Digital Economy in the mena region Gihan Abou Zeid

Digital Economy Policies in the Region
During the 11th International Conference on 
Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management 
and Organisational Learning, Arab states pledged 
to work towards an information society, i.e. a 
society in which the generation, dissemination, 
and use of information has a significant impact 
on all economic, social, political, or military 
sectors (Rooney, 2014). At the national level, 
some Arab states began to translate these 
pledges into their legislative structures. In 
Beirut, an agreement was made to include the 
digital economy in the January 2019 Summit’s 
list of approved items. Later, Lebanon began 
paving the way for a digital transformation by 
adopting Law No. 81 on Electronic Transactions 
and Personal Data, which legalized digital 
transformation and e-signatures (Wahab, 2019). 
In Saudi Arabia, the Knowledge Economic City 
was built in Medina. In Egypt, the Ministry of 
Communication and Information Technology 
established the first specialized technological 
incubators at the end of 2000. In the United 
Arab Emirates, the Dubai Internet City was built. 
Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman also made 
a number of advancements in the digital sphere 
(Abou El-Chamat, 2012). 
In 2014, 11 out of 19 countries in the MENA 
region adopted national broadband strategies. 
At the core of these strategies are targets 
addressing broadband penetration or coverage 
across the MENA region. These targets may 
differ across the region, depending on available 
broadband infrastructure and on the disposable 
income of the population, as well as on the state 
of government finances (Gelvanovska et al., 
2014: 3-4). Moreover, the Joint Arab Strategy 
for Digital Economy was launched to work 
on strengthening the economy’s main pillars 
and applications that add value to the digital 
economy (Al Eqtisadiah, 2019).