At first, or even third, glance, the dusty and desolate industrial estate at the edge of Khartoum looks more like the set of a bad action movie than a fountainhead of innovative capitalism.
But past the rubbish compactors and discarded hydraulic pistons, and around the corner from the crumbling warehouses that shelter pigeons, weeds and a single, lonely boot, Sudan’s great young entrepreneurial hopes are honing their presentations between frequent sorties to the buffet table.
Over the next few hours and days, the eight men and four women who have won a place in the final of Mashrouy, a Sudanese hybrid of The Apprentice andDragon’s Den, will step into the brightly lit studio to face the judges. Though the pitches are well rehearsed and the nerves well buried, the enthusiasm remains fresh. Abu Bakar Makki is delighted with the machine he has invented to minimise the costs and dangers of using mercury to extract gold – if reluctant to go into the specifics of its design. Maha Abdul Hady Ali hopes her software programme will help to spare women unnecessary and stressful biopsies by scanning mammograms to detect abnormal breast tissue. As for Ashraf Salah, he reckons his mobile taxi app could go the full Uber.
Mashrouy, which means “my project” in Arabic, was devised three years ago to address the almost total lack of young entrepreneurship in a country where 62% of the population is under 25 and the youth unemployment rate stands at 23%.
“When we started up the show, none of us could remember the Arabic word for entrepreneurship,” says Hussam Osman of the Sudanese Young Businessmen’s Association, which created the show in partnership with the British Council.
“We had to look it up. It almost doesn’t exist in Sudanese youth. People here won’t take risks because of the financial risks involved, and people wouldn’t want to give their children money to fund a radical idea.”
No comments:
Post a Comment