How many violent acts against women must occur, in how many different places before we, as a society, stand up to stop it?

1) @lajump, aka Leslie, rightly pointed out that the private sector has an important role too.  While the government is key to reducing red tape and facilitating start-ups, the Egyptian private sector must help by opening up its networks and taking risks on promising enterprises. “I am ready to put more money in,” Egyptian billionaire and telecom titan Naguib Sawiris told Businessweek.  Recognizing that it was the source of pain, he believes in “spreading” the country’s prosperity.  That will be key in order to protect his own.

2) Celebrate the ones that are there, but make sure that everyone knows about it.  Everyone wants to guide an entrepreneur and tell him or her how to do it.  What about telling the rest of us how he or she did it?  We in the West do it through publications such as Fast Company, Inc. Entrepreneur and entire newspaper sections devoted to the topic.  The same is not true in the developing world.  As a development and media junkie, I’m dismayed by the absence of entrepreneurship coverage in places like Egypt.  The stories of the incredible Egyptian men and women that have launched enterprises have the power others to believe in their ideas.  Perhaps that will inspire them to become entrepreneurs.  Better yet, perhaps it will inspire them to become writers, architects, designers and anthropologists (see earlier post).  Reading about someone turning an idea into reality builds confidence.

Journalism training is a must anywhere, anytime.  In this post-Mubarak era it an opportunity to equip Egypt’s talented reporters with the skills to report on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.  Reuters, the Soros Foundation and the European Center for Journalism are organizations doing just that. The fourth estate made all the difference in the French Revolution.  Let’s make sure it does the same in the Egyptian one.

• A year ago, Egypt’s government released figures on the country’s poverty.  It showed that it had reached 23.4 percent, “up from 20 percent the previous year.”
• In June 2010, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) released its Human Development Report for Egypt.  That report noted that among the country’s unemployed, estimated to be 8 million, “90 percent were under the age of 30.”
• Business Insider has this informative piece about Egypt’s “economic tragedy”, in what it calls “3 simple charts.”

In a special report in 2010, The Economist ran this set of social indicators:

Egypt is more populous and poorer today than it was 20 years ago.  But it is also more literate and connected to the world.  That is good and bad.  Young Egyptians are developing skills and becoming more aware of the opportunities around the world – (and the lack of them in their own country).  You extrapolate.

Increased freedoms would go far to ensure that these youth can access those opportunities.  Expanding entrepreneurship would guarantee it.  As much as Egyptians need and deserve freedom, they need and deserve the tools that will allow them to build vibrant and sustainable businesses.

Endeavor is one of the few non-profits working to do that.  It is working to support “high-impact” entrepreneurs through world-class mentorship and high-level networks.  They are entrepreneurs such as Hind and Nadia Wassef who run Diwan, a boutique bookshop committed to reviving Egypt’s rich literary heritage, Mostafa Hafez, a young techie who creates video games at Timeline Interactive, the company he founded with the belief that Silicon Valley isn’t the only place where innovation comes from and Fatma Ghaly, who as the CEO of Azza Fahmy jewelry, has created a highly-coveted Egyptian designer brand.  These entrepreneurs are shattering perceptions that entrepreneurship in Egypt can’t succeed.

Last year, following the April 2010 Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, the State Department launched the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP).  ”Focused on supporting and empowering entrepreneurs,” GEP is another program helping Egyptians realize their entrepreneurial potential.  It’s one of the few government programs that doesn’t make me cringe.  That’s because, rather than doling out funds or ideology, it is tapping into its platform to identify entrepreneurs and connect them to mentors and networks in order to help start-ups thrive.  From the looks of the crowds in Tahrir Square, thrive is something Egyptians are hungry to do.

Earlier this week the White House and the Kauffman Foundation announced Startup America Partnership, an initiative aimed to allow Americans to test “new ideas, bring new products to market and generate new businesses.”  Isn’t there a way to replicate and adapt this for Egypt?

Hat tip to @krmaher and @auerswald who have enriched, through their smart and measured Tweets, my experience of the events in Egypt.

“Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt and the audience of Elvis and you have Umm Kulthum.” Virginia Danielson, Harvard Magazine.

Since I was in Cairo this past week, the only thing that caught my eye was Egyptian entertainer Umm Kulthum.

Umm is hailed as the Arab World’s – not just Egypt’s – greatest singer.  She sells nearly a million records every year.  On the first Thursday of every month, Radio Cairo plays her songs.  Not bad for someone who’s been dead for nearly forty years.

Umm shot to fame during the 1940s and 50s when radio was just emerging.  In fact, she was the first artist Egyptians heard the night Radio Cairo first went on the air in 1934.  They immediately fell in love.

Umm’s legacy is largely a result of what Maria Callas called her “incomparable voice.”  But as I walked by an unassuming bronze statue of her, in front of the museum dedicated to her in downtown Cairo, I realized it was also because of her entrepreneurial spirit.

Umm was born the daughter of a poor Egyptian family in a village in the Nile delta.  Her father was a Muslim imam, who not only taught her to read the Koran, but also had her memorize it.  He then had her recite it – and was blown away by her voice.

When she was 12 he dressed her up as a boy and had her perform in a small troupe that he directed.

What put her on the road to fame, however, was her keen ability to network, build a niche, and become a role model, even if she herself didn’t have one.  Umm surrounded herself not only with musicians but also poets, who helped her develop her own “epic” songs and style.

She knew it was not enough to just sing, she had to create a genre.  To do so, she studied Arab classics as well as French imports and infused them both into her long songs that “measured in hours rather than minutes.”

She also surrounded herself with political figures including Egyptian King Farouk, whose uncle she nearly married, and Egyptian nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser.  Umm’s songs are strongly associated with the Arab national movement against Western powers.  In 1996 Michal Goldman made a film called Umm Kulthum:  A Voice Like Egypt. It is about Umm’s music and how it led to the overthrow of the British and freed Egypt in 1953.

What left me in wonderment, however, was finding out how many other singers and artists she influenced, including Bob Dylan who has been quoted as saying, “She’s great.  She really is. Really great.”

Arabs are abuzz about getting their ideas for new businesses off the ground.

Habib Haddad, founder of Yamli and Yalla Start Up, is excited but worried that this is just a trend.  “It’s unusual for someone in the Middle East to admit that he is going off to start a business. So, I’m excited to see that so many Arabs are diving into it.  But I wonder how long it will last?”

How not to make it a trend?  Here are Haddad’s three suggestions:

• Increase the influx of sophisticated investors: While there are entrepreneurs in the Middle East, there are few entrepreneurial savvy investors.  Haddad suggests that along with all the entrepreneurial education and support that is pouring into the region, equal focus must be placed on strengthening and diversifying the investor class. “We need less bankers and more venture capitalists.  Bankers don’t understand what entrepreneurs need.”

• Source mentors: Where do budding entrepreneurs go for advice?  While there are organizations like Endeavor in Egypt and Jordan, the region lacks the networks and entrepreneurial support structures that exist in the United States. “It’s a myth that entrepreneurship is a lonely venture,” says Haddad.  He believes that serious entrepreneurs need feedback, criticism and guidance.  “That’s why as an early stage start-up I decided to be based in Boston and not the Middle East. I wanted a support network.”

• Train the media: I screamed when Haddad mentioned this (I hope his ears have recovered.)  Journalism in the Middle East is under developed to begin with.  It’s virtually non-existent when it comes to entrepreneurship.  It’s not just a matter of training journalists to understand how to cover entrepreneurship, investments and innovation (which incidentally is a project I’m spearheading at Endeavor .)  It’s getting Middle East journalists to see the importance of those things.   “It is rare to see an article about a start-up, an investment or simply anything about someone with an idea in the Middle East.”

Yahoo’s acquisition of the Amman-based Arab Internet service provider Maktoob in August 2009 is a prime example.  Only after there was considerable buzz in the US press and on Twitter did the Jordanian press pick up on it.  “It always has to be a Western story first before the Arab press will pay attention.”

Will this work?  May be.  May be not.  I’ll tell you though, with passionate entrepreneurs like Habib Haddad thinking about this stuff – and given the region’s proximity to Europe, Africa and Asia, the Middle East is a place I’d put my money on and in.