About GEN in Bahrain

GEN began working in Bahrain in 2009 when it organized the Kingdom’s first Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) campaign in partnership with Young Arab Leaders - Bahrain and O2M Communications. Programming during these early editions aimed to encourage young Bahrainis to consider building companies rather than pursuing public-sector employment. One of the campaign's first success stories was Al Tamasuk, a social venture addressing diabetes awareness and prevention. Its founder, Tariq al Olaimy, met his co-founders and won seed funding at a business-plan competition during the 2009 campaign.

The introduction of GEW planted the seeds for more than 15 years of ecosystem building in the nation. As the campaign matured through the early 2010s, GEN's activities in Bahrain steadily grew in scope. As GEN engaged the entrepreneurial community, it added Tenmou—an angel investment firm founded by Hasan Haider and the first of its kind in the MENA region—to the coalition catalyzing the GEW campaign.

Government participation grew alongside the initiative. In 2015, Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, Bahrain's Minister of Transport, served as a national leader for the GEW campaign, signaling significant government interest. This momentum resulted in Bahrain bidding to host the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC). Led by Tamkeen, Bahrain's Labour Fund, the consortium bested competing international bids and hosted GEN's marquee annual gathering in April 2019. The 11th GEC at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre in Manama drew thousands of international delegates. Zayed Rashid Al Zayani, Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, opened the Congress, framing the event around Bahrain's shift from an oil-based economy toward a diversified, knowledge-based market, and calling on citizens to become job makers rather than job seekers.

Tamkeen's Chair of the Board, Shaikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa, noted that GEN’s work in Bahrain had impacted the outlook of its people and created lasting momentum toward an entrepreneurial future. Bahrain's host government joined the Congress's ministerial steering committee, and Pakiza Abdulrahman then of the Bahrain Economic Development Board represented the Kingdom among the public-sector members convened around GEN's policy work.

GEN's work in Bahrain proved adaptable when circumstances demanded it. During the 2020 global pandemic, the campaign shifted to a free, fully virtual format. Nawaf Mohamed Alkoheji, CEO of Tenmou and a GEN Senior Advisor, publicly challenged the local community to keep celebrating GEW despite the disruption.

As GEN’s work developed into a year-round platform, GEN partnered with Tamkeen to carry forward its ecosystem initiatives. Tamkeen anchors much of the country's private-sector development under its Economic Vision 2030 reform blueprint. Esam Hammad and Sabeeka Engineer have led GEN’s activities in Bahrain. In that same year, Bahrain opened a Startup Huddle chapter, hosted its first Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) national final, and delivered a national GEW campaign, establishing the full range of GEN programs in the Kingdom.

GEN produced GEW 2025 in partnership with Tamkeen, running events around themes of technology, innovation, artificial intelligence, and regional market expansion. The campaign was anchored by the 10th edition of the MENA Angel Investment Summit, which convened investors and startups from across the region alongside local ecosystem partners. A recurring theme of recent campaigns has been women's leadership. PLAYBOOK, a leadership and career platform founded by Wafa Alobaidat that GEN highlighted for advancing women into leadership roles across the MENA region, won the Kingdom's national EWC finals and went on to represent Bahrain at the global finals in Riyadh.

GEN continues to support Bahraini founders through its global program suite. Manama's Startup Huddle chapter, organized locally by Aysha Al-Hammadi, runs regular mentor-supported meetups for early-stage founders. The EWC, the global pitch competition GEN launched at GEC 2019 in Manama, has produced a steady stream of Bahraini finalists competing for a share of the $1 million prize pool. Clever Play, an e-learning platform led by Latifa Al-Khalifa, reached the global finals in 2019; Trillion Tree Fund, a conservation-finance venture led by Leena Al Olaimy, followed in 2021; and 7amdaan.io advanced in 2025.

GEN maintains relationships with a broad set of Bahraini ecosystem stakeholders, including Tamkeen, the Bahrain Economic Development Board, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Tenmou and the wider MENA Angel Investors Network, Bahrain FinTech Bay, the StartUp Bahrain platform, the National Bank of Bahrain, GFH Financial Group, and the Derasat research center. Much of this activity extends beyond the capital to campuses such as Bahrain Polytechnic in Isa Town, which has hosted StartUp Bahrain Weekend and related training programs for aspiring founders.

GEN's founder and president, Jonathan Ortmans, has been a consistent champion for Bahrain on the global stage. He backed the Kingdom's selection to host GEC 2019, citing its welcoming culture and openness at a moment when some nations were turning inward. As GEN's engagement with Bahrain has deepened, its focus has widened toward regional and bilateral cooperation, from spotlighting Bahrain–United States trade links to positioning the Kingdom as a hub for fintech and applied AI within the Gulf. With Manama well established on GEN's global map, the network's goals in Bahrain remain what they have been since 2009: connecting Bahraini founders with the knowledge, networks, capital, and policy support they need to start and scale.