{
  "title": "Breaking Barriers By Gary Seidman",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/breaking-barriers-gary-seidman",
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  "summary": "Women entrepreneurs are changing the dynamics of the Arab workplace",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "Overview",
      "content": "- Women entrepreneurs in the Arab world are increasingly taking on entrepreneurial roles in business and technology, challenging traditional roles and gender expectations.\n- Labor force participation for women in the Middle East and North Africa is 19 percent compared with the global average of nearly 50 percent.\n- The trend follows a global pattern that is accelerating innovation and diversifying prosperity, but progress requires confronting social norms and entrenched interests."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Brewing opportunities in Yemen",
      "content": "- Profile: Arzaq Al-najjar, 34, founder of Mocha Valley, a coffee-production and business consultancy based in Sana'a.\n- Historical context and market size:\n  - Nearly 600 years ago coffee beans from Ethiopia were first roasted, brewed, and sipped in Yemen’s Sufi shrines.\n  - During the 16th century, ships carried coffee from the port of Mocha across the Middle East and North Africa; by the early 20th century coffee became a global commodity.\n  - By 2021, coffee exports topped $36 billion.\n  - Today, Yemen exports less than 1 percent of the world’s coffee.\n- Mocha Valley activities:\n  - Specializes in research, training, and development assistance for entrepreneurs, investors, coffee traders, farmers, and partners along the coffee value chain.\n  - Offers training and promotes quality standards; Al-najjar was the first female “coffee cupper” in Yemen and became a consultant after completing her MBA in Lebanon.\n  - Launched Mocha Valley five years ago.\n- Socioeconomic and conflict-related constraints:\n  - Yemen’s development ranked 183rd of 191 countries on the UN Human Development Index in 2021.\n  - World Bank: Approximately 22.5 million people, or about 75 percent of the entire population, require humanitarian assistance, with over 4.3 million civilians displaced.\n  - IMF estimates that Yemen’s GDP will fall by 0.5 percent in 2023 and that inflation will run at 17 percent.\n  - Cultural barriers: women face discrimination in business; many deals occur during male-only qat sessions.\n  - Agricultural competition: qat is a more lucrative crop for many farmers and siphons off farmland and water in a water-scarce country.\n- Aspirations and potential:\n  - Al-najjar seeks to develop and expand Yemen’s coffee value chain so producers and traders can access global markets.\n  - She is optimistic that greater female participation can make the coffee industry more efficient and cultivate future women leaders in the sector."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Empowering Egypt’s unbanked",
      "content": "- Profile: Fatma El Shenawy, cofounder of Khazna, an Egyptian fintech founded in 2019.\n- Mission and services:\n  - Khazna was built to serve the underserved, connecting Egypt’s unbanked and underbanked with digital access to money, bill payment, and services via a mobile app.\n  - Provides an income-backed multipurpose credit line for cash advances, bill payment, purchases from a merchant network, and medical insurance.\n- Market opportunity and scale:\n  - Global Finance Magazine: 67 percent of Egypt’s population have no access to formal banking services.\n  - Mobile phones are in more than 90 percent of Egyptian households.\n  - World Bank: about 1.7 billion people around the world are currently unbanked.\n  - Khazna partners include businesses that employ 1.5 million people and Egypt Post to serve their 5 million pension customers.\n- Expansion and regulatory environment:\n  - Khazna has ambitions beyond Egypt, including Saudi Arabia.\n  - El Shenawy cites shared characteristics between Saudi and Egypt: a progressive regulator open to new ideas and a digitally connected population ready for new financial services."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Regional implications and takeaways",
      "content": "- Female entrepreneurship is contributing to economic diversification, innovation, and inclusion across the Arab world despite low female labor force participation.\n- Key barriers include cultural norms, discriminatory practices, conflict and humanitarian crises, resource constraints (e.g., water scarcity), and entrenched informal institutions (e.g., qat sessions).\n- Technology and fintech present scalable avenues to extend services to underserved populations, leveraging high mobile-phone penetration."
    },
    {
      "heading": "Policy-relevant points and recommendations",
      "content": "- Support development of value chains (e.g., coffee in Yemen) through training, standards, data, and market access to help integrate local producers into global markets.\n- Promote financial inclusion via digital platforms that leverage widespread mobile-phone ownership to reach unbanked and underbanked populations.\n- Address gender-specific constraints by:\n  - Creating targeted training and mentorship programs for women entrepreneurs.\n  - Reducing discriminatory barriers in business practices and negotiation forums.\n- Consider conflict-sensitive development approaches in fragile contexts (e.g., Yemen) that account for humanitarian needs, displacement, and macroeconomic instability (GDP contraction and high inflation).\n- Encourage regulatory environments that enable fintech innovation while protecting vulnerable users, as exemplified by Khazna’s model and cross-border expansion ambitions.\n\nSource: Breaking Barriers By Gary Seidman, F&D Magazine, September 2023.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- Breaking Barriers\n  - Breaking Barriers (Markdown version){rel=\"alternate\" type=\"text/markdown\"}\n  - Breaking Barriers (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/breaking-barriers-gary-seidman"
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    "Authors: GARY SEIDMAN",
    "Published: September 1, 2023",
    "Women entrepreneurs in the Arab world are increasingly taking on entrepreneurial roles in business and technology, challenging traditional roles and gender expectations.",
    "Labor force participation for women in the Middle East and North Africa is 19 percent compared with the global average of nearly 50 percent.",
    "The trend follows a global pattern that is accelerating innovation and diversifying prosperity, but progress requires confronting social norms and entrenched interests.",
    "Profile: Arzaq Al-najjar, 34, founder of Mocha Valley, a coffee-production and business consultancy based in Sana'a.",
    "Historical context and market size:",
    "Mocha Valley activities:",
    "Socioeconomic and conflict-related constraints:",
    "Aspirations and potential:",
    "Profile: Fatma El Shenawy, cofounder of Khazna, an Egyptian fintech founded in 2019.",
    "Mission and services:",
    "Market opportunity and scale:",
    "Expansion and regulatory environment:",
    "Female entrepreneurship is contributing to economic diversification, innovation, and inclusion across the Arab world despite low female labor force participation.",
    "Key barriers include cultural norms, discriminatory practices, conflict and humanitarian crises, resource constraints (e.g., water scarcity), and entrenched informal institutions (e.g., qat sessions).",
    "Technology and fintech present scalable avenues to extend services to underserved populations, leveraging high mobile-phone penetration.",
    "Support development of value chains (e.g., coffee in Yemen) through training, standards, data, and market access to help integrate local producers into global markets.",
    "Promote financial inclusion via digital platforms that leverage widespread mobile-phone ownership to reach unbanked and underbanked populations.",
    "Address gender-specific constraints by:",
    "Consider conflict-sensitive development approaches in fragile contexts (e.g., Yemen) that account for humanitarian needs, displacement, and macroeconomic instability (GDP contraction and high inflation).",
    "Encourage regulatory environments that enable fintech innovation while protecting vulnerable users, as exemplified by Khazna’s model and cross-border expansion ambitions.",
    "**Breaking Barriers**"
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