Fadi Ghandour Sees Bright Future For Region’s Entrepreneurs
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Fadi Ghandour, one of the Middle East’s most prominent investors in start-ups, says that private-sector growth is critical to democracy and prosperity for the region, and that the role for regional governments is to facilitate and encourage investment.
Fadi Ghandour, founder and CEO of Aramex, says that entrepreneurship is “the primary problem solver for youth in the Arab world.”
In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Ghandour said that economic grievances lie at the heart of the popular uprisings across the Arab world. Democracy and economic empowerment, therefore, go hand-in-hand for Arab youth.
Ghandour, who founded Aramex in 1982, is a passionate promoter of social entrepreneurism in the Middle East and one of the region’s most prominent investors in start-ups.
Aramex, a global express and freight-forwarding-services company that specializes in the Middle East, is one of the top entrepreneurial success stories in the region. In 1997, it became the first international company in the Middle East to be listed on the NASDAQ. Ghandour is also the chairman of Wamda, which invests in Middle Eastern entrepreneurs, and a founding partner of Maktoob.com, the largest Arab online community, now owned by Yahoo Inc.
