membrane technology and a new type of photovoltaic cell.

Although the IBM/KACST plant was announced in April, details about when construction will start remain vague. What is clear, however, is that this is part of a broader effort to generate homegrown innovation. “Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water in the world, and we continue to invest in new ways of making access to fresh water more affordable,” said Turki Al Saud, vice president for research institutes at KACST, in a statement. “Using these new technologies, we will create energy-efficient systems we believe can be implemented across Saudi Arabia and around the world.”

But Henthorne thinks renewable energy will really take off when MENA countries decide to develop it as part of their energy policy. “Most desalination plants in Australia are powered indirectly by renewable energy: They use membrane technology, which just uses electricity from the grid, and Australia has extensive wind power capacity,” she says.

Membrane technology is becoming more widespread in MENA because of an energy conundrum: Water demand is more or less constant throughout the year, but electricity demand surges in summer because of air-conditioning. “Electricity demand in winter is about 70% lower than in summer, and producing steam for desalination only is very expensive,” Henthorne adds.

The solution has come in the form of hybrid desalination plants where membrane technologies can help fill the gap from thermal units during winter months. Innovative pre-treatment technologies have also helped overcome the water quality problems, which all suggests that membrane processes will become more widespread in the region.

The Middle East is likely to remain a leading player in the desalination market, but Henthorne says there are many thirsty emerging markets, including as China, India or Australia. “I think we could see a shift in where the core developments are happening,” she suggests.

Source : Arabic Knowledge@Wharton

10 Great Achievers !

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A while ago, a list titled 10 Great Achievements of the Human Mind was published on listverse. I really enjoyed the list, and I thought the author did an exceptional job on it. The list presented “ten works of superlative genius, in no particular order.” Despite this qualifier, some people complained about the order of the list and commented that the list was too Eurocentric. In response, a challenge was issued several times to present Ten Great Achievements of the non-European mind. I would hardly call myself an expert, and I approach this subject through a Eurocentric lens, but I am intrigued by this challenge. My list is different in that I am concentrating on the areas of medicine, science and mathematics and largely ignoring literature, music and art. In addition, I think it is important to note that a lot of the contributions of non-Europeans have not been attributed to a specific individual but, nevertheless, reflect great achievements of the human mind. Also, while I understand the pride that people have in the accomplishments of their geographical and cultural forebears, this pride should never serve to denigrate a perceived lack of achievement in other groups. We are all human, and we can all take pride in these historical accomplishments. Finally, there are plenty of other great non-Europeans that I did not include – perhaps that can be for another few lists. Without further ado, I present ten non-European men of superlative genius, in no particular order.

 

Imhotep | 2650 – 2600 BC

Imhotep, an Egyptian polymath, presented on azensys.comImhotep, an Egyptian polymath, is the first physician, architect and engineer whose name is known to history. He was high priest of Ra and chancellor to the Pharoah Djoser of the Third Dynasty. So great was his legacy that, despite being a commoner, he was granted divinity after his death. Imhotep was revered as a poet and fifteen hundred years after his death a song praised his acuity with language: “I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hordedef, with whose discourses men speak so much.” As an architect and engineer, he designed the 62 metre tall step pyramid for Djoser and is credited with the first known use of columns. Below his pyramid his name and title are given as “seal-bearer of the King of Lower Egypt, first one under the king, administrator of the Great Mansion, prince, chief of seers.” As a physician, a writing attributed to him was devoid of supernatural reasoning and made remarkable descriptions of various ailments and cures along with anatomical descriptions.

 

Zhang Heng | 78 – 139 AD

Zhang Heng the chinese artist, poet, mathematician, presented on azensysA native of central China, Zhang Heng was an artist, poet, mathematician, geographer, astronomer, and statesman of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 -220 AD). As an artist, he was considered among the four greatest of his time and his poetry was acclaimed by contemporaries and later commentators. Zhang Heng invented an early but efficient seismograph which could detect the direction of an earthquake up to 500 km (310 miles) away. In addition, he improved the accuracy of the Chinese water clock and invented both an odometer and a mechanical chariot that always pointed south. Zhang also improved the armillary sphere, adding the horizon and meridian rings. Not satisfied with a static three-dimensional model of the heavens, Zhang used complex gears and water power to make the globe rotate in order to display the changing positions of the heavens by season. He added a rotating pillar that portrayed the waxing and the waning of the moon. As an astronomer, he mapped and catalogued a total of 2,500 stars, more than twice as many as Ptolemy (83 – 161 AD).

He believed in a geocentric model of the universe and discussed the spherical shape of the moon, the nature of solar and lunar eclipses, and the waxing and waning of the moon. His epitaph, written by his friend Cui Ziyu read, in part: “The excellence of his talent and the splendor of his art were one with those of the gods.”

 

Sushruta | 600 BC

Sushruta - ancient Indian physician - the father of surgery, presented on azensys.comSushruta, an ancient Indian physician, is considered by many to be the father of surgery. The work attributed to him and later followers bears his name, the Sushruta Samhita. Sushruta demonstrated knowledge of the circulation of blood and lymph and of the arteries. Sushruta connected obesity with heart disorders and diabetes, recommending physical activity in order to cure it. He conducted surgery for curing kidney stones and accurately described and recommended treatments for angina pectoris, hypertension, and leprosy. Sushruta laid the foundation for plastic surgery and related various methods for covering physical defects using skin grafts and other methods. He also described methods for labioplasty (the reduction in size of the labial hood) and rhinoplasty (nose surgery). The Sushruta Samhita travelled from the Arab world and reached Italy by the sixteenth century.The first major rhinoplasty in the western world was completed by Joseph Constantine Carpue in 1815, after having studied Indian methods for twenty years.

 

Abu Al-Qasim | 936-1013 AD

Abu Al-Qasim - Abulcasis - The Arabic scientist from Spain, presented on azensys.comAbu Al-Qasim, better known to the West as Abulcasis, was an Arabic surgeon, physician, and scientist from Spain. Considered by many to be the father of modern surgery, his medical text, Kitab Al Tasrif, profoundly influenced Islamic and European surgical procedure. He gave the earliest recorded description of hemophilia and described the Kocher method for treating dislocated shoulders long before it was described by its nineteenth century namesake. He specialized in cauterization and amputation and invented or improved over two hundred surgical instruments. His inventions included surgical needles and forceps as well as devices for the inspection of the ear, the inspection of the urethra’s interior, and the removal of foreign bodies from the throat. His use of catgut for internal stitching is still used today. Al-Qasim also described how to ligature blood vessels during surgery and how to prepare medication by sublimation and distillation. He performed and described operations in the areas of Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology, Obstetrics, Urology, and Orthopaedics.

He stressed a positive relationships between doctors and patients and careful observation and diagnosis of illnesses. His Kitab Al Tasrif was highly influential in the Islamic world and was the definitive medical text for Western surgeons for nearly five hundred years.

 

Ibn Khaldun | 1332 AD – 1406 AD

Ibn Khaldun - brilliant North African polymath, presented on azensys.comIbn Khaldun was a brilliant North African polymath of Arab descent who was born Tunis but travelled extensively throughout North Africa. He was a statesman, philosopher, Islamic theologian and jurist, historian, astronomer, mathematician, economist, poet, and social scientist and is widely considered to be the father of historiography, cultural history, demography, philosophy of history, and sociology. Although his greatest interest was in history, his contributions in other areas were extensive. His writings anticipated later sociology and economics. Arnold J. Toynbee, the British historian, called Ibn Khaldun’s most famous work, the Muqadimmah, “a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place.” Toynbee also stated that Ibn Khaldun “appears to have been inspired by no predecessors, and to have found no kindred souls among his contemporaries, and to have no answering spark or inspiration in any successors.”

 

Shen Kuo | 1031-1095 AD

Shen Kuo was a brilliant Chinese scientist presented on azensys.com Active during the Song dynasty (960-1127 AD), Shen Kuo was a brilliant Chinese scientist, mathematician, cartographer, engineer, and statesman. As a mathematician, he conceived of techniques that paved the way for high-order arithmetic progressions and spherical trigonometry. Shen hypothesized the concept of gradual climate change through his observations of fossilized bamboo in northern China. He also hypothesized that land formations were the result of geomorphology based upon his observations of inland marine fossils, soil erosion, and silt buildup. He improved the designs of various astronomical tools including the spherical astrolabe and the triangular blade of the sundial. Shen fixed the position of the pole star and corrected lunar and solar errors. He was the first to discover true north through his experiments with the magnetic compass.

He worked extensively with optics, discussing the formation of rainbows by refraction, focal points, concave inversion, and describing the geometric and quantitive properties of the pinhole camera. In the field of archaeology, Shen recommended the use of metallurgy, geometry and optics to study the artifacts of the ancients. He also used the sight from an ancient crossbow he had uncovered to calculate the height of a distant mountain, using it as the survey device now known as Jacob’s staff. Despite his scientific interest, he never developed a scientific method and had a deep interest in the occult and the supernatural.

 

Ibn Rushd | 1126 – 1198 AD

Ibn Rushd, better known to the west as Averroes presented on azensys.comIbn Rushd, better known to the west as Averroes, was an Arabic polymath born and educated in Cordova, Spain and active in both Spain and Morocco. He was an Islamic theologian, jurist and philosopher with interests in geography, medicine, mathematics and physics. As a physician, Ibn Rushd wrote extensively on Arabic medicine. He supported dissection, suggested the existence of Parkinson’s disease, and was the first to identify the retina as a photoreceptor. Along with the Byzantine copies of Aristotle’s writings, Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle were translated into Latin and allowed for the re-emergence of Aristotle’s thought in Western Europe. His writings influenced Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas and were highly influential in Europe for nearly four centuries. Ibn Rushd’s argument for the separation of science and philosophy from theology helped pave the way for secularism. Although he was not the first Arab philosopher to do so, he often wrote that existence precedes essence, a central claim later to be found in existentialism. Ibn Rushd also argued that men and women were equal, claiming that women and men possessed equal abilities to excel in war and in peace and citing examples of female warriors and generals throughout history.

His influence was overwhelming in shaping Western European philosophy and theology as well as Arabic Islamic thought.

 

Aryabhata | 476-550 AD

Aryabata I was an early Indian Mathematician and Astronomer presented on azensys.com Aryabata I was an early Indian Mathematician and Astronomer who worked in the city of Kusumapura in north central India. His great works were Aryabhitiya (c. 499) and the Aryabhatasiddhanta, a text which is now only preserved in the works of commentators. His works include the first recorded usage of decimal place value and algebra. His independent calculation of the value pi was correct to eight places. He defined sine and cosine and utilized fractions, square and cube roots, diophantine and quadratic equations. Aryhabata contended, contrary to Vedic tradition, that the earth was round and rotated daily. In fact, many commentators later altered his text in order to cover up what they viewed as an error – the axial rotation of the earth. Some have argued that he supported a heliocentric view of the solar system, but others question how this can be extrapolated from his writings. Aryabata produced a highly accurate calendar and initiated the practice of beginning each day counting from midnight. His calculation of the circumference of the earth was only off by about 110 kilometres (67 miles) while his calculation of the length of a year was only off by 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Aryabhata accurately described why eclipses, solstices, and equinoxes happen. India’s first satellite, launched in 1975, was named Aryabhata in his honour.

 

Abu Rayhan Biruni | 973 – 1048 AD

Abu Rayhan Biruni was a Persian mathematician, theologian on azensys.comAbu Rayhan Biruni was a Persian mathematician, theologian, philosopher, astronomer, geographer and historian who was born near the Aral Sea in Khwarazm. He was fluent in Persian, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew Khwarezmian and Syriac and had knowledge of Hindi and Latin. While he wrote 146 books largely on astronomy, astrology, geography and mathematics, only 22 of these works have survived. As an astronomer, he was critical of astrology because of its reliance on supposition rather than empirical evidence. His study of India exposed him to Indian theories of axial rotation and heliocentricity. Biruni was meticulous in his observations and gathering of empirical data. He refused to dismiss data that contradicted his theories out of his concern for accuracy. After reading the work of the Indian astronomer and mathematician, Brahmagupta (598 – 665 AD), Biruni observed and confirmed the attraction of all things towards the centre of the Earth. He also correctly contended that the distance between the earth and the sun was greater than Ptolemy’s estimate. Biruni theorized on the elliptical orbits of the planets. Biruni is the father of geodesy, the three dimensional measurement of the earth.

His measurement of the radius of the Earth was only off by 16.8 km (10.4 miles) and he created highly accurate maps that correctly represented the distance between cities. He is among the earliest proponents of the experimental scientific method and used it in mineralogy to carefully measure and catalogue various stones and metals. The weights he gave for the minerals are correct to three decimal places. Biruni has been called the father of anthropology and objectively observed and recorded the culture and religion of various groups by immersing himself in their language and texts. He stands among the greatest scholars that the world has ever produced.

 

Ibn Sina | 980 – 1037 AD

Ibn Sina, better known to the West as Avicenna - azensys.comIbn Sina, better known to the West as Avicenna, was a Persian polymath renowned for his philosophy and medical expertise. He had memorized the Koran by the age of ten, mastered what was known of physics, metaphysics, logic, and mathematics by sixteen, and completed his study of medicine by the age of 21. His Canon of Medicine was a 14 volume medical encyclopedia which was used throughout Europe and the Islamic World until the eighteenth century. His other famous work, the Book of Healing, was an encyclopedia of over 20 volumes on science and philosophy. His medical writing was heavily influenced by Hippocrates, Galen, and Sushruta, and had a great impact on learning in Western Europe. He introduced experimental medicine, risk factor analysis, quarantines, systematic experimentation in the study of physiology, and the idea of syndromes. He observed and described contagious and sexually transmitted diseases, pioneered in the area of neuropsychiatry, theorized on the existence of micro-organisms, and laid the pharmacological foundations for testing the effectiveness of drugs. Ibn Sina was the first to define the physical principle of momentum and define simple machines and mechanisms.

As a philosopher, he wrote extensively on logic, ethics, and metaphysics and successfully merged Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. His philosophy was leading school in Islam by the twelfth century, and philosophical works heavily influenced William of Auvergne, St Albertus Magnus, St Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics. Ivn Sina is a national icon in Iran and has been recognized in both the East and the West as a towering figure in history.

Source: Listverse.com by Scratch

Innovative executive program for Leadership and Entrepreneurship

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The Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (MILE) brings senior executives and high potential leaders from all over the world to discover new dimensions in leadership and management practices and help them grow in their business careers.

We offer participants in our programs priceless engagements with the world’s most influential academic and business leaders on a range of critical management and leadership issues. We empower them with the desired leadership skills to help successfully transform their organizations and each their personal goals.

After the phenomenal success of PALM I and PALM 2, and due to popular demand, MILE is pleased to announce the launch of its 3rd Program for Advanced Leadership & Management (PALM3).

MILE brings speakers who are industry leaders, professors and authors from top business schools and consultants from the world’s finest global consulting firms to share their knowledge and rich experiences with our growing network of program participants.

The program combines top quality content, world-class speakers, and live regional case studies. Participants will have the opportunity to expand their business repertoire to include new concepts, approaches and practices. For our upcoming PALM 3 we are delighted to have professors from Harvard Business School, Wharton School, IESE, London Business School, Kellogg School of Management, and Cranfield School of Management who we are confident will contribute towards an extremely enriching and rewarding program.

Al Baraka to launch €100m bank in France

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Bahraini Islamic lender announces operations to start in European country by H1 2012

Bahraini Islamic lender Al Baraka will expand to France next year and expects to launch a bank with a capital of 100 million euros ($142 million) by the first half of 2012, the bank’s top official told Reuters.

Al Baraka had announced in 2009 its plan to launch operations in France but had to postpone it due to the financial crisis.

“I think by the first or second quarter of 2012 you will see us operating in France … The file was never closed. It was only postponed because of the problem in Europe,” Al Baraka’s chief executive said on the sidelines of an Islamic Finance event in Jeddah late on Wednesday.

“At this stage it is up to the French to start amending their laws concerning Islamic banking,” he said.

Al Baraka is also in the final stages of issuance of a sukuk, or Islamic bond, from its largest unit, Albaraka Turk Participation Bank, the first bank in Turkey to operate on Islamic principles.

“We are finalising a syndicated facility for our subsidiary in Turkey. We started with $150 million and I think it will reach to about 350 million,” Yousif said.

Managers for the issue are Standard Chartered Bank , Emirates Bank, Noor Islamic Bank, Deutsche Bank, and ABC Standard he said.

He said he expects the one-year sukuk to close within two days and the pricing to be about 4 percent.

Arab world – Paved with good inventions

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The bumpy road to innovation in the Arab world is paved with good inventions that never see the light of day

Have you heard of the Egyptian electric pedal? No, it is not some new-age exercise bike that charges your aura, enhances your spiritual wellbeing, gives you access to the most exclusive esoteric knowledge and cures all known conditions.

It is, in fact, an innovation of powerful simplicity designed to deal with the forthcoming energy crunch and reduce urban pollution. The EEP, which is buried under busy roads, acts like a giant dynamo, turning roads into powerhouses. The technology utilises the normally wasted kinetic energy of cars and converts it into electricity.

The Think Tank Team (3T), the creators of the pedal, estimate that installing the technology on a busy 100 km stretch of road would generate enough energy to supply around 5,000 households and create 250 jobs.

If applied widely enough, this low-tech green solution has the potential to not only generate electricity that is up to 70% cheaper but also to slash energy consumption. The developers reckon that, if Egypt installed 30,000 such pedals, it could knock 20% off the country’s oil consumption, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year and creating up to half a million jobs. Even if the real potential of this inexpensive technology is less than the developers believe, it is still a very promising concept. So, what has been the fate of this bright idea?

Since 2004, the EEP has been powering the Cairo headquarters of Petrojet, an Egyptian oil company. Ministers expressed some initial enthusiasm when the concept was launched at the Arab Ideas Market. However, the government, from the Ministry of Electricity to the Social Fund for Development, has adopted a “wait and see” approach.

“Our major constraint was, and remains, the attitude of the community as a whole, and decision-makers in particular, towards the project,” complained 3T’s director Ihab Abdel-Karim in an interview. “Nobody has been prepared to provide the least support to allow the initiative to see the light.”

Tired of waiting for the authorities and local market to take up their idea and run with it, 3T has decided, despite its expressed preference for keeping the “Egypt” in the EEP, to seek foreign partners.

The difficulty 3T has faced in peddling the EEP and the apparent dead end it has reached provides a telling analogy of the state of innovation in Egypt and the Arab world. There is no real shortage of bright minds and innovators, as my mother, who occasionally takes up the cause of one or the other in her idealistic attempts to improve the world, never tires of telling me. In fact, given the Arab world’s shoddy R&D record, the science pages of newspapers and the shelves of university libraries are surprisingly full of clever innovations and ideas that rarely make it beyond the drawing board.

However, the dominant patronage culture in academia, the shortage of research funding, the almost complete absence of private research, the difficulty of registering and protecting intellectual property, as well as the rote-based education system, may explain why more research is carried out by Arabs outside the region than inside it.

The UN’s shocking 2002 Arab Human Development Report (pdf) stated that Arab countries only invested 0.4% of their collective GDP in R&D. That said, the Arab world is way ahead of China and India in its per capita output of science papers.

Summing up the bleak picture, former Jordanian prime minister Adnan Badran told the World Science Forum in Budapest last November: “The combined sum of Arab expenditure on R&D, education and health is less than Arab military expenditure.”

Nevertheless, things are slowly improving. For instance, Egyptian expenditure on R&D increased from 0.3% of GDP in the 1990s to almost 1% in 2006/2007. This still falls far short of the regional knowledge powerhouse, Israel, which, according to Unesco (pdf), sets aside nearly 5% of its national income to fund research; one of the highest figures in the world.

During a recent visit to Jordan, I saw some promising signs of hope. The Jordanian government has set up some half a dozen technology incubators, some in collaboration with the EU, in the past few years. Recognising that too much research winds up collecting dust in the Arab world, one successful approach has been to raid the archives for bright ideas that have promising application potential.

MonoJo is one company that was born out of this process. The firm has developed local varieties of monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies which can be used for clinical and research purposes to diagnose diseases.

I visited the oldest of these incubators, iPark, where young Jordanian innovators are given seed funding and a location to let their imagination loose. Companies incubated there include IT developers, chip designers and game makers.

Kindisoft has been one of the park’s biggest successes. This start-up has developed an award-winning solution that protects the hard-earned intellectual property of Flash developers. “At first, Flash was not seen as a serious development platform,” explains Ammar Mardawi, the firm’s founder. “Now that it is, we have a lot of business.”

In fact, Mardawi and co showed remarkable foresight, since millions of web users now have Flash media installed on their machines. This has made Flash an attractive platform for developers, which has, in turn, lured the “reverse engineers” who have, according to one estimate, stolen code from 2 million Flash applications since 1998.

Incubators like iPark suffer from their own peculiar financial challenges. “Most venture capitalists in the Middle East are not interested in the small amounts our start-ups need. It is relatively easy to get your hands on $10m, but it can be hard to acquire a few thousand,” Omar Hamarneh, iPark’s director, told me.

This also touches on another major challenge facing the Arab world. Countries that have the human resources lack the funds, and countries that have the finances tend to lack the people. In theory, this sounds like a match made in heaven, but a lot of political, cultural and bureaucratic barriers stand in the way of efficiently matching brains with money regionally.

There are a number of efforts in motion that seek to promote pan-regional, collaborative R&D, including the independent Arab Science and Technology Foundation, which seeks to create “simple solutions to common Arab problems”, including water desalination and solar power. To overcome fragmentation, it might not be a bad idea for Arab countries to take such small-scale models further, and coordinate their scientific efforts more closely.

The Arab world needs to shift away from being largely an importer of science and technology and create and apply knowledge that addresses the specific challenges facing the region. Some progress has been made, but more needs to be done to reform education systems, and create a culture and system that appreciates and rewards innovation.

Author: Khaled Diab

 

Microsoft launched Arab World Social Innovator’s program in UAE

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Samer Abu- Ltaif, Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf & Ms. Peggy Dulany, Founder & Chair of the Synergos Institute.

Micrsoft announced the launch of the Arab World Social Innovators (AWSI) program in UAE, which aims to expand the scale and sustainability of high- impact social entrepreneurship to further empower youth in the region and particular in the UAE.

 

Recently, the 2009-2010 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report has positioned UAE among the highest prevalence of social entrepreneurs, with the US, Iceland, and Argentina. The 2010 World Bank Doing Business Report also substantiated this advanced position by ranking the UAE at 33 out of 183 economies in terms of ease for doing business.

The Arab World Social Innovator’s program is based on the belief that sustainable change can be achieved by empowering local leaders and organizations, and strengthening the capacity of local institutions to respond to pressing social and economic challenges. The program will identify 20 Social Innovators to help them transform successful models into larger-scale enterprises or non-governmental organizations.

The program will target high-priority sectors such as youth employment, education and environmental issues, and a greater representation of women.

“Promoting entrepreneurship has always been an integral part of Microsoft’s broader mission across the Gulf to promote social and economic development,” said Samer Abu- Ltaif, Regional General Manager, Microsoft Gulf. “The Arab World Social Innovator’s Program gives us a unique opportunity to help individuals through access to our world class tools, technologies and market resources to help bring new ideas, ventures and innovations to life. We are extremely excited to partner with such a prestigious organization as the Synergos Institute to further support the future generation of successful entrepreneurs who will make a real difference in their community.”

Microsoft will leverage its global brand, technology platform, and presence in the region to identify opportunities to apply its technology to support the work of Social Innovators, leverage software to support their work, provide ICT training courses and sessions and maximize the exposure of the AWSI program through Microsoft marketing channels.

Wishing “Ramadan Kareem”

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Ramadan mubarak from aZensys TeamThe holy month of Ramadan began on August 1st 2011 (Ramadhan 1st 1432). And with this once more the world has stated to make one big error. I have been noticing this error since a couple of years and it is in regards to the meaning and interpretation of word “Ramadan Kareem”. For some reason the world wide electronic and print media has been using the expression “Ramadan Kareem” as a wish for Muslim world on the arrival of holy month Ramadan.

Ramadan Kareem is not a wish

Saying Ramadan Kareem is a wrong wish as it has no meaning.

Ramadan is one of the holy months of Islamic calendar. In this month Muslims fast and saying Ramadan Kareem has no meaning. It is not an event. Rather Eid ul Fitr is an event that arrives at the end of Ramadan. And one can make a wish to anyone on Eid.

It has been turning into a wrong custom where many TV channels and worldwide non-Muslim Print media have been publishing a wish of “Ramadan Kareem”. Even President Obama has been wishing Muslims Ramadan Kareem.

Meaning of Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan is a name of holy month of Islamic calendar while “Kareem” is an Arabic origin word which means “generous”. So when it is written “Ramadan Kareem”, it does not mean “Happy Ramadan” or “Welcome Ramadan” but it rather is a way to give respect to this holy month.
Certainly, Ramadan is a much awaited month but if you actually want to wish a Muslim Ramadan, you can say “The holy month of Ramadan Kareem has arrived” or “May you have blessings in the holy month of Ramadan” or “Ramadan Mubarak”. Ramadan Mubarak is a better way to wish Ramadan as it actually means “Ramadan greetings”.

Ramadan Mubarak to all of you!

Venture capital to boost innovation in Arab world

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Innovation in the Arab World trhough Zaha Hadid designed the Dubai TowersTwo venture capital funds have been launched in Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to encourage innovation in science and technology and establish knowledge-based industry in the Arab world.

The Omani Centre for Investment Promotion and Export Development launched the US$135 million ten-year venture capital fund to promote investment in science and technology in the Gulf region, with a special focus on development in Oman.

The fund aims to attract foreign high-tech firms and cutting-edge research facilities to the region, and support local small and medium technology-based enterprises, which make up 70 per cent of businesses in Oman.

Services will include access to finance for five years, access to information technology, electronics and energy, and mentoring for scientists and businessmen setting up businesses.

Earlier this month (5 August), the UAE-based Arab Science and Technology Foundation announced its plan to set up an US$15 million venture capital fund, to be launched at the Fifth Forum on Investing in Technology in Jordan on 12–13 December.

The fund will distribute around US$500,000 to science and technology start-ups over a seven-year period.

Zakaria Maamar, associate professor at the College of Information Technology at Zayed University, UAE, told SciDev.Net, “This is a major milestone in supporting businesses that aim to provide advanced solutions to real problems that the Arab society faces.”

“These are extremely welcome moves. Much research ends up… as published papers with no thought of translation into products to improve society and build knowledge-based economies,” Abdallah Daar, an Omani scientist at the University of Toronto, told SciDev.Net.

“What is needed is further strategic thinking and positioning, and mechanisms to converge [high quality research, entrepreneurship and venture capital]. With major funds now going into higher education and research and development, Oman and other countries in the Arab world are positioning themselves for a prosperous future not based solely on oil revenues,” he added.

The Arab World Needs Entrepreneurial Heroes

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Dubai is a city that defies the laws of physics. It is a place where architects are regularly commissioned to build the Dali-esque. Tallest building in the world? Check. Islands in the shapes of Palm Trees? Done. Want Whistler-like ski conditions in a shopping mall or an underwater hotel? Double check. It has more cranes than any city in the world today with the exception of Shanghai. Its airport terminals are a microcosm of the city-state:  epic in size, unabashedly commercial and catering to a cross-section of humanity that is simply unparalleled (how exactly do Seychellois communicate with Ethiopians?)

In the middle of the barren desert, Dubai has built one of the most impressive balance sheets of hard assets in the world. It is the showcase for entrepreneurial vigor (and renewal) in the Middle East. Yet in 2010, it was barely rescued by its neighbor Abu Dhabi from the verge of bankruptcy. So what gives?

Simple. Dubai, like much of the region, needs heroes.

A few weeks back I presented at the 2010 Celebration of Entrepreneurship conference, hosted by Arif Naqvi’s Abraaj Capital. The conference was a first of a kind Pan-regional unconference (a cross between TED and TechCrunch for the Middle East). Over 2,000 entrepreneurs, innovators and stakeholders in the region’s were buzzing to connect, share and hear the stories and lessons learned from entrepreneurial practitioners from around the world. Silicon Valley personalities like Mike Cassidy, Joi Ito, and my colleague Jim Hornthal, talked about their experiences, alongside regional innovators like Osman Sultan, CEO of du, a telco in the United Arab Emirates. Everyone shared pages from their playbook and themes that are all-too-familiar for Silicon Valley types, including embracing lessons from failure, failing forward, and nurturing a culture that encourages risk-taking.

My own talk was entitled “Why Entrepreneurs are the New Asset Class,” a follow-up to a meme I’ve written about before for Forbes. I discussed the characteristics that I’ve seen in people, some of whom I’ve invested in, that personify great entrepreneurs. I mentioned the stories of Rich Skrenta, Tim Westergren, Renaud Laplanche, Salman Khan, and Leila Janah – all of whom embody the spirit of entrepreneurs for me in different ways. Yet I realize now that their stories, while instructive, fail to stir local imaginations in one distinct way — they aren’t homegrown.

The new Archetype

But there are many stories that are. Take conference co-host and entrepreneur turned uberangel investor Fadi Gandour. His is a story of a local Jordanian boy who made good. Fadi is the founder and CEO of Middle Eastern logistics company Aramex, the “FedEx of the Middle East.” Gandour’s prominence as a local entrepreneur is now only eclipsed by his role as an angel investor and enabler for young entrepreneurs across the region. Walking the conference floor with Fadi is an unending sequence of high-fives, broad smiles and a friendly arm around countless young entrepreneurs seeking advice from his playbook and funding from his checkbook.

As an angel investor, his story intersects with another local success, Jordanian Internet pioneer Maktoob, the leading Arabic language portal, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2009. Virtually every local entrepreneur I meet, digital aficionado or not, knows the story by heart: two local Jordanians Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury, bootstrap their way from consulting company to web developers, to an Arabic web email service. They expand the vision to build the Yahoo of the Arab world, and after years of lean-living, Yahoo completes the endorsement and buys the company in a deal rumored to be somewhere north of $100 million. As a mentor and investor, Fadi tells the story on his blog. Young entrepreneurs use this as their fuel to be the next success story from the region.

Then there are the stories of ex-pats coming back to the region. Take Usama Fayyad, formerly Chief Data Officer at Yahoo. Usama came to the U.S. to earn his PhD in data mining, now perhaps the most coveted expertise for anyone in the web business. Usama joined Yahoo through an acquisition of his former company, the DMX Group, a data mining and technology company, and then became the executive responsible for Yahoo’s data strategy and much of their research organization.

He recently launched a startup incubator in his hometown of Amman, Jordan, called Oasis500. I had a chance to visit Oasis500 to meet some of their entrepreneurs. What struck me most was how each entrepreneur I met had a distinct, plausible vision. They are clearly self-assured, fueled by the transitive property of success – if their benefactor can do it, so can they.

Creating the next origin myth

The Heroes designed by Dr Naif MutawaOne local entrepreneur has taken this notion of Arab heroes to heart. Naif Al-Mutawa, Founder and CEO of the Teshkeel Media Group, is the creator of “The 99,” a comic book about super-heroes that are derived from local cultural motifs. “The 99” is a reference to the 99 Names of God, attributes that are commonly used in Islamic literature to describe the Almighty. Most recently characters from the 99 have teamed up with their seasoned compatriots across the Atlantic from the Justice League of America – Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman – to take crime fighting globally. One of many firsts for Muslim superheroes.

Yet the majority of the conversations I had with young entrepreneurs touched on one of the main challenges to forging new paths, namely a culture of convention. It came across from a young lady who had recently moved to Dubai from Pakistan. An established marketer by training, she was now struggling with how to leave her well-heeled job to create her own brand identity firm. From a cushy job at a multinational firm to now sleeping on a friends couch, it was clearly as much a social struggle as a financial struggle to make the shift from the gainfully employed to the gainfully happy.

In a region where nearly two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30, an emerging generation is struggling to reconcile convention with a unique vision for their future. They are about to enter the workforce, and they need new examples. They also need jobs: by some accounts 80 million new jobs have to be created to accommodate their entry in the next 20 years.

This is the very real challenge facing Arab governments. Regional leaders have publicly and privately expressed an agenda to move their economies into the next era, an era beyond oil dependence – and that requires embracing change.

The good news is that the Arab World has a rich and ancient tradition of innovation. From this unique confluence of geography and peoples have emerged some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators including the creators of the first civilizations in Mesopotamia, mathematicians (Al-Khwarizmi for example, was the creator of ‘algebra’ and the term ‘algorithm”), the inventors of optics (“The Treatise on Optics” was written by Hassan Ali Aitan), pioneers in medicine (Rhazes, Avicenna, and Averoes, authors of “Havi”, “The Book of Healing”), and astronomers (Al-Biruni introduced the possibility of the earth‘s rotation on its own axis 500 years before Galileo). The oldest surviving universities in the world today are in the region, such as Al-Azhar in Cairo, and polymaths from Edward Said to the inventor of ice-cream cones can be traced there.

So rather than embark on the next real-estate development, or free trade zone, or embellishing the regional balance sheet with the next physical asset, perhaps it’s time to reclaim this legacy. It’s time to celebrate homegrown iconoclasts.

It’s time to celebrate your heroes.