About GEN in Jordan

GEN has been active in Jordan since 2008, when it partnered with the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) on the creation of a national campaign to encourage more Jordanians to pursue an entrepreneurial path. During our initial GEW campaign, the Center held seven events across the campus of the Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) with 1,500 participants.

Active now for 16 years, the GEW 2024 campaign in Jordan was one of the five largest in the world with 1,206 events in Amman and throughout the Kingdom with more than 25,000 participants.

With continued backing from GEN, QRCE have developed the campaign over the years through partnerships with more than 250 organizations – including a strategic partnership with Zain Innovation Campus and active engagement from a wide range of strong ecosystem players like Wamda Capital, Business Development Centre Jordan, iPARK, Information and Communication Technology Association of Jordan (Int@j), Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation, King Hussein Foundation, Ministry of Investment, Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship and Oasis 500. 

The partnership with Wamda contributed to GEN securing Fadhi Ghandour, founder of Aramex and executive chairman of the Wamda Group, as a keynote speaker for its Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul in 2018.

GEN also has a direct connection to Jordanian startups. Since 2019, it has run the Entrepreneurship World Cup, a startup pitch competition with $1 million in cash prizes each year for some of the most promising startups in roughly 200 countries. More than 450 Jordanian startups have entered the competition, accessing free training resources, with five reaching the global finals in that time period where they had access to live, face-to-face training and mentorship.

Amman has also been home to a chapter of Startup Huddle – a program run by GEN to support the development of local startups and ecosystems through monthly meetups. Initially launched in 2017, the Startup Huddle Amman chapter ran for five years under a collection of local organizers, passionate individuals within the ecosystem, with support from QRCE and other partners.

Beyond programs like those above that directly support its founders, GEN’s research community is also active in measuring the strength of Jordan’s startup ecosystems. Starting in 2017, GEN releases the Global Startup Ecosystem Report each year in partnership with Startup Genome – with Amman entering the Top 10 MENA ecosystems in the 2025 report following continued growth over the past several years.

GEN's ongoing mission in Jordan is to connect its ecosystems to leading edge research, innovative programs, and communities of seasoned experts. Our goal is to deliver high impact entrepreneurial performance by: monitoring and assessing ecosystem performance, sharing best-in-class programming and knowledge sourced from around the world and leading ecosystem stakeholders in collective action.