Fikr6; Final Thoughts

After a three day fiesta, the Fikr6 conference has come to an end. Overall, the conference covered many issues of interest to the Arab region, discussed concepts for growth and adaptation in the growing world, and dealt with strategies for the future.

The final day was again filled with more hot topics and heated discussions, and although I will not go into detail over the specific subjects, a number of interesting concepts were raised:

- Role in Globalization
A question was raised over what the Arab world has contributed to the process of Globalization; the answer was "We buy. The world produces and we buy". This does make you think, considering that we have become consumer economies rather than producers (with the exception of oil). We don't export motor vehicles, we don't export electronics, we don't export technology, and so on. People don't travel to world to attend our universities, people don't leave their countries to recieve our healthcare.

Sure, a few countries do produce and offer services to a certain extent, but overall the general notion is that we consume. Essentially this means that most of our money is not being used inside our countries, and is slowly being pumped out of the region. Cash inflow from outside the region isn't very outstanding either, and besides the petroleum (for a few countries) and to a certain extent, investments, what else do we really have to offer the world? Isn't it about time this started to change?

- Arab Unity
Everyone seems to be talking about Arab unity, a single strategy, a single plan. Although this is a great idea, why do we restrict ourselves to it? Why wait for this to be a pre-requisite? Unity of the Arabs, and a single strategy is going to take a long time to create, and a lot of politic, economic and societal issues will come in the way before it is achieved. Before creating this unity, each country needs to take it's own initiative and finds it's own strengths, and build upon those. A collective strategy could be placed parallel to each country building on itself.

- Private Sector Innovation
In terms of innovation and action, the private sector in our countries needs to make big steps. The past has shown that most big initiatives in the region were started by the private sector, and after reaching a large enough size, were then taken on by the public sector. Example in point; Bahrain. Real-estate investment and properties were not very big on the government agenda, but as the private sector (initially with the investment banks) started pulling in investors and proving that this was infact a very profitable business, the government took notice, and started to become more and more interested in the concept, until finally placing it on it's list of priorities.

The public sector can help build initiative by changing legislation and so on, but most schemes are usually started through the private sector, and support should be provided to them to come up with new proposals and ideas.

- Strategy vs. Action
Strategies and plans have been discussed between the Arabs for years and years; a plan to compete in the global markets, a plan for growth strategies, plans for unity, plans for production, for diversification, and so on.

Till when will we keep talking about strategies and plans? This is the time for action.

Overall, the conference ended on a great note, and hopefully some of these ideas will be delivered to the decision makers in our region, helping us to evolve. The whole experience was exciting, and truthfully I think we need more of these events, to bring us together to discuss ideas, thoughts, and experiences.