Elias Kamal Jabbe

With the fourth edition of Dubai Design Week taking place next month, we look ahead to the increasingly popular event, and how the region’s design and architecture industries are evolving

After welcoming some 60,000 attendees in 2017, this year’s edition of Dubai Design Week – taking place from November 12-17 – is set to build on past successes, with scores of events showcasing the best of the region’s design industry.

The tradition of telling stories is not unique to the Middle East, but this part of the world has for millennia enjoyed tales of love, adventure and divine power expressed in oral lore and passed down generation to generation. This culture of oral tradition is evident today in the popularity of radio, where the medium reaches more than three quarters of the populations in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Lebanon.

In following with this tradition, podcasts and audiobooks are also picking up pace...

The summer is usually considered a calm time in the Gulf countries, when business grinds to a halt and vacations are the focus.
Not at AstroLabs, the Dubai-based Google for Entrepreneurs hub which is home to a plethora of startups and offers digital training courses throughout the year.
Following the opening of its second space in the DMCC Free Zone in April, AstroLabs has expanded further into Saudi Arabia with its Forward KSA training initiative...

The sixth edition of ArabNet Digital Summit Dubai kicked off on April 30, bringing its unique mix of technology and marketing expertise to Madinat Jumeirah...During a panel about brand safety, L’Oréal Middle East’s head of media Sofiane Haddadi provided a candid overview of how his team makes sure their online video advertising strategy hits its mark and reaches the eyes of people within its target audience.

Technology and digital communication are impacting people’s interactions and activities during Ramadan.
Freemium mobile apps like Iquran and Muslim Pro, which launched in Ramadan 2010, are more used during this month. The latter has constantly introduced new features, evolving into a platform that connects Muslims worldwide. Google has even recently created an app called Qibla Finder that guides Muslims to find Makkah’s direction for daily prayers.
Greetings, religious music, recipes search i...

Jeddah-based Saudi entrepreneur Manar Saud Alomayri used to listen to English books online, and felt there is a gap when it comes to Arabic audiobooks. She thought that a modern style of reading books needs to be provided for the mobile-first young generation of the Arab world that she belongs to. This drove the IT professional to leave her well-paid job within the insurance industry to launch Dhad Audiobooks in June 2014, offering online Arabic audiobooks. Books prices range from 6 to 22 Saudi Riyals per book (US$ 1.6 - 5.8). Some are even offered for free, such as إنما نحن جوقة العميان,

Time flies when you're having fun! Dubai-based startup Geeks, launched in December 2014 by the Jordanian partners Mousa Yassin and Fathi Alsharif, has successfully wooed customers in need of tech support, by providing them a prompt on-demand, location-based service.
Over the last couple of years, Geeks won the ‘Most promising startups’ award by Forbes Middle East (2016), raised over $1 million in funds, mapped out plans to expand in the GCC, and morphed from a consumer-focused outfit...

Edtech has been on the rise around the world, with platforms such as California-based Khan Academy making inroads as far away as Yemen.

TeachMeNow.com was launched in May 2015 in Dubai, by serial entrepreneur Thea Myhrvold.
With roots in both Europe (Norway) and the Middle East (Iraq), and having spent some of her childhood growing up in the MENA region, Myhrvold was motivated to turn her online tutoring concept into a reality in an Arab country, and contribute to the regional tech industry's success.

Ever since he first saw Star Trek as a child Damu Winston has had a lifelong fascination with futuristic technology.
The founder and CEO of Universal Linguistics (ULIQ), is an American expat in Dubai who arrived to the UAE in September 2015.
The startup enables users to connect with live interpreters and translators, who speak the desired foreign language the user wants to understand and speak.
The use cases include communicating with locals while traveling, ordering food at a restaurant...

‘We can all go further together than we could all alone’, is the promise of the 2,000-year old practice of ‘jameya’ (‘gameya’ in Egyptian Arabic), which is still popular in Egypt and other predominantly Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East.
The idea is straightforward: a group of people monthly pitches in a fixed amount of money to a pot, and everyone takes turns taking home all of the money at the end of each month. The practice is also called rotating scoring and credit associations (ROSCA).

You cannot spread happiness without being happy yourself. This tenet is the driving force behind Alper Celen’s aim to build the happiest company in the Middle East. Celen is a Turkish-American entrepreneur and investor who is the cofounder of Joi, one of the GCC’s online gifting platforms. Based in Dubai’s Al Quoz area, it currently operates in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Just as his company focuses on spreading good vibes, he decided to make being happy one of the foundations of Joi’s culture....

With the largest B round funding in the history of the Middle East tech ecosystem (41 million dollars for Fetchr) and Amazon’s historic acquisition of Souq and Payfort which happened during the last 60 days, investment in MENA startups will likely be a hot topic this summer. Considering the statistics about the influx of capital in the MENA revealed last week in ArabNet’s latest report, regional entrepreneurs may be asking themselves: “When and how can I get my hands on some of that money?”