How Gaza's businesswomen are beating the Israeli blockade

by Nigel Wilson

Perched on a plastic chair, Hadeel Elsafadi, 24, is leaning over a wooden desk to watch cartoons on her laptop. On her screen, a classic cat and mouse rivalry is playing out in the unfamiliar surroundings of the Jordanian capital, Amman.

"My team dreams of getting the copyright to make a series about Tom and Jerry in Jordan," Hadeel says.

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It's supposed to be a day off at Gaza Sky Geeks, Gaza's only start-up accelerator, but the brightly-coloured office is buzzing this afternoon. Groups of young women and men huddle around screens and chat over hot chai. Established by the NGO Mercy Corps in 2011, the programme offers young entrepreneurs a shared working space and access to international mentors and investors.

Hadeel already has five years of start-up experience in Gaza and across the region. She founded her first animation start-up in 2011. Two years later, on a trip to Amman, Jordan, Hadeel met the co-founder of her latest venture, DaVinci Box. It specialises in 2-D and 3-D animation as well as motion graphics. The company has 30 clients and Hadeel manages the Jordan-based team remotely. "I stay in Gaza but I think outside of Gaza," she says, adding that regional markets are much bigger and less restricted than the domestic market.

Nine years under an Israeli economic blockade, which Egypt has intermittently enforced too, makes Gaza an unlikely place to find a thriving start-up sector. Parts of the coastal enclave remain devastated after last summer's war, the worst in modern times, and the third in six years in this narrow strip on the Mediterranean Sea. Energy shortages mean there are only eight hours of electricity each day here and the lack of 3G service also hinders connectivity.

Yet a couple of blocks up from the beachfront, a new generation of entrepreneurs is working to rival the regional start-up hubs of Amman, Cairo and Beirut.

"We have some people in Gaza who are incredibly smart and are totally comparable to what you see elsewhere in the region," says Iliana Montauk, director of the Gaza Sky Geeks start-up accelerator.

The Gaza Sky Geeks programme has focused especially hard on attracting women to the sector. "Right now in our incubation, about 40 per cent of our teams have a woman as a co-founder," says Iliana. The female participation levels at the Gaza accelerator are not just high for the region, but are far higher than global rates.

On the crest of this new wave of female entrepreneurs is Mariam Abultewi, who launched a mobile ride-sharing app, Wasselni, last year. The app is designed to improve the taxi system in Gaza, by connecting passengers with drivers online, before heading out to the street to catch a ride.

"It's tough. People think I'm a fresh graduate girl, trying with her graduation project," says Mariam. "But taxi offices and small businesses usually try to see results. If I'm a woman and can get them more customers and more passengers, it's okay."

Gaza has been governed by the Islamist group Hamas since 2007 and much attention has been drawn to some of Hamas's more conservative diktats. In 2013, for example, the UN cancelled its annual Gaza marathon after Hamas banned women from taking part. The move to prevent male hairdressers from cutting women's hair also garnered worldwide attention. While these episodes grab the world's attention for a day or two, the subtler conservative social codes that dictate the tempo of daily life in Gaza present bigger obstacles for female entrepreneurs here.

"What we've noticed is that for women, families seem to play a larger decision-making role than for men," says Iliana. "Often the women will already be married at a young age. They won't be the ones deciding how family income is used."

In Gaza, the idea of women travelling alone, without a male relative, is considered strange for parents. "When it comes to travel, when it comes to expanding the service, they have concerns about my safety, how I can manage things. They have some concerns, but I can handle it," says Mariam.

Meanwhile, many parents here are not familiar with the idea of creating a start-up, and struggle to see why a graduate would decide to build a company from scratch.

"If you are trying to establish something new, there is no revenue from the first day," says Mariam. "In Gaza, and in other places, families don't think the same way. If you're a fresh graduate, they expect you to find a job at the ministry, or something like that."

While a conservative society can present extra obstacles for women launching a start-up here, women have a crucial advantage over their male peers when it comes to visiting potential clients outside the region. Women are far likelier to be granted permits to leave Gaza and also stand a better chance of obtaining entry visas for other countries. For young men, the chances of getting a visa to enter Egypt are slim. Getting permission to travel through Israel to the West Bank is also much harder for men.

"The profile of a terrorist and an entrepreneur is quite similar – a young men between the ages of 18 and 30," says Iliana. "So that has been one of the reasons we've been working really very hard to have an inclusive start-up community. We encourage every team in Gaza to have a woman entrepreneur on the team."

As more young women entrepreneurs gain experience, build networks and travel in the region, it could become harder for them to accept the travails of running a company in Gaza. But Hadeel, the animation company head, dismisses the idea of leaving her homeland for a more comfortable life abroad. "I hope to stay in Gaza and work hard. If I leave Gaza and other people leave Gaza, I don't like this idea. I want to stay in Gaza and improve life here."