Is mandatory military service hurting entrepreneurship in Egypt?
Imagine what the world would be like if Steve Jobs, Bill Gates
and Mark Zuckerberg had all been forced to spend three years in the
military after dropping out of college, instead of turning their
startups into some of the world’s most powerful brands.
Would we have Facebook, Google, and Apple? Would their youthful
entrepreneurial zeal, enthusiasm and energy have been tempered or
hardened by military duty?
While each of these founders managed to barely miss America’s draft
policy for the Vietnam War (especially Zuckerberg, who was born
over a decade too late), aspiring young entrepreneurs in Egypt
don’t share the same luck. Compulsory conscription is a reality,
and one that is hindering or derailing their startup ambitions.
“It is the worst thing ever I have found in my business,” claims 22
year-old Mostafa Hemdan, the founder of Recyclobekia, a startup he founded
during his second year of university that collects and ships
electronic waste abroad to be recycled. He even goes so far as to
say, “this is worst thing in my life.”
In Egypt, all males between the ages of 18 and 30 are required by
law to join the military for anywhere between 12 and 36 months,
depending on their background, education, and other factors. Often,
students postpone it until they finish their studies, but they
cannot travel abroad without special permission from the Ministry
of Defense.
There are some exemptions from service. For example, if you are the
only male child, or all your brothers are currently in the
military, you are exempt, for a time. Otherwise, it’s basically
“unavoidable,” people say. Despite rampant corruption in Egypt, you
also can’t bribe your way out of the military. If you skip it, you
are required to pay a hefty fine and barred from things like
running for office in the future.
“Every time I travel for business, I have to go to my college to
get permission that says I’m a student,” says Hemdan, describing an
irritating bureaucratic back-and-forth between his university and
the military which significantly delays and disrupts his flow of
business, since all of his clients are abroad.
“In the first semester, [the university] said I would travel and
stay [abroad] to avoid the military,” explains Hemdan, “and now
that I’m in the final graduation year, they say I can’t travel.”
He’s now decided to hire an older COO to manage the international
travel and day-to-day operations of the company, while he considers
enlisting next year, just to get it over with.
Although more than 25 countries, including Norway, Finland, Greece,
South Korea, and Turkey, all have mandatory military service, the
rising internal and external encouragement of youth
entrepreneurship in Egypt, coming from University programs like the
American University in Cairo’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Program and
Venture Lab, as well as foreign entities like the US State
Department’s Global
Entrepreneurship Program, seems at odds with the country’s
policies.
“Instead of working for two to three years and starting a company,”
says Dr. Sherif Kamel, Dean of AUC’s Business School, now
entrepreneurs are starting companies right out of university. “The
age for starting companies went down from 28, now down to 20 or 21.
They want to go launch immediately,” says Dr. Kamel.
But in some cases, they simply can’t. Entrepreneurs say just the
prospect of service is making them put their business ideas on
hold.
Mohamed Nedal, Ali Farid Ali and Khaled Ali-Elden, the 20-year old
co-founders of Pure
Life, a company they began building during their second year at
Helwan University in Cairo, just graduated last month.
Although they earned a spot as one of 13 finalists in Cairo’s StartupCup for their
plan to build a commercial-scale plant that turns organic waste
into electricity and fertilizer, they are afraid to build anything
more than a small prototype at the moment.
“We will go for our military service in October,” they told me, “so
we must wait until after to invest in our product.” They will
dedicate the next few months to working on refining their idea,
with the help of valuable mentorship and training, but ultimately
their final step will be put on hold until after their service.
Ideas, passions, and worldviews also change quickly in your
early twenties; who can say the whole team will be on board after
one, or possibly three years of service? Three years is a long
time, for both an entrepreneur and a market.
In Egypt’s case, it’s not as if the people don’t support their
armed forces, as recent events may have shown. The Egyptian army
has, according to recent polls,
a 94% approval rating among Egyptians, making it perhaps the
most trusted institution in the country. Yet that doesn’t mean
everyone should, or wants, to join its ranks.
“Military conscription is simply an immoral waste of human
capital,” says Hany Al-Sonbaty, the Managing Director of Flat6Labs,
a tech accelerator and incubator in Cairo, who has seen many
startups broken up over the issue of military conscription.
The country’s 84 million strong population is one of its greatest
assets, the oil of the 21st century, according to AUC’s
Dr. Kamel. But how will Egypt choose to use it?
It’s a big question for Egypt and its powerful armed forces,
especially at such a pivotal time for the country. It’s also an
incredibly complex one.
What does the nation need or value more at this moment, the
manpower to maintain one of the region’s strongest armed forces
against perceived threats both internal and external, or the human
capital to build the engine of a new economy?
Photo credit: Spencer Irvine.