Meet the Entrepreneurs Trying to Fix the Arab World’s Broken Job Market
While governments invest in reform, many of the most effective responses to the region's employment challenges are emerging from entrepreneurs working directly with the communities affected by them.
The decision to launch Jordan’s first remote recruitment platform for women was personal. Six months after giving birth to her daughter, Sawsan Lubani confronted a stark reality: Either relinquish the career she loved and become a stay-at-home mother, or accept a demotion and a salary cut. “I had no choice,” she says.
After getting married, Lubani moved from Amman to Zarqa, an industrial city northeast of the capital where professional opportunities were scarce. The daily commute to Amman was expensive and unsafe for a woman traveling alone. Away from family and friends to help with childcare, she was unable to find work.
“I faced an identity crisis. I didn’t even know who I was anymore,” she says.
Then a former colleague reached out with a remote work opportunity. The report-writing job paid around $250 a month—far below a livable wage in Jordan—but for Lubani, it represented a valuable opportunity. “I could stay at home with my daughter and avoid a career gap in my resume,” she says.
At 5am, the alarm would sound. Creeping quietly to her desk, she worked quickly, trying to get ahead before her daughter woke. Initially, she was simply grateful to be working again, but over time, she realized she could help other Jordanian women balance family life with flexible work.
When the COVID-19 pandemic normalized working from home, she saw an opportunity. In 2023, after completing incubator programs in Jordan and graduating from the Founder Institute in Silicon Valley, Lubani launched iRole, a recruitment platform that connects women with remote jobs and skills training.
“I wasn’t someone who wanted to become an entrepreneur,” the 38-year-old says. “I just had an idea to get myself out of this place and help other women do it too.”
Across the region, startups like iRole are offering an alternative to traditional recruitment systems, filling in where universities and outdated labor laws have struggled to keep pace.
Three years after its launch, iRole has connected women across Jordan to remote roles in fields including accounting, marketing, administration, and design. One woman works as an accountant for a Dubai-based company, while another is a designer advising a Jordanian student doing a PhD in London.
The platform also helps women navigate cultural barriers. In parts of Jordan, conservative norms prevent women from working outside the home. Others leave the workforce after having children because salaries barely cover travel and childcare costs.
“An entry-level salary in Amman might be around $500 a month,” says Lubani. “Commuting from Zarqa, I needed $200 for travel and $200 for daycare. The salary hardly covers the expenses.”
Remote work, she says, affords the flexibility women need to maintain their careers while managing family responsibilities. “I do what I need to do when I need to do it. I have a schedule for me and for my kids, know when to work, when to go to the gym, when to work overnight.”
But new platforms are still colliding with old realities.
In Egypt, Mohammed Orabi founded the recruitment and training platform Matloub after a frustrating period of job searching. He had changed jobs at least ten times in two years, often traveling more than 10 hours from Upper Egypt to Cairo, only to discover that the role was unsuitable or, worse, a scam.
This experience is not unusual in Upper Egypt, a rural region where job opportunities outside the agricultural sector are scarce. The area is home to some of the poorest communities in the country and unemployment rates are high.
Orabi launched Matloub in 2021 to provide young people with real opportunities and to help companies access talent from an often-overlooked pool. They also provide training and mentorship to equip candidates with in-demand skills.
Many young people in Upper Egypt lack access to career guidance or professional training. “People don’t understand job duties and responsibilities,” Orabi says. “There’s a huge gap between education and what companies actually need.”
Orabi believes this disconnect between jobseekers and employers represents an “urgent challenge” in the labor market.
“Universities are not doing enough to prepare students,” he says.
To date, his agency has worked with 60,000 people and secured 40,000 jobs in banking, pharmaceuticals, customer service and sales, among other sectors. Orabi credits this success to a hands-on approach that supports job-seekers through their first few months in a new role.
“We help them onboard and settle in,” he says. “A lot of people feel alone when they start a new role.”
Matloub also acts as a middleman to protect young people from exploitation and scams. Common deceptions include positions in the Gulf that require an employee to cover travel expenses for a role that doesn’t exist.
In Egypt, misleading salary advertisements and workplace mistreatment are frequently reported. Egypt’s 2025 Labor Law has introduced stronger protections for workers, but doubts remain about the legislation’s capacity to change a culture of workplace exploitation. “Employment laws are not enforced,” Orabi says.
Employers, meanwhile, complain that candidates graduate without the necessary soft skills, pointing to exaggerated CV’s and an over-reliance on AI tools in job applications. “Many don’t know how to send an email or how to deal with a problem,” says Lubani. “They lack communication and critical thinking skills.”
Governments across the region are investing in entrepreneurship and digital skills to diversify their economies and reduce the employment burden on bloated public sectors.
In Jordan, startups are supported through funding initiatives that aim to improve the business environment and spur investment. Egypt’s Communications Ministry similarly provides grants and training for students to bolster digital skillsets and meet the needs of the job market.
But founders like Lubani and Orabi believe that grassroots platforms are better placed to understand the challenges that face sidelined jobseekers. “They are enthusiastic, they really want to work and offer something to society; all they need is someone to put them in the right place,” Orabi says.
Similar gaps between education and employment are compounding unemployment and impeding economic growth elsewhere in the region.
In northwestern Iraq, Murad Ismael, now a Member of Parliament, founded Sinjar Academy to fill a vacuum in the labor market and furnish youth with skills to revitalize the economy after years of conflict.
IT and tech skills are in high demand in Iraq, but here too, outdated university courses fail to prepare students for the workforce, and many struggle to find jobs after they graduate.
Sinjar Academy runs courses in programming, digital media and computer skills to help people find jobs and revitalize a community devastated by war. “Overall, it’s not a very technology-supportive environment in Iraq, but we’re trying to create the skills and opportunities to drive this forward,” Ismael says.
Education is also a way for people to process what they have suffered. The memory of the 2014 genocide, when ISIS killed and abducted thousands of Yazidis from Sinjar and surrounding villages, hangs over the community. Many people are still displaced after years of conflict, while efforts to rebuild have been hampered by a lack of funding from the central government.
Equipping the next generation with relevant skills will help reboot the economy and transition away from overreliance on NGOs, says Ismael. “If people have good skills, they will get work. The issue is not having a degree; it’s about the ability and opportunity to make the most of their lives.”
Across Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq, these entrepreneurs are addressing problems that governments, universities, and employers have struggled to solve. Their approaches differ, but they share a common belief that talent exists everywhere, even where opportunity does not. The challenge is building the bridges that connect the two.
The Arab world’s employment crisis cannot be solved by startups alone. But by connecting overlooked talent with real opportunities, entrepreneurs like Lubani, Orabi, and Ismael are showing that some of the most effective solutions begin far from government ministries and boardrooms.
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