The Enterprise Financing Network of the Middle East and North Africa Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (MENA-OECD) has announced the final results of  “MENA 100 Business Plan Competition” during a ceremony held last Wednesday, 11 November in the Bahraini Capital of Manama, in cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank and in partnership with 18 regional Partners including the Syrian Enterprise Business Centre (SEBC)/ SME Support Programme (SSP) – MENA-OECD representative in Syria.   

Evaluation criteria of the competition included business vision, quality of team, market potential, innovation, and robustness of financials estimates.

Following the presentations, the MENA 100 jury, composed of regional and international judges, voted on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes during a closed working session. The winners were Morocco for first place, Egypt for second and Jordan for third.

Syrian participation in the competition was represented by 37 young men and women, three of which reached the finals: Sana Abdullah, Firas Al Qudsi and Imad Haydar. The finalists were invited to attend the closing ceremony in Manama where Sana Abdullah, as best Syrian candidate, was selected to present her business plan to the jury.

Poul Gadegaard, SSP Team Leader spoke of the importance of this competition and SEBC’s role: "SEBC is very proud of the results achieved by Syrian participation in this regional competition, considering the limited time as the announcement was on such short notice. This reflects the advanced level of entrepreneurship among young Syrian".

He added that the competition was a valuable opportunity for Syrian youth to benefit and learn about the investment cycle, how to set up action plans, how to access funding sources for their projects and to engage in innovative business partnerships with the financial and economic world.

He pointed out that one of the goals of this pilot initiative is to support the private sector in cooperation with regional Partners which is also one of the main objectives SEBC/SSP.

The primary objective of the MENA 100 business plan competition is to encourage existing and inspire potential entrepreneurs and connect the 100 best of them in the Middle East and North Africa region with potential sources of finance to generate business transactions.

The MENA 100 Competition addressed innovative entrepreneurs from the 18 Arab countries participating in the MENA OECD Investment Program (Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen).