The managing director of the Oman Technology Fund, Maha Al Balushi, on Oman’s 25-year vision to top the world’s innovation ranks.
Maha Al Balushi is running the Oman Tech Fund’s first pre-seed accelerator, Techween, in collaboration with Ireland’s National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) as part of an overall strategy to spark innovation and entrepreneurship in her country.
Oman was ranked last year in the Global Entrepreneurship Index as third out of Arab countries for innovation and 33 out of 137 countries. It has achieved notable successes but the road ahead is long.
Al Balushi told Inspirefest 2018 how she is helping to spearhead Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said’s vision to develop the country’s economy, particularly through science and technology.
“He said that the national economy of a country is in fact based on small and medium industries. ‘These are the fundamentals and the foundation of all national economies.’ Since then, the entrepreneurial scene in Oman started to revive. I say revive because Omanis are known to have been entrepreneurs since forever.”
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Words by John Kennedy
