The Digital Arabic Content (DAC) industry offers great investment opportunities in the Arab region. Despite the presence of many challenges to its development in Arab countries, its chances of success are fairly big, in view of the mounting reliance on the Internet in economic and social activities, and of the presence of over 300 million Arabic-speaking persons.
With the aim of encouraging the DAC industry, UN-ESCWA is launching a series of DAC national competitions in a number of member countries through several workshops, in cooperation with specialized local incubators. Winning projects will receive a one-year incubation at the technological incubators of each country.
The series of competition launchings will be initiated on 25 June in Palestine followed by Lebanon on 26 June. July will witness the rest of the launchings in other participating countries. The series of workshops include, beside the launch of the competition, the modalities of participation, a demonstration of opportunities and importance of the DAC industry, and the services that partner incubators will provide winning projects during the incubation period. Partners include the following specialized incubators: BeryTech Technology & Health (Lebanon); the Palestinian Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI-Palestine); Jordan Innovation Centre, Technological Business Incubator (Jordan); the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Incubator (Syria); and the Aden ICT Incubator (Yemen).
More than a competition, this project offers entrepreneurs and creative-thinking university graduates the opportunity to develop their ideas on marketable ICT products, and opens the door to the establishment of start-up enterprises that produce them. It is part of the implementation of the “Promotion of the Digital Arabic Content Industry through Incubation” Project, which aims to develop the DAC industry in Western Asia by supporting and promoting its applications. UN-ESCWA is implementing the project in cooperation with the aforementioned incubators. Several studies and an expert group meeting have been organized so far, resulting in the establishment of cooperation bases with partner incubators.
For more details, please visit the Website of the project: http://www.escwa.un.org/divisions/projects/dac/index.asp