Source: Wamda - Building a startup launchpad in Iraq
Iraq’s entrepreneurship scene has a number of players helping startups, such as Fikra Space which was launched in 2014, but they are all working as separate islands.
In order to accelerate entrepreneurship we need to create an ecosystem that integrates all efforts, and to focus all our activities on a single objective: that of creating new job opportunities.
My company RITS (Ramin Information Technology Solutions), which spent most of 2016 establishing Iraq’s first business incubator for the graduates of Al Mansour University College, proposes taking Iraqi entrepreneurship to the next level.
Our proposition is to establish a Centre for Iraqi Entrepreneurship; this is the beginning of our pitch to the government and other organizations in Iraq to help us make it happen - but we are prepared to go it alone.
This centre is to be in Baghdad, possibly with regional offices around Iraq, and will act as a multi-functional organization supporting entrepreneurs and startups, helping with generating ideas dedicated to solving actual Iraqi problems.
The centre, effectively a large scale incubator, should provide facilities for Iraqi inventors and for new generations of entrepreneurs. We strongly feel this centre should be left to entrepreneurs to run and should have no relationship with any government department, in order to protect it from the paralysis that the entire Iraqi government suffers from.
We envisage the centre to act as a magnet that educates youth in entrepreneurship.
The center will incorporate a permanent science exhibition, a music corner as a way to balance the large influence of technology at the center, an alternative energy division, and a scientific think tank made up of experts to recommend solutions to government.
Read more here: Wamda - Building a startup launchpad in Iraq