About GEN in Syria

The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) traces its presence in Syria to 2015, when the Syrian Economic Forum (SEF) became the country’s first national host organization for Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). For the first-ever GEW Syria, SEF led a national Syrian Entrepreneurship Day that brought together aspiring entrepreneurs, representatives of the Syrian Interim Government and Syrian Opposition Coalition, and members of the business community, while launching a series of lectures under SEF’s Civic Education program. The campaign was deliberately positioned as a beacon of hope at a time when Syrian human development had regressed by more than four decades of war. 

In its early years, GEW Syria operated under exceptional circumstances. SEF, led by Founding Chairman Ayman Tabbaa and Executive Director Tammam Al Baroudi, partnered with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) to develop a course that combined entrepreneurship with civics, taught by Syrian university professors and delivered both inside Syria – in Aleppo and Idlib – and across the border in Kilis, Turkey. The University of Aleppo adopted the course as part of its first-year curriculum on campuses operating in the Aleppo countryside, and the program was later adapted for online delivery through an e-learning platform called Ta’alum (“Learning”). 

As the Syrian conflict reshaped where and how Syrians lived and worked, the GEW campaign evolved with them. In November 2017, SEF hosted GEW activities in Gaziantep, Türkiye, focused on bringing the thousands of Syrian businesses operating in the informal sector into the formal economy – an initiative that secured Turkish authorities’ approval for Syrian investment in the Gaziantep Free Economic Zone, where Syrian factories began producing goods ranging from PVC pipes to potato chip flavoring and putting young Syrians and Turks to work. Throughout these years, GEW served as a platform to demonstrate that entrepreneurship could be a vehicle for recovery, livelihoods, and integration rather than only a celebration. 

In 2025, the campaign entered a new chapter with the launch of Startup Syria as the country’s GEW national host – signaling Syria’s return to the global GEN map after years of conflict. Joining more than 85 organizations worldwide leading GEW 2025 under the theme Together We Build, Startup Syria positioned the campaign around five priorities: the role of AI and technology in rebuilding key sectors, women and youth leadership in entrepreneurship, sustainable innovation and climate resilience, unlocking investment and access to finance, and diaspora networks empowering local founders. “We are excited to bring Global Entrepreneurship Week to Syria, a milestone that will put Syria back on the global map of innovation,” said Fadi Bishara, Chair of Startup Syria. “Syrian entrepreneurs will come together in this global celebration of the power of innovation… Entrepreneurship is ready to fuel recovery, rebuild communities, and position Syria as a country of ideas and opportunity once again.”  

In 2023, GEN recognized the broader Syrian entrepreneurship community with the Inspiration + Resilience Award at the Compass Awards, presented to UNDP Syria during GEC 2023 in Melbourne. The award honored the partnership’s work supporting founders building businesses through years of conflict and reconstruction. 

Syria’s formal entry into GEN’s policy community came in 2025, when it joined the Startup Nations community alongside new members from Croatia, Ukraine and Suriname. Syria’s addition to the community came at a moment when the country’s policy environment was being reshaped to support recovery and private-sector-led growth. The GEN Policy team provided strategic guidance to Startup Syria as it drafted a national entrepreneurship strategy and startup act. In March 2026, Ahmad Sufian Bayram, founder of Startup Syria and executive advisor to the Minister of Telecommunication and IT, presented the strategy to the Startup Nations community.  

GEN also has a direct connection to Syrian startups through the Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC), a global startup pitch competition with $1 million in cash prizes each year for some of the most promising startups in roughly 200 countries. Syria has been one of the more active EWC national competitions in the region: at the 2022 EWC Syria National Finals, organized in Damascus by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through its Youth Leadership Programme and Youth Empowerment Programme in partnership with Sanad Team for Development, 218 contestants from across the country competed for a share of the prizes. My Rootstock, a startup developing locally grafted vegetable seedlings; Al-Ather Tracking Solutions, a fleet-tracking software provider operating in Syria since 2019; and Smart Window, a digital marketplace connecting service providers with customers, shared first place across the ideation, growth and early stages and advanced to the EWC Global Finals, where they joined the GEN Starters Club community of founders. 

Smart Window’s co-founder and CTO, Ahmad Ramadan, was featured among the EWC Global Finalists in GEN’s 2023 and 2024 impact reports as one of the Syrian founders representing the country on the global stage. Sudipto Mukerjee, then-UNDP Syria Resident Representative, captured the spirit of the national competition: “Despite all the problems that we have in this world, we have every reason to be optimistic because this generation of young people will bring about positive change.” Earlier, in 2018, Syrian alumnus Anwar Almojarkesh of Braci Limited – a London-based startup founded by a Syrian innovator – received the Best Alumni Pitch award at the GIST Tech-I competition finals held during GEN’s Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) in Istanbul. [VERIFY: The 2018 GEC in Istanbul also featured Syrian refugee entrepreneurship as a major theme, with sessions including a workshop on “Entrepreneurship in Post-Conflict Economies” and the “Empretec Global Summit: Entrepreneurship + Migration” spotlighting the nearly 7,000 businesses Syrian entrepreneurs had established in Turkey since 2011 – a moment GEN partners highlighted as elevating refugee voices into the global ecosystem dialogue.] 

GEN maintains relationships with key Syrian ecosystem stakeholders that have evolved alongside the country’s circumstances. These have included Startup Syria, the Syrian Economic Forum, UNDP Syria, the Sanad Team for Development Foundation, Damascus University’s Faculty of Informatics Engineering, the Damascus Chamber of Commerce, the Damascus Chamber of Industry, and the Center for International Private Enterprise. GEN’s engagement also intersects with diaspora-focused organizations and partners working with Syrian entrepreneurs across the region, including in Turkey and Lebanon, recognizing that the Syrian entrepreneurial community is distributed across host countries as well as Syria itself. 

Jonathan Ortmans, Founder and President of GEN, has spoken consistently about the importance of including post-conflict economies and refugee entrepreneurs in the global ecosystem dialogue, and Syria has been a recurring example in that case. With Startup Syria now leading GEW and Syrian representatives entering the Startup Nations community, GEN’s ongoing mission in Syria is to connect a new generation of founders, ecosystem builders and policymakers to the programs, research and peer communities that can accelerate Syria’s return as a country of ideas and opportunity.