The World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise

Volume 1: Africa and Middle East

Wayne Visser

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351284424
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise is the first comprehensive global compendium that clearly describes the national approaches to sustainable enterprise. Through a systematic review of each country, this quick-to-access reference guide showcases the similarities and differences in each region. Every country profile includes key information about the relevant history, country-specific issues, trends, research, and the leading organizations operating in the field as well as best-practice case studies. The guide comprises four volumes, each dedicated to a specific region of the world. In a world where organizations are working increasingly across national and regional boundaries and research takes a joined-up and international approach, this book is an essential guide for practitioners and researchers in the disciplines of business sustainability, social enterprise and corporate responsibility. The first of its kind, this reference book provides the reader with a unique insight into what is the current state-of-play in each country. Each edited volume provides expert contributions from around the world; the contributors have been selected on the basis of their knowledge of the country and their clear experience in sustainable enterprise. Each regional/country profile includes the following subsections: Sustainable Enterprise in context; Priority issues; Trends; Government policies; Case studies; Further resources; and References. This unique resource will be an essential acquisition for all organizations who need to benchmark their sustainable enterprise strategies throughout different regions and cultures and want the best possible intelligence on the key issues and concerns relating to sustainable business and social responsibility in all of the markets in which they operate. It provides a useful companion reference collection to The World Guide to CSR, also edited by Wayne Visser. The full Four Volume Set of The World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise is available for purchase as a single item at a 25% discounted rate.

Part 1
Regional profiles

I
Middle East and North Africa

Dima Jamali

Professor of Management, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Nazareth Seferian

Sustainability Expert, CSR Armenia, Armenia

Maali Qasem Khader

CEO and Founder, Schema and Jordan Institute of Directors (JIoD), Jordan

Regional context

According to an old Arab saying, “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads.” While the human and cultural resources of the Middle East are rooted in the centuries-old histories of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Syria, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region today encompasses a much larger and more diverse landmass that has undergone staggering transformations over the past 60 years.

The MENA region covers approximately 8.6 million km of land and is located at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe. It is made up of 18 countries and has a population of approximately 355 million people, comprising roughly 6% of the world’s population. While Arabs are the majority ethnic group in the region, the population encompasses various other ethnicities, including Turks, Tukomans, Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Copts, Jews, Assyrians, Maronites, Cicassians, Somalis, Armenians, and Druze, among others. Roughly 90% of the population is Muslim. (United Nations, 2012).

MENA is blessed with abundant natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, land, forests, water, as well as human capital, all of which continue to bring wealth to the region.

The majority (85%) of the MENA population live in middle-income countries, such as Lebanon, Libya, and Jordan. High income countries, also commonly referred to as the Gulf Countries, include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait, and make up 8% of the MENA population, while low-income countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Morocco contain the remaining 7% of the MENA population. (United Nations, 2012).

The low- and middle-income countries, commonly referred to as the developing countries of the MENA region, are undergoing tumultuous change as a result of the Arab Spring and the ensuing conflict, war, instability and violence. Today, the North Africa segment, especially Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, is suffering from the growing pains of transitional governments and post-revolutionary insecurities of varying degrees. Egypt, for example, which ousted its first democratically chosen leader in 2012, is currently in a state of flux, characterized by a polarized political scene, which continues to threaten civilian life with sporadic violence that has no end in sight (World Bank, 2013).

The Levant region, on the other hand, made up of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine, has a long history of protracted political conflict which has become increasingly intensified today due to the civil war that continues to unfold in Syria. The high-income Gulf Countries in MENA have made significant strides forward in terms of development, accentuating the gap across social, environmental and economic indicators between them and their low-income counterparts.

Hence, there is a ripe platform for sustainable enterprise development in the context of the region. Our chapter will look especially at the role of sustainable enterprise in the weaker yet fertile portion of the MENA region, where access to adequate and sustainable solutions for the most basic of social, economic and environmental needs can contribute to the region’s stability and prosperity.

Priority issues

The MENA region has made significant progress over the past decade in relation to key development indicators. For example, the region boasts a primary education completion rate of 91%, an average life expectancy of 70 years and an under-five mortality rate of 38/1,000 (World Bank, 2013). With 30% of the population between the ages of 15 and 29, over 100 million youth provide a substantial untapped pool of ingenuity and talent. This educated, young, smart and resilient population of MENA is one of its greatest resources, providing immense opportunities for growth and development.

However, providing this “Youth Bulge” with the economic prospects and opportunities that they need to survive and thrive during their most productive years remains one of the region’s greatest challenges (Sayre and Constant, 2011). Across MENA, youth unemployment rates have reached 25%, the highest in the world. Young unemployed males in the region spend at least two years looking for work, while women will sometimes spend three years or more (World Bank, 2014).

Besides unemployment, 23% of the population are living under $2 a day (United Nations Development Programme, 2011) and inequalities in income distribution have resulted in increased feelings of indignity, frustration and discontent among the youth in the region, fuelling the revolutionary spirit and their gloomy aftermath.

The latest conflict in Syria, for example, continues to spill over into neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, which have taken on the largest influx of Syrian refugees and find themselves dealing with the associated pressures on their infrastructure, public health, labour, education and security, all of which are aggravating an already delicate economic, social and political balance.

It is estimated that 1.5 million Syrian refugees reside in Lebanon, making up approximately 30% of its population, resulting in spikes of poverty and continued security breaches that are threatening civilian life and any hope of economic prosperity. Jordan has seen an inundation of over 800,000 refugees since the war began. Iraq too is housing many displaced Syrians while it continues to struggle with the shaky political foundation left behind after nine years of war and US involvement in Iraq, which ended in 2011 (UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2014).

Creating productive employment opportunities continues to be an immense challenge for the region as a whole, with current unemployment rates generally higher than during the pre-revolutionary period (Kadri, 2011). As a result, in what is being dubbed the “Arab Winter”, governments of the mid- and low-income countries in the region are struggling to meet basic social needs.

The rise of the sustainable enterprise provides a potential avenue for much-needed change and hope for introducing solutions to a multitude of complex social and environmental problems that plague the region at this particular juncture.

Trends

Sustainable enterprise is a new and growing trend in MENA. Starting at the turn of this century, various social entrepreneurs were recognized, with Ashoka introducing its own fellows from the Arab world in 2003. Sustainable enterprise offers hope for innovation in the social sector, by bridging the gaps between the public, private and non-profit sectors. Nevertheless, several obstacles constrain the development of the social enterprise sector in MENA.

One challenge is that there is very little integration and coordination among MENA governments. In general, these countries do not have shared government policies or regional legislative initiatives on any issues related to sustainable business. Even at a national level, most of the governments in this region have not yet developed any specific policies or legislation to encourage sustainable business. One exception in the region is Israel (Gidron and Yogev, 2010), where the government announced its intention to launch a social business investment fund in 2013.

The social enterprise movement in the region is growing mainly through support by foreign governments such as the USA and the countries of the European Union, employing various international agencies such as USAID and the British Council. Ashoka and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship are also influential organizations across the region.

A regional study on social enterprise reported that most Middle Eastern countries do not allow for “flexible and inclusive” types of organization (Wolfensohn Centre for Development et al., 2010). Hence, most social businesses or eco-enterprises in the region are required to register as for-profit companies, with no special privileges or allowances that distinguish them from other profit-seeking entities (Abdou et al., 2010). This is related to the fact that many countries in the region do not have laws that support risk-taking and innovation. For example, the bankruptcy laws penalize companies for failure and could dissuade social entrepreneurs (Abed and Davoodi, 2003).

The tax policies of countries in MENA are also not particularly conducive to the development of social enterprises. Most for-profit organizations in the region are subjected to a blanket tax, which means that all profit is taxed in the same way, irrespective of any social or environmental benefits. For example, Fair Trade Egypt is legally registered as a for-profit enterprise to ensure its ability to respond to market demand and to be able to export and receive foreign currency in a timely manner. These are all activities that it would be greatly limited or restricted from pursuing if it were registered as a non-profit organization. However, being taxed as a for-profit company limits its impact, as the objective of a fair-trade organization is to maximize distributions to low-income producers.

Despite the unsupportive policy context, social entrepreneurs continue to proliferate across MENA, with Egypt accounting for 39% of social entrepreneurs and social businesses in the region, followed by Palestine (22%), Jordan (17%) and Lebanon (15%) (Hoogendoorn and Hartog, 2010). Social businesses seem to be enjoying a shy presence in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with numbers barely reaching the 3% and 2% respectively.

The efforts of these social entrepreneurs are spread across numerous sectors, particularly education (24%), health (22%) and social justice and human rights (22%). Other efforts can be found in civic engagement (15%) and the rural development sector (10%) (Hoogendoorn and Hartog, 2010). An analysis of the Ashoka, Synergos Arab Social Innovators, Skoll and Schwab Foundation websites suggests that males constitute 66% of social entrepreneurs in the region.

Case studies

Cairo-Amman Bank (Jordan)

The Cairo-Amman Bank is a full-service bank in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, with a head office in Amman. The bank promotes itself as a champion in support of the local community and low-income customers. One programme is building on a partnership with the UNHCR that began during the Iraqi refugee crisis. Now, the UNHCR is working with Cairo-Amman Bank to provide cash-based assistance to some 75,000 Syrians living outside camps. UNHCR collects biometric information, including iris scans, as refugees are registered, using technology developed by a Jordan-based firm, IrisGuard. Cash assistance is distributed using specialized ATMs installed in over 100 locations across Jordan which require only an iris scan. The system not only prevents fraud and multiple registrations, but also avoids problems around the loss of cards and pin codes. The technology could also offer innovative ways for monitoring the distribution, movement and needs of vulnerable populations.

Cedar Environmental (Lebanon)

Cedar Environmental is an environmental waste management organization whose mission is to build community facilities that recycle waste into new forms of usable products. Cedar Environmental was founded by environmental and industrial engineer Ziad Abi Shaker, a social entrepreneur with a passion for achieving a zero-waste society. Besides waste management and recycling plants, the company is also involved in rehabilitation of industrial land and support for organic farming. Through its research and development, Cedar Environmental has succeeded in developing various ways to improve the treatment of waste. For example, it developed recycling plants to produce organically certified fertilizers from organic waste, and innovated a new technology to transform plastic bags into panel boards for outdoor use, thereby replacing wooden and steel panels.

Another Cedar Environmental initiative is around finding a use for Lebanon’s green and amber bottles that have been piling up in landfills since the 2006 War in Lebanon, when the only glass manufacturing facility in Lebanon was destroyed. By partnering with a local glass blowing institution, The Khalife Bothers from the southern coastal town of Sarafand, Cedar Environmental was able to transform the used bottles into simple glass products that could appeal to urban tastes in Beirut. By doing so, not only has Cedar Environmental revived the country’s glass blowing artisan-ship, a trade that had been passed down across generations for hundreds of years, but also diverted beer bottles from Lebanese landfills and put them to good use (Anderson, 2013, 2014).

ConnectME (Palestine)

ConnectME is a social enterprise established to support the sustainable development of economies in transition in Palestine and the wider MENA region. It has a strategic focus on the incorporation of youth and women into the social, economic and political fabric of MENA societies. To this end, ConnectME engages Palestinian and Arab Diaspora communities to support regional economic initiatives such as entrepreneurship programmes, and creates partnerships between international public and private entities and their Arab counterparts. ConnectME also strengthens relationships among the region’s businesses, societal groups and governments. As a woman owned and founded enterprise, ConnectME incorporates a distinct understanding of economic development. It aims to increase the participation of all citizens in the region, closing the gender gap and empowering women by developing their capacity for leadership and providing them with opportunities for innovation.

Landmark Hotel (Jordan)

Landmark Hotel is one of the more sustainable hotels in the region. After an extensive stakeholder engagement process and revisiting their value chain, they identified three strategic areas: employees, environment and the supply chain. Landmark Hotel has invested in extensive training programmes to encourage employees to advance their knowledge. As a result, they have one of the lowest turnover rates in the industry, with associated savings in recruitment and retention costs. The hotel undertook an in-depth energy audit and identified various ways to reduce their energy consumption, use renewable energy, manage their waste and increase employee awareness to ensure their commitment to the programme.

The hotel held several workshops with their suppliers to identify ways to improve their relationship and be more sustainable in the process. One successful initiative as a result was with a fruits and vegetables supplier. They struggled to provide the hotel with the necessary products fast enough due to a lack of packaging material. As a result, the hotel changed their process and invested in more sustainable packaging, which is rapidly returned to the supplier to be reused.

Liliyot Restaurant (Israel)

This culinary establishment has developed an important social programme to rehabilitate youth at risk. Specifically, it trains and employs around 15 high school dropouts every year, allowing them to learn a skill that can earn them a decent living. The youth are taught, trained and employed for a period of up to 18 months, receiving support from qualified professionals, including a social worker, over this time period. The restaurant partners with Elem, the Organization for Youth at Risk in Israel, to make this programme a reality. The initiative was further expanded when Liliyot opened a bakery, allowing the restaurant to take on more young people and also teach them new skills. The programme participants receive full salaries and are expected to meet the same high standards as all employees. A study by the Bar-Ilan University in 2008 found that the participants in this programme ended up in better life circumstances than peers who were not at Liliyot, thus demonstrating the importance of this small but effective initiative in Israel.

Nahdet El Mahrousa (Egypt)

Nahdet El Mahrousa aims to empower the ideas of young E...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Regional profiles
• Part 2: Country profiles
• About the editor
• About the contributors
• Other volumes of the World Guide to Sustainable Enterprise