‘We have to be leaders’: Jordanian tech entrepreneur on inspiring the next generation amid Middle East war
In the week when the Assad regime in Syria fell, and as war continued to rage in Gaza, a Jordanian social entrepreneur shares how he’s encouraging young people to stay hopeful amid the heavy toll of war and uncertainty – and inspiring them with the ‘Robot Football Olympics’.
War in the Middle East has prompted hopelessness and depression among Jordan’s young people, says one of the country’s leading social entrepreneurs, who nevertheless remains committed to his goal of educating future leaders of the region.
Jaser Alharasees, co-founder of robotics and coding education company Robotna – which created the high-energy, popular ‘Robot Football Olympics’ (pictured) – told Pioneers Post that his dream was to prepare “millions of Arab students” as leaders for the future.
New investment, secured this year, is helping him to edge closer to this goal.
But the brutal conflict and instability surrounding Jordan – a small, peaceful country bordered by Israel, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – had taken a heavy toll, he said. The war in Gaza had been devastating for people in Jordan, where more than half the population had Palestinian roots. Desperate to help loved ones across the border, but often powerless to do so, many young people “don’t see any hope for the future... lots of youth don’t participate in our programmes these days because they [are] depressed.”
Jordan is bordered by Israel, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
Many events in Jordan were cancelled following the war in Gaza from October 2023 – including Robotna’s ‘Innovation Nation’, the culmination of a programme that involves more than 15,000 students and 600 schools, and which is the Middle East’s largest artificial intelligence education programme, according to Alharasees.
The entrepreneur was speaking to Pioneers Post in Amman last week, just two days after Robotna had hosted its 2024 Innovation Nation event – and in a week that also saw the dramatic fall of the brutal Assad regime in neighbouring Syria.
Robotna co-founder Jaser Alharasees, pictured at his office in Amman, Jordan, aims to prepare “millions of Arab students” as leaders for the future
While concerns for Gaza participants from previous years had weighed heavy at the Innovation Nation event, the organisers had shared a message of hope.
“We teach the kids that we have to learn more. We have to be leaders. Some day, maybe some of us will become a leader of the government and push Israel to end this war,” he said.
Robotna provides free education for government-funded schools and for the general public, which is subsidised by charging fees for its services to private schools.
Its work has been widely recognised: Alharasees and his co-founder Thaer El-Ladawi were named among the Forbes Middle East 30 under 30 entrepreneurs in 2023, and this year Robotna received a prestigious national honour, the King Abdullah II medal of excellence.
We are thinking about expansion in the Gulf region, to give us more profit, so that when Palestine and Syria and Lebanon are ready, we can give these courses for free there
But the current economic downturn in Jordan, caused in part by a sharp drop in tourism as international visitors avoid the region, has been a challenge for the social enterprise. It has also had to postpone ambitions to expand – with plans to work in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Sudan all pushed “three steps back” due to conflict.
“Now we are thinking about expansion in the Gulf region, to give us more profit, so that when Palestine and Syria and Lebanon are ready, we can give these courses for free for students in these countries,” Alharasees said.
Mismatch in the job market
More than 45% of young people in Jordan are unemployed. One factor is the mismatch between education and the job market: many international tech firms are present in the country, but cannot fill positions because few people apply, and those who do apply lack the necessary technical and soft skills, Alharasees said. One Robotna initiative, targeting students and graduates in IT and engineering, aims to fill this gap by providing the practical training that’s missing in formal education. Around 70% of those who complete the programme get an interview or find a full-time job within six months, according to the social enterprise.
Robotna has also developed an internationally recognised diploma in robotics and coding, targeted at six to 16-year-olds and available in English and Arabic, which it is currently delivering in 10 schools around Jordan. It reaches many more people through its popular ‘Robot Football Olympics’, which sees groups of schoolchildren building and operating a robot in an emotion-filled competition against other schools.
The Robot Football Olympics is a hotly-fought contest among schoolchildren
One student, quoted on Robotna’s website, describes their participation in its education programmes as “the best experience I have ever had in my life”, learning not just about science and technology but also “that I should not give up in any situation and that the most important thing is to work with passion to achieve success.”
But Robotna’s contests are telling when it comes to the concerns of Jordan’s young people. The Innovation Nation project culminates in a challenge to build an AI-based product that benefits the environment. This year, a group from the desert region in the south of the country designed a device that detects which trees most urgently need watering, Alharasees said. Another group in Syria – where participants had to access education materials via a specially created WhatsApp course, because the website was blocked – built a robot that could search for people trapped under rubble.
Growth and recognition
The impetus for Robotna came when, aged around 13, Alharasees was selected to participate in a robotics and coding course. “This chance, it just changed my life,” he said. When he went to study at university – in a region surrounded by schools whose facilities were “ten times worse” than those at the government school he had attended – he began to wonder how he could give other youngsters “the same spark that I got 10 years ago”. With fellow student Thaer El-Ladawi, he co-founded a volunteer project in 2013 that saw students going into surrounding schools to teach robotics, coding and AI. A few years later, the pair realised that charging a fee to private schools could help them fund services for those who could not afford to pay.
We are always, in the Middle East, the survivors
One of the biggest challenges Alharasees cites today is the fact that Jordan does not have specific legal form for social enterprise; this means that Robotna must pay the same rate of taxes as any other purely commercial company.
But there is no temptation on the part of the co-founders to reduce their philanthropic work to focus on lucrative commercial opportunities.
“We have a goal to give, as I told you, the spark for more students,” he said. “Even if we stopped all the for-profit things, we will keep doing the free things.”
In any case, the social enterprise has recently secured further support for the business. Alfanar, a venture philanthropy organisation operating throughout the Arab world, has supported Robotna since 2020. As of this year, it is part of Alfanar’s three-year ‘Sustain’ programme: this will include technical support to scale up the business and expand into new markets, plus grant funding in year one of $100,000, said Alfanar’s Suha Abdul Rahim. Initially this is grant funding, but it will “slowly move to a portion that will be based on 0% interest loans”, mostly likely in the third year.
For now, many people in Jordan, seeing what is happening in Palestine and in Lebanon, are increasingly fearful about the future, Alharasees said. “But we will survive. We are always, in the Middle East, the survivors. We will survive this time, and we will survive the next time.”
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Photo of Jaser Alharasees by Anna Patton; all other photos supplied by Robotna. Map graphic by Fanny Blanquier. Pioneers Post’s travel to Jordan was funded by Stichting SPARK, as part of its Ignite conference on 8 December.
