The Gulf states, North Africa and the Maghreb, Egypt, the Levant, Iraq, and contexts where choice is severely constrained
MENA is the short label, not the region. The Gulf is one part of it: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Dubai are not shorthand for the whole, and the region's endowments, constraints and room for error differ more inside it than most single figures suggest.
Broad window
Thu 20 May, about 11:00 PM to 2:00 AM Toronto timeIn Cairo: Fri 21 May, about 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM. The hours belong to the conversation, not to one region: contributors from anywhere take part wherever the question needs them.
Taking part
Contributor expressions of interest are not open.
The question in play
How must leadership change when the systems people depend on are changing faster than institutions can adapt?
The relay's opening question, carried from Toronto. South Asia transforms it live, and this movement receives that version when its own begins.
Regional reality
Regional Reality
The Middle East and North Africa is a region of extraordinary but profoundly uneven endowments, where energy, capital, geography, human capability and institutional capacity coexist with some of the world's sharpest constraints in water, employment, fiscal space and conflict exposure. Across the region, leaders are attempting transitions that must often occur simultaneously: from hydrocarbon dependence toward more diversified economies, from public-sector-led employment toward more productive private activity, from infrastructure expansion toward resource resilience, and from inherited economic arrangements toward systems capable of meeting the aspirations of younger and more diverse populations. The leadership challenge is therefore not simply whether the region can change. It is how leaders make consequential choices among competing transitions when resources, institutional capacity, exposure to disruption and room for error differ dramatically across countries.
Endowment → Choice → Transition
What these three words mean here
Endowment
Not oil alone. The inherited combination of hydrocarbons, sovereign capital, solar and renewable resources, geography, trade routes, ports, infrastructure, demographic structure, human capability, diaspora, institutions, cultural assets, state capacity, fiscal capacity, water availability or scarcity, and exposure to conflict and disruption. Every transition begins from an inherited position, and inherited advantage does not determine the quality of future choices.
Choice
The hinge. What to diversify, subsidize, liberalize, localize, privatize, regulate, build, maintain, stop, protect, reform, fund now or defer, who participates, and who carries the costs. Leadership becomes consequential when desirable futures compete for the same capital, institutional attention, implementation capacity and social tolerance.
Transition
Not the energy transition alone. Economic, labour, fiscal, energy, water, digital, institutional, urban, industrial and state-market transitions, often running at once. Transition is not one destination. It is a portfolio of choices.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The region's inquiry starts from the position that the question is not whether to transform, but which transitions come first and who carries their costs. It is organised around:
Choosing between transitions that are all necessary
Economic transformation that becomes productive work
What the state should build, enable, regulate or stop doing
Water, energy and climate governed as one system
Resilience where the room for error is unequal
This is what LEAD48's research sees in Middle East & North Africa: the tensions, the evidence and the questions it raises. It is where the inquiry starts, not a boundary around it. The conversation needs people who can strengthen it, challenge it, complicate it or take it somewhere it has not gone, and a well-evidenced challenge to this reading is as strong a contribution as support for it.
Prevailing conditions Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What is changing here?
Each condition is backed by the sources listed with it. Open a source to see what it says and where it stops.
Economic transition is happening at radically different speeds and from radically different starting points
Some economies hold sovereign assets, hydrocarbon revenue, fiscal buffers and delivery capacity. Others face tight fiscal space, higher debt, weaker institutions, conflict exposure and severe resource constraints.
Detail and scope
Even among producers the inherited position differs by a factor of four: oil rents were 42.8 percent of GDP in Iraq in 2021 against 15.3 percent in Qatar and 10.9 percent in Bahrain. Diversification is not a switch from oil to non-oil. It is the gradual redesign of how an economy creates income, jobs, resilience and fiscal capacity.
Scope: Region-wide, and the differences between countries here are larger than the differences between many regions.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Employment systems are not keeping pace with human capability
Education and aspiration have expanded faster than the pathways into productive work, and the gap falls hardest on young people and on women.
Detail and scope
Youth unemployment in 2024 ran from 0.6 percent in Qatar to 39.1 percent in Jordan and 38.9 in Tunisia, while recorded female participation ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar to 4.7 percent in Yemen, with the highest figures resting on substantially migrant workforces. Economic transformation becomes socially consequential only when new economic activity creates credible pathways into productive work.
Scope: Everywhere in the region, in different forms: citizen employment expectations, private-sector absorption, localization and migrant labour interact differently in each labour market.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the future
"The Arab States and Northern Africa are consistently the subregions with the world's highest youth unemployment rates. In the two subregions, more than one in five economically active young people struggle to find work (youth unemployment rates of 26.2 per cent and 22.6 per cent, respectively) and at least one in three young people is in NEET status (NEET rates of 32.4 per cent and 30.1 per cent, respectively)."
Published
2026-08
Evidence period
2025, from ILO modelled estimates (November 2025); 2026 and 2027 are projections
Geography
ILO subregions, not MENA: the Arab States (in ILO's 2024 grouping, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen) and Northern Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara)
Limitations
ILO modelled estimates for two ILO subregions, not a figure for this movement's geography and not a country rate. The youth unemployment rate is a share of young people in the labour force; the NEET rate is a share of all young people; the two use different denominators and are never added together or converted into each other. The 2026 edition does not restate which countries each subregion contains, so the membership above is ILO's 2024 grouping. Ages 15 to 24 only.
Water, heat and energy are becoming one interconnected operating system
Water supply depends on energy, energy demand rises with heat, cooling and desalination compete for the same power, and food, cities and industry depend on all of it.
Detail and scope
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 9 in Egypt, 22 in Qatar, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against a world average of 5,431. Supply at that level is manufactured, which makes water an energy and fiscal decision. In MENA, Planet is increasingly an operating constraint on economic strategy, not an environmental sidebar.
Scope: Universal in the region and unevenly severe: Lebanon, Iraq and Morocco hold ten times the internal water per person that the Gulf states do, and face their own scarcity through drought, demand and allocation.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) (2026)
Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026
Installed renewable capacity in IRENA's Middle East grouping was 43,778 MW at the end of 2024 and 56,446 MW at the end of 2025: growth of 28.9 per cent, about 12.7 GW, the region's largest growth rate, "with Saudi Arabia accounting for the majority of this expansion".
Published
2026-03
Evidence period
End of 2024 and end of 2025
Geography
IRENA's Middle East grouping only: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the State of Palestine, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. IRENA counts the North African countries under Africa, so this is not a MENA figure.
Limitations
Installed capacity at the end of the year, not the share of electricity generated from renewables, not planned capacity, not investment and not employment. IRENA's Middle East grouping includes Iran and Israel and excludes all of North Africa, so it does not match this movement's geography, and no MENA total is published or constructed here. IRENA's highlights map, updated later, shows 57 GW for the same grouping; the yearbook table value is used here.
State capacity can accelerate transformation, and state dominance can also constrain it
Sovereign investment and industrial policy can move faster than markets; the same dominance can crowd out the private activity a transition is supposed to produce.
Detail and scope
The leadership question is not simply state or market. It is what each must do, what each should stop doing, and how capability moves between them, which is a different question in a state with sovereign assets than in one with none.
Scope: Region-wide, and the answer differs with fiscal room: state dominance is a choice in some countries and the only available instrument in others.
Resilience means radically different things depending on how much room a system has to absorb failure
High-buffer systems hold fiscal reserves, institutional redundancy, sovereign assets and access to capital. Low-buffer systems carry fiscal distress, conflict, displacement, institutional fragmentation and damaged infrastructure.
Detail and scope
Resilience is partly the capacity to absorb disruption, and it is also the capacity to continue making meaningful choices after disruption occurs. A failed experiment is a lesson in one system and a lasting loss in another.
Scope: The sharpest internal division in the region, and the reason its leadership lessons do not transfer evenly within it.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Inside the region Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
One region, several realities
None of these stands for the others.
The Gulf states
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain hold hydrocarbons, sovereign capital, state-led transformation programmes, migrant labour systems, localization policy, rising women's participation, AI and digital government, megaprojects, industrial policy, tourism, renewable energy and manufactured water. They are not one economy: oil rents ran from 10.9 percent of GDP in Bahrain to 23.7 in Saudi Arabia in 2021, youth unemployment from 0.6 percent in Qatar to 15.1 in Kuwait, and their fiscal positions and transition strategies differ accordingly. The Gulf does not represent the region, and no single Gulf state represents the Gulf.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia face employment, youth, manufacturing, private-sector productivity, agriculture, water, migration, trade, energy, industrial upgrading and regional connectivity, and they face them from different positions: youth unemployment was 22.4 percent in Morocco, 29.9 in Algeria and 38.9 in Tunisia in 2024, and Algeria's hydrocarbon rents give it a fiscal structure the other two do not have. Morocco's trajectory is not the North African template.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Treated separately because of scale. Youth employment and population growth, the state-market balance, infrastructure programmes, fiscal constraints, energy, cities, private-sector development, state-owned enterprises and labour-market absorption. Renewable internal freshwater is 9 cubic metres per person, among the lowest recorded anywhere, so water, energy and food policy are one decision rather than three.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Jordan and Lebanon differ sharply and are not read together. Jordan carries severe water scarcity at 62 cubic metres per person, the region's highest recorded youth unemployment at 39.1 percent, refugee hosting at scale and a large committed infrastructure programme. Lebanon holds relatively high internal water at 839 cubic metres per person alongside fiscal collapse, institutional fragmentation and renewed conflict exposure. Human capital is substantial in both; the constraint that binds is different in each.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Hydrocarbon rents at 42.8 percent of GDP in 2021, the highest recorded in the region, alongside reconstruction, infrastructure, connectivity ambitions, contested state capacity, diversification pressure, regional trade position and youth unemployment at 31.7 percent. Endowment and constraint are present in the same economy, which is what makes sequencing the live question rather than resources.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
A distinct analytical layer rather than a place on the map: Yemen, Gaza, severely disrupted Palestinian contexts and other conflict-affected situations where the evidence supports responsible inclusion. Here the leadership portfolio is not growth against transition but survival, continuity of basic services, reconstruction, livelihoods, institutional preservation and protecting future human capability. These contexts are never scored or ranked against diversification programmes, and the section below sets out how they are held.
Who experiences the region differently Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Who experiences this differently?
No region is a single story. These groups are named from the evidence, not as a complete list.
Young people entering the labour market
Educational aspiration has expanded faster than credible pathways into productive work, and the resulting gap is not one number: youth unemployment ran from 0.6 percent in Qatar to 39.1 percent in Jordan in 2024. A young population is not automatically a dividend, and public-sector employment expectations, private-sector absorption, entrepreneurship and localization each change what is actually available.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the future
"The Arab States and Northern Africa are consistently the subregions with the world's highest youth unemployment rates. In the two subregions, more than one in five economically active young people struggle to find work (youth unemployment rates of 26.2 per cent and 22.6 per cent, respectively) and at least one in three young people is in NEET status (NEET rates of 32.4 per cent and 30.1 per cent, respectively)."
Published
2026-08
Evidence period
2025, from ILO modelled estimates (November 2025); 2026 and 2027 are projections
Geography
ILO subregions, not MENA: the Arab States (in ILO's 2024 grouping, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen) and Northern Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara)
Limitations
ILO modelled estimates for two ILO subregions, not a figure for this movement's geography and not a country rate. The youth unemployment rate is a share of young people in the labour force; the NEET rate is a share of all young people; the two use different denominators and are never added together or converted into each other. The 2026 edition does not restate which countries each subregion contains, so the membership above is ILO's 2024 grouping. Ages 15 to 24 only.
Recorded female participation runs from 61.8 percent to 4.7 percent across the region, and in the highest-rate states much of that workforce is migrant rather than citizen. The question this movement puts is what economic capability remains unavailable when systems prevent women from participating fully, which is a question about employment, skills, diversification, entrepreneurship, digital systems, mobility and policy at once.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Migrant labour is structural to several Gulf economies rather than a temporary solution: it is how competitiveness, construction, services and care are delivered. It raises questions of mobility, protection, skills, localization and cost simultaneously, and both dimensions belong in the record, the economic and the human. Qatar's reforms removed exit permits and no-objection certificates and approved more than 348,500 job changes between November 2020 and August 2022, while the same account records retaliation against workers who try to move and months of unpaid wages.
Source International Labour Organization (2022)
Overview of Qatar's labour reforms
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
Refugees and displaced people, and the systems hosting them
Several economies host displaced populations at a scale that shapes labour markets, public services, water demand and fiscal position. Access to formal work, and the regulation that governs it, decides whether that presence is a cost absorbed or a capability used.
People whose livelihoods depend on water they no longer have
Farmers, rural communities and water-intensive industries face allocation decisions taken elsewhere. Where internal freshwater is 9 or 22 or 62 cubic metres per person, supply is manufactured and priced, and who gets it is a leadership choice rather than a natural outcome.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
What the evidence complicates Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What might we be getting wrong?
Common assumption
MENA's future is fundamentally a post-oil story.
What the evidence shows
Hydrocarbons remain economically consequential while diversification, electricity demand growth, renewables, water and industrial transformation increasingly interact. Oil rents were still 42.8 percent of GDP in Iraq and 23.7 in Saudi Arabia in 2021, and the 2020 collapse and recovery showed exposure rather than exit. The region is not leaving one economy for another; it is running several transitions at once.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Having capital means having transformation capacity.
What the evidence shows
Capital can finance a transition, and institutions, human capability, implementation capacity and sequencing determine what it produces. The same sum spent in a different order, or into a system that cannot absorb it, produces a different economy.
Common assumption
Economic diversification automatically creates jobs for citizens.
What the evidence shows
Sectoral diversification and labour-market transformation are related but distinct problems. New sectors can grow on migrant labour, on capital intensity, or on skills the education system is not yet producing, and none of those routes creates citizen employment by itself.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Migrant labour is simply a temporary workforce solution.
What the evidence shows
Migrant labour is structural to several Gulf labour-market models, creating simultaneous questions of mobility, protection, skills, localization and economic competitiveness. Reform has changed the rules for hundreds of thousands of workers while retaliation, unpaid wages and slow enforcement persist, which is what a structural system looks like when it is being changed.
Source International Labour Organization (2022)
Overview of Qatar's labour reforms
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
Water here is simultaneously an energy, infrastructure, food, fiscal, urban and national-resilience issue. Jordan's answer to 62 cubic metres per person is a 300 million cubic metre desalination plant, a 438-kilometre pipeline and a 281 megawatt solar plant to power it: a water decision that is also an energy, debt and urban decision for decades.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
Physical delivery is one layer. Utilization, productivity, opportunity cost, fiscal sustainability and long-term economic value decide what a project produces, and the question after building is whether the system can use what was built. Project size is not a measure of leadership quality.
Common assumption
Fragility means leadership knowledge only flows into a country.
What the evidence shows
Operating under severe constraint generates knowledge about continuity, local institutions, prioritisation, adaptation and resilience that higher-buffer systems rarely have to develop. The direction of learning is not one-way, and this movement does not treat it as if it were.
Leadership challenges Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What must leaders do?
The conversations this region will prioritise. Not a ranking of the region's biggest problems.
Choose the Transition Portfolio
When several transitions are necessary at once, what must leaders fund first, sequence carefully, scale, defer or stop?
The anchor priority, and the one the others are cases of. Every transition here is defensible; they compete for the same capital, institutional attention, implementation capacity and social tolerance.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Who participates when economies diversify, and what makes new economic activity become meaningful work rather than impressive output statistics?
Diversification and employment are separate achievements. Youth, women, localization, migrant labour, skills, entrepreneurship and private-sector development all sit between one and the other.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
What should the state build, enable, regulate or leave so that transformation can continue beyond state spending itself?
Not a call to grow the private sector. A question about which capabilities belong to the state, which must be developed by firms, and what each has to stop doing for the other to work.
Treat Water, Energy and Climate as One Strategic System
How should leaders allocate scarce resources when water security, energy reliability, food systems, cities and climate adaptation increasingly depend on one another?
Resource systems that were once planned separately increasingly have to be governed together, and the allocation decisions between them are among the most consequential leadership choices in the region.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
Source International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) (2026)
Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026
Installed renewable capacity in IRENA's Middle East grouping was 43,778 MW at the end of 2024 and 56,446 MW at the end of 2025: growth of 28.9 per cent, about 12.7 GW, the region's largest growth rate, "with Saudi Arabia accounting for the majority of this expansion".
Published
2026-03
Evidence period
End of 2024 and end of 2025
Geography
IRENA's Middle East grouping only: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the State of Palestine, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. IRENA counts the North African countries under Africa, so this is not a MENA figure.
Limitations
Installed capacity at the end of the year, not the share of electricity generated from renewables, not planned capacity, not investment and not employment. IRENA's Middle East grouping includes Iran and Israel and excludes all of North Africa, so it does not match this movement's geography, and no MENA total is published or constructed here. IRENA's highlights map, updated later, shows 57 GW for the same grouping; the yearbook table value is used here.
How does leadership change when some systems can absorb failed experiments while others cannot afford one?
The high-buffer and low-buffer difference is not a ranking of competence. It changes what counts as a reasonable risk, and therefore what counts as good leadership.
Tensions Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What trade-offs must they navigate?
These are to investigate, not to resolve on a slide. Each side of a tension is a legitimate demand.
Ambition and absorptive capacity
Ambition attracts capital, talent and attention. Absorptive capacity, in institutions, supply chains, regulators and workforces, decides how much of it can be turned into anything.
Setting an ambition beyond current capacity is how capacity gets built. Matching ambition to capacity is how delivery actually happens.
View the other 4 tensions
State direction and market dynamism
State direction can move faster than markets and can crowd out the private capability the transition is meant to create.
Direction from the state is what makes transformation at this speed possible. Market dynamism is what makes it continue after the spending stops.
Localization and labour mobility
Citizen employment targets and an economy built on mobile migrant labour pull in opposite directions, on cost, skills and competitiveness.
A country's claim on work for its own citizens is legitimate. So is the mobility, protection and skill of the workers the economy currently runs on.
Source International Labour Organization (2022)
Overview of Qatar's labour reforms
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
The revenue funding the transition comes largely from the thing the transition is meant to reduce dependence on.
Present revenue pays for the transition and for the services people rely on now. Future resilience is what the revenue is supposed to be buying.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
National transformation and regional interdependence
National programmes compete for the same investment, logistics, talent and markets, while water, energy, migration and trade cross the same borders regardless.
Each country is right to build its own capability. The systems that constrain them do not stop at borders, and some capability only exists when they connect.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Every response is classified as established, promising, early, contested, failed, and documented with the Response Case Protocol: Attempt → Conditions → Mechanism → Evidence → Outcome → For whom → Cost / trade-off → Unintended effects → Transferability.
Saudi Vision 2030 diversificationEstablished transformation / continuing
Attempt
Redesign how a hydrocarbon economy creates income, jobs and fiscal capacity, across non-oil sectors, investment, tourism, industry and labour-market participation.
Conditions
A large producer with sovereign capital and delivery capacity, oil rents at 23.7 percent of GDP in 2021, and an expanding young and educated population.
Mechanism
State-directed transformation funded from hydrocarbon revenue and sovereign investment, with parallel social and labour-market reform.
Evidence
Oil rents were 23.7 percent of GDP in 2021, down from 28.1 in 2018 and through 16.0 in the 2020 collapse. Recorded female labour force participation was 33.3 percent in 2024 and youth unemployment 11.5 percent.
Outcome
Established transformation, continuing. It is neither a completed success nor a failure, and the evidence here does not settle it either way: rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with economic structure. What the case shows is that transformation can advance before dependence disappears, and that the two are measured differently.
For whom
Citizens entering an expanding non-oil economy, and the women whose recorded participation has risen. Costs fall where subsidy, employment expectation and sequencing change.
Cost / trade-off
The revenue funding the transition is the revenue the transition is meant to reduce reliance on, which is the region's sharpest sequencing problem.
Unintended effects
Not established from these sources, which report national aggregates rather than distribution or displacement.
Transferability
The sequencing question travels; the sovereign capital behind it does not.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
UAE diversification and digital transformationEstablished / evolving
Attempt
Build a diversified economy on trade, logistics, finance, tourism and services, then layer digital government and artificial intelligence onto it.
Conditions
Hydrocarbon rents lower than most producers at 15.7 percent of GDP in 2021, an economy already built around trade and re-export, and a resident workforce that is substantially migrant.
Mechanism
State-led investment in infrastructure and digital systems, open trade positioning, and a labour market supplied largely from abroad.
Evidence
Oil rents were 15.7 percent of GDP in 2021, and recorded female labour force participation was 52.5 percent in 2024, a figure that reflects a largely migrant resident workforce rather than citizen participation.
Outcome
Established and evolving. The interest for this movement is what comes next: successful transition creates the next generation of governance problems, in data and AI governance, in water and energy demand that growth keeps raising, and in an employment model whose structure the diversification did not change.
For whom
Residents and firms in a diversified economy; the migrant workforce that delivers much of it experiences it on different terms.
Cost / trade-off
Speed of delivery has rested on an imported workforce and on state coordination, both of which carry their own long-term questions.
Unintended effects
Not established from these sources.
Transferability
The layering is transferable, diversify first and digitise the result; the starting position is not.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Qatar's post-tournament economic transitionEstablished infrastructure / transition in progress
Attempt
Convert a decade of accelerated infrastructure investment into a diversified economy with productive private activity.
Conditions
A small, high-income producer with oil rents at 15.3 percent of GDP in 2021 and recorded youth unemployment of 0.6 percent, holding new stadiums, transport, hotels and urban infrastructure built to a fixed deadline.
Mechanism
Legacy conversion: repurposing assets, attracting events, tourism and business activity, and building private-sector productivity on top of delivered infrastructure.
Outcome
Established infrastructure with the transition in progress. Delivery is not in question; the question after building is whether the system can use what was built, and that is a utilisation and productivity question rather than a construction one.
For whom
The national economy, and the sectors that can build on the infrastructure. The workforce that built it is covered by the labour reform case.
Cost / trade-off
Building to a deadline delivered assets quickly and fixed the sequence in advance, which limits how much the plan can adapt afterwards.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The post-event question transfers to any economy that has built ahead of demand.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Change the terms of a migrant labour system: a non-discriminatory minimum wage, the removal of exit permits, and the right to change employer without a no-objection certificate.
Conditions
An economy structurally dependent on migrant labour, with a sponsorship system that tied workers to employers.
Mechanism
Legal reform plus enforcement infrastructure, including a wage protection system that blocks companies failing to pay the minimum wage.
Evidence
A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021 and raised the basic wage of 280,000 workers, 13 percent of the workforce. Exit permits and no-objection certificates were removed, and more than 348,500 job-change applications were approved between November 2020 and August 2022. The same source records that many workers still face difficulty changing jobs, that there are many cases of employers retaliating against those who try, that many companies have not paid workers for months, and that receiving and enforcing a court ruling can take several months.
Outcome
Significant reform with implementation gaps, and the gaps are not smoothed over here. Changing the rule and changing the lived system are not the same achievement: the legal position of hundreds of thousands of workers changed, and enforcement, retaliation and wage payment remain live problems on the same evidence.
For whom
Migrant workers, unevenly: those able to use the new mobility, and those who meet retaliation or non-payment when they try.
Cost / trade-off
Mobility raises costs and uncertainty for employers who built their models on immobility, which is precisely why enforcement is the binding constraint.
Unintended effects
Retaliation against workers seeking to move, recorded by the reform's own partner institution.
Transferability
The lesson is general: a reform's evidence has to include its enforcement, or it is reporting intent.
Source International Labour Organization (2022)
Overview of Qatar's labour reforms
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
The Aqaba-Amman water system (Jordan)Major implementation / high-necessity transition
Attempt
Manufacture a national water supply: desalinate at the Red Sea and convey water 438 kilometres to the capital.
Conditions
Renewable internal freshwater of 62 cubic metres per person, described in the project record as among the lowest in the world, against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Mechanism
A long-term concession combining a 300 million cubic metre per year desalination plant, a 438-kilometre pipeline with pumping stations, and a 281 megawatt solar plant to cap the carbon cost of moving the water uphill.
Evidence
The project provides net potable capacity of 300 million cubic metres a year, a 438-kilometre underground pipeline with three tanks and four pumping stations, and a 281 MWp solar plant. MIGA's guarantee covers US$1.25 billion of investment by Meridiam and Suez, and the project is intended to raise supply by about 30 percent.
Outcome
Major implementation of a high-necessity transition. It is not optional and it is not cheap: scarcity forces infrastructure choices that bind water, energy, finance and resilience together for decades, and commits a fiscally constrained state to an operating cost it cannot later avoid.
For whom
Households and industries in Amman and Aqaba. The cost is carried nationally, through tariffs and public commitments, by people whose water is now a manufactured product.
Cost / trade-off
A generation of fiscal capacity is committed to one system, which is the clearest portfolio decision in the region: what this funds, it also forecloses.
Unintended effects
Not established from a record published at approval.
Transferability
The binding lesson transfers: at this level of scarcity, water policy becomes energy and debt policy.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Jordan's work on jobs, women and refugee employmentPromising / demonstrated results
Attempt
Raise participation in formal work for young people, women and refugees at the same time, in a labour market with very little slack.
Conditions
Youth unemployment of 39.1 percent in 2024, the highest recorded in the region, recorded female participation of 16.0 percent, and a large hosted refugee population.
Mechanism
Regulatory change on work permits and formalisation, combined with skills programmes, transport and childcare measures, and work with employers.
Outcome
Promising, with demonstrated results in the locked research. The lesson is the shape of the intervention rather than its scale: participation barriers usually require regulatory, social, skills and employer action at the same time, because removing one barrier leaves the others binding.
For whom
Young people, women and refugees able to reach formal work; the same measures reach those already closest to the labour market first.
Cost / trade-off
Formalising refugee employment in a labour market this tight raises a real competition question that the approach has to answer rather than avoid.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High: the simultaneity principle applies wherever participation barriers are plural.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Morocco's water-security and economic-resilience architectureEstablished direction / continuing transition
Attempt
Hold agricultural output, industrial competitiveness and urban supply together through sustained drought, using water infrastructure, reuse, desalination and decarbonised energy.
Conditions
Renewable internal freshwater of 785 cubic metres per person, an order of magnitude above the Gulf and still far below world average, with agriculture carrying a large share of employment and demand.
Mechanism
Water infrastructure and allocation policy tied to agricultural, industrial and energy strategy rather than run separately.
Outcome
An established direction with the transition continuing. The transferable part is the framing: resource resilience and economic competitiveness increasingly belong in the same portfolio, and Morocco treats them as one decision rather than as an environmental programme beside an industrial one.
For whom
Farmers, rural communities and water-intensive industry, whose allocations are decided together.
Cost / trade-off
Protecting agricultural livelihoods and reallocating water toward higher-value use are in direct tension, and both are defensible.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
High for any economy whose competitiveness runs through a resource it is running short of.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Egypt's state-market rebalancingContested / active reform
Attempt
Change the boundary between state and market: reduce the footprint of state-owned enterprises, widen competition and attract private investment while fiscal space is tight.
Conditions
Population scale, youth unemployment of 17.3 percent in 2024, renewable internal freshwater of 9 cubic metres per person, heavy infrastructure commitments and constrained fiscal room.
Mechanism
Divestment and competition policy alongside continued state-led investment, with private investment expected to take up activity the state steps back from.
Outcome
Contested, and active. It is contested because the boundary itself is disputed, not because the direction is unclear: transformation here is not simply adding private activity, it requires changing what the state does, and each step is argued over on grounds of employment, sovereignty and fiscal necessity at once.
For whom
Private firms entering activity the state leaves, and public-sector employees whose position depends on what the state keeps.
Cost / trade-off
Reducing the state's role releases fiscal pressure and removes an employment guarantee that a labour market this size has relied on.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The boundary question transfers widely; Egypt's scale and fiscal constraint shape the answer.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Iraq's railway modernisation and development roadEarly implementation / strategic connectivity
Attempt
Turn geography into an economic asset by building rail and road connectivity between the Gulf and Turkey, alongside reconstruction.
Conditions
Oil rents at 42.8 percent of GDP in 2021, the region's highest recorded dependence, youth unemployment at 31.7 percent, damaged infrastructure and contested delivery capacity.
Mechanism
Large transport infrastructure intended to create transit revenue, industrial activity and employment beyond hydrocarbons.
Outcome
Early implementation of a strategic connectivity bet. Infrastructure here is an attempt to convert geography from constraint into advantage, and its result will depend on delivery capacity, regional relationships and utilisation rather than on the plan.
For whom
A workforce with few non-hydrocarbon options, and regions along the route.
Cost / trade-off
Capital committed to transit infrastructure is capital not committed to services, water or diversification inside the existing economy.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The framing transfers, geography as a portfolio asset; the execution risk is specific.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Lebanon's recovery and reformStalled / reversal under renewed conflict
Attempt
Rebuild fiscal, banking and institutional function after economic collapse, while basic services and human capital are preserved.
Conditions
Fiscal collapse, institutional fragmentation, high internal water availability at 839 cubic metres per person alongside failing supply systems, and renewed conflict exposure.
Mechanism
Reform programmes and international engagement, running against an operating environment that keeps changing underneath them.
Outcome
Stalled, with reversal under renewed conflict. This case is uncomfortable on purpose and is not converted into a recovery story: reform progress is not the same as system resilience when external shocks can overwhelm the operating environment faster than institutions can be rebuilt. High water availability alongside failing water delivery is the same lesson in miniature: an endowment is not a capability.
For whom
A population carrying the cost of collapse, and the institutions and professionals still operating inside it.
Cost / trade-off
Reform sequencing designed for a stable environment is the wrong sequencing for one that keeps being disrupted, and that is a leadership problem rather than a technical one.
Unintended effects
Not established in this cycle.
Transferability
The warning transfers: reform plans assume an operating environment, and that assumption is itself a risk.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Held apart Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Leadership under severely constrained choice
A separate analytical layer, not a category of response case. Where choice is this constrained the leadership portfolio is a different portfolio, so these contexts are not classified, scored or compared against diversification programmes anywhere in this movement.
What does leadership mean when the immediate portfolio is not growth versus transition, but survival, continuity, reconstruction and preserving future capability?
These contexts are held as their own layer. They carry no classification, no score and no ranking, and they are never set beside a diversification case as though the two were the same kind of decision.
Each context is different. Nothing here treats one conflict or political situation as equivalent to another, and the movement makes no political interpretation that the evidence does not support.
The framing is factual and plain. No dramatic imagery, no language that turns a population into an illustration, and nothing included where the evidence would not support responsible treatment.
The learning runs both ways. Continuity under severe constraint produces knowledge about prioritisation, local institutions and adaptation that higher-buffer systems rarely need to develop.
Yemen
Recorded youth unemployment was 32.2 percent in 2024 and recorded female labour force participation 4.7 percent, the lowest figures in the region on both measures. Internal renewable freshwater is 57 cubic metres per person. These are indicators of an economy operating under severe constraint; they are recorded here as data, without further interpretation.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Comparable labour-market and water series were not available for this context in this cycle, and nothing has been asserted in their place. The context is named because the leadership questions in this layer apply to it, and it is held open until evidence that can be treated responsibly is attached.
Severely disrupted Palestinian contexts
Labour-market and resource series were not available in this cycle. The context is named, and no figures, characterisations or political interpretations are supplied in place of evidence.
Other conflict-affected contexts
Included only where evidence supports responsible treatment. Where it does not, the context stays named and unevidenced rather than being described from inference, and the gap register records what is missing.
What the portfolio consists of here:
Survival and basic services
Water, power, health and food supply are the immediate portfolio, and their continuity is the decision rather than a precondition for it.
Continuity of institutions
Keeping payment systems, registries, schools, clinics and local administration functioning at all, often in fragments, determines what can be rebuilt later.
Livelihoods
Income that can be earned now, inside a disrupted economy, rather than employment created by growth.
Reconstruction
Sequencing repair against resources that are a fraction of the damage, where the order of rebuilding decides who can return to normal life first.
Preserving future human capability
Schooling, health and skills that will not pay off for years, protected now because their loss is not recoverable later.
Operating under severe constraint generates knowledge about continuity, prioritisation, local institutions, adaptation and resilience that higher-buffer systems rarely have to develop. The relay treats this as knowledge flowing outward, not only assistance flowing in.
Leadership interpretation
Through the LEAD48 4P Leadership Lens
The region remains the subject. The 4Ps help interpret what the evidence means for leadership.
What the evidence asks us to examine
People experience the transition. Process makes it executable. Planet sets the limits. Portfolio decides the choices. Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
How each P reads in this region
People
Who carries the consequences?
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks Who experiences the transition being chosen, and on what terms?
People experience the transition. Citizens, young people, women, migrant workers, refugees, entrepreneurs and communities live inside the choices made about diversification, subsidy, localization and investment. Youth unemployment runs from 0.6 to 39.1 percent across the region and recorded female participation from 61.8 to 4.7 percent, so the same regional transition is an entirely different experience depending on where and who you are.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What has to work for a chosen transition to be executable at all?
Process makes it executable. Institutions, regulation, labour markets, procurement, public administration, implementation capacity, competition and delivery systems decide whether a decision becomes a result. Qatar's labour reforms are the clearest case in the region: the rule changed for hundreds of thousands of workers, and retaliation, unpaid wages and slow enforcement show that changing the rule and changing the lived system are not the same achievement.
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What do water, heat, energy, food and land make possible or impossible here?
Planet sets the limits. Water, heat, energy, food, land and climate are the operating constraint on economic strategy in this region, not an emissions question attached to it. Renewable internal freshwater runs as low as 0 to 22 cubic metres per person in parts of the Gulf and 9 in Egypt, against a world average of 5,431, so supply is manufactured, energy-intensive and fiscal. Resource systems once planned separately increasingly have to be governed together.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
The evidence asks What gets funded, sequenced, deferred, stopped or protected?
Portfolio decides the choices, and it is the dominant P for this region. What to fund, in what order, what to defer, what to stop, what to protect, what to diversify, which risks to carry and what must not be allowed to fail. Room for error is unequal: the same decision is an experiment in a high-buffer system and an irreversible commitment in a low-buffer one. Not choosing is still a portfolio decision.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
SDG connections Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
Which Goals does this touch?
A Goal appears here only when a cited source supports the link.
SDG 6
Clean water and sanitationPrimary
6.4: Substantially increase water-use efficiency and address water scarcity
Water is the region's binding physical constraint and its most expensive manufactured input. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
7.3: Double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency
Energy is what water costs here, and the transition is an industrial and fiscal question before it is an environmental one. Evidence-backed
Source Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group (2025)
Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
The project covers "a net potable water capacity of 300 million cubic meter ("MCM") per year", "a 438-km long underground water pipeline, three tanks and four pumping stations", and "a solar power plant with a production capacity equal to [281] MWp sized to cap the carbon emissions of the Project". MIGA's guarantee is US$1.25 billion covering investments by Meridiam and Suez. The record states that "Jordan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world and has annual renewable water resources of less than 61 m3 per capita", with the project intended to raise supply by about 30 percent against a projected 26 percent supply-demand gap.
Published
2025-12-18
Evidence period
Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation
Geography
Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations
A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
8.5: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all
The gap between diversification and productive work is the region's central social question. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
Youth unemployment in 2024 ranged from 0.6 percent in Qatar, 5.5 in Bahrain and 6.4 in the United Arab Emirates to 29.9 in Algeria, 31.7 in Iraq, 32.2 in Yemen, 38.9 in Tunisia and 39.1 in Jordan, with Saudi Arabia at 11.5, Oman 13.5, Kuwait 15.1, Egypt 17.3 and Morocco 22.4. No single figure describes the region, and the Gulf figures do not describe it either.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
9.2: Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization
Industrial capability and infrastructure are what diversification is attempting to build. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Oil rents (% of GDP)
Oil rents as a share of GDP in 2021 were 42.8 percent in Iraq, 23.7 in Saudi Arabia, 23.5 in Oman, 15.7 in the United Arab Emirates, 15.3 in Qatar, 14.5 in Algeria and 10.9 in Bahrain, with Kuwait at 27.6 percent in 2020. Dependence differs by a factor of four between producers, and every one of them fell sharply in 2020 before recovering, which shows the exposure rather than a change in structure.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2018 to 2021
Geography
Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations
Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people
Migrant labour is structural here, and mobility and protection are the same question. Evidence-backed
Source International Labour Organization (2022)
Overview of Qatar's labour reforms
"A non-discriminatory minimum wage came into force in March 2021, and 280,000 workers, or 13% of the workforce, saw their basic wage rise." The reforms removed "the requirements for workers to obtain exit permits to leave the country, and no-objection certificates to change employers", and "Between 1 November 2020 and 31 August 2022, over 348,500 workers applications to change jobs have been approved." The same account records that "Many workers still face challenges in changing jobs", that there are "many cases of employers retaliating against workers wishing to change jobs", that "many companies have not paid their workers for months", and that the time for workers to receive a court date and enforce a ruling "can be several months".
Published
2022-04-07
Evidence period
November 2020 to August 2022
Geography
Qatar
Limitations
Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
16.6: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
Institutional capacity decides what capital produces, and its absence is what defines the low-buffer contexts. Evidence-backed
View the 5 supporting Goals
SDG 5
Gender equalitySupporting
5.5: Ensure women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership
Recorded participation runs from 61.8 to 4.7 percent, and capability that cannot participate is unavailable to the economy. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2024)
Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
Recorded female labour force participation in 2024 ran from 61.8 percent in Qatar, 52.5 in the United Arab Emirates and 47.3 in Kuwait to 19.8 in Morocco, 18.5 in Egypt, 16.0 in Jordan, 14.3 in Algeria, 11.0 in Iraq and 4.7 in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia at 33.3, Bahrain 42.4, Oman 30.1 and Tunisia 26.6. The highest figures belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant, which is a different fact from citizen participation.
Published
2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2024
Geography
Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations
A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
11.3: Enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory planning
Cities are where water, cooling, energy and employment decisions meet. Evidence-backed
SDG 12
Responsible consumption and productionSupporting
12.2: Achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
Allocation between agriculture, industry and households is the practical form of every resource choice here. Evidence-backed
Source World Bank, World Development Indicators (2021)
Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
Renewable internal freshwater per capita in 2021 was 0 cubic metres in Kuwait, 3 in Bahrain, 9 in Egypt, 16 in the United Arab Emirates, 22 in Qatar, 57 in Yemen, 62 in Jordan and 78 in Saudi Arabia, against 251 in Algeria, 311 in Oman, 348 in Tunisia, 785 in Morocco, 817 in Iraq and 839 in Lebanon. The world average is 5,431.
Published
2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20)
Evidence period
2021
Geography
Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations
Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
LEAD48 curates the conversations inside this movement from the research on this page and the perspectives below. You do not need to choose a session: bring what you know to the inquiry, and the matching is LEAD48's work.
Contributor expressions of interest are not open.
The shape of a movement
How a movement moves
The same beats in every region, in the same order. What fills them, and how long they take, is this region's own.
View the beats every movement runs through
Baton Handover In
The incoming and outgoing regions are both live. Intellectual content, not an emcee transition.
Opening Regional Provocation
One strong regional voice frames the movement: what is happening in this region right now, and why should the rest of the world care?
Regional Reality
The evidence: what is actually true in this region.
Responses, Experiments and Tensions
The practical core: what is being tried, and where it is contested.
Regional Synthesis
What we learned, what challenged our assumptions and where we disagreed.
Baton Question + Handover Out
The signature moment. The baton never simply moves: it evolves.
Perspectives sought Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What perspectives strengthen this inquiry?
The kinds of knowledge and experience this inquiry needs. They describe perspectives, not places: one person may bring several, and a strong case or a well-evidenced challenge counts as much as a title.
View the knowledge this movement needs
Gulf economic diversification
Knowledge required Works inside a Gulf diversification programme on what is actually being built and sequenced.
Why this is needed The region's largest transformation portfolios are designed and revised here.
North African private sector and productivity
Knowledge required Runs or studies firms and productivity in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia or Egypt.
Why this is needed Where fiscal room is tighter, transition depends on firm-level productivity rather than on state capital.
Youth employment
Knowledge required Works on the pathway from education into work where youth unemployment is highest.
Why this is needed Educational aspiration has outrun credible pathways, and the gap is understood where it is widest.
Women's economic participation
Knowledge required Works on what keeps women's economic capability unavailable to these economies.
Why this is needed Recorded participation runs from 61.8 to 4.7 percent, and the barriers differ by country and by whether the workforce is citizen or migrant.
Migrant labour systems
Knowledge required Works with migrant workers, recruitment or labour regulation in the Gulf.
Why this is needed Migrant labour is structural to these economies, and both its economics and its conditions belong in the room.
Water security
Knowledge required Plans or operates water supply where the resource is manufactured.
Why this is needed Water is the binding constraint, and at this scarcity it is an energy and fiscal decision.
Energy transition
Knowledge required Works on generation, grids or the industrial energy transition in a producer economy.
Why this is needed Transition inside an economy funded by hydrocarbons is a different problem from transition elsewhere.
Sovereign investment and portfolio management
Knowledge required Allocates or governs sovereign capital across competing national priorities.
Why this is needed This is the portfolio decision in its most literal form.
Public-sector transformation
Knowledge required Has changed how a public administration works, not only what it spends.
Why this is needed Implementation capacity, not capital, decides what transformation produces.
Digital government and AI
Knowledge required Builds or governs digital public systems and AI in government.
Why this is needed Successful transition creates the next generation of governance problems, and they arrive first here.
SMEs and entrepreneurship
Knowledge required Builds or finances small and growing firms in the region.
Why this is needed Activity that continues after state spending stops has to come from somewhere.
Localization and workforce development
Knowledge required Designs or delivers citizen employment and workforce localization policy.
Why this is needed Localization and labour mobility pull against each other, and the trade-off is managed by practitioners.
Infrastructure and megaproject delivery
Knowledge required Has delivered large infrastructure and lived with what happened after construction.
Why this is needed Utilisation, opportunity cost and fiscal burden are known by the people who ran the project, not by its announcement.
Basic-service delivery under severe constraint
Knowledge required Keeps water, power, health or schooling running in a disrupted context.
Why this is needed This is the constrained-choice portfolio in practice, and the knowledge it produces is not available elsewhere.
Reconstruction
Knowledge required Has sequenced reconstruction against resources far smaller than the damage.
Why this is needed Prioritisation under those conditions is a leadership discipline in its own right.
Refugee and mobility systems
Knowledge required Works on displacement, hosting or labour-market access for displaced people.
Why this is needed Several economies here host populations at a scale that shapes their labour markets and public services.
Regional connectivity
Knowledge required Works on trade, transport or energy connections between these countries.
Why this is needed National transformation and regional interdependence meet in these connections.
Urban development
Knowledge required Plans or runs a city where cooling, water and employment pressures converge.
Why this is needed Cities are where the resource system and the employment system are experienced together.
Food, water and energy nexus
Knowledge required Works across the resource systems rather than inside one of them.
Why this is needed Systems once planned separately now have to be governed together, and few people work that way yet.
Youth
Knowledge required Is entering work, study or leadership in the region now.
Why this is needed The transitions being sequenced today will be lived by people who are not in the room when they are chosen.
The baton
The question moves
It arrives. South Asia hands this movement the question.
This region changes it. Everything above is what it is changed by.
It leaves changed. Sub-Saharan Africa receives whatever this movement earns in the room.
No question is written in advance. Each movement's question is earned live, in the room, and published here once it has been.
Global report contribution
What this movement will contribute
How this movement feeds the report
What this movement will contribute to the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. Every field is filled from the live movement, and disagreement is preserved rather than resolved. The record keeps what the evidence said, what LEAD48 inferred before the event, what contributors challenged or added, and what LEAD48 concluded afterwards, as four distinguishable layers. The pre-event version is never overwritten.
What this movement finds is written in the room during the relay and becomes its part of the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. How the five outputs work
Research gaps and limitations Evidence-grounded synthesisLocked for the programme
What this evidence cannot show
These are limitations, not blockers. They are published so a reader can judge the evidence for themselves.
View what this evidence cannot show
Six response cases carry no verified figures of their own
Qatar's post-tournament transition, Jordan's jobs and refugee employment work, Morocco's water architecture, Egypt's state-market rebalancing, Iraq's connectivity programme and Lebanon's recovery are described from the locked research without primary-source figures attached to the case itself. They say so rather than asserting numbers.
Affects: Responses and experiments
Three of the four severely constrained contexts carry no evidence
Only Yemen has verified indicators attached. Gaza, severely disrupted Palestinian contexts and other conflict-affected situations are named and held open rather than described from inference, because supplying characterisations without evidence is exactly what this layer is meant to avoid.
Affects: Leadership under severely constrained choice
Oil rents move with the oil price, not only with economic structure
The diversification evidence rests partly on rents as a share of GDP, a measure that fell sharply in 2020 and recovered. A falling share is not by itself evidence that an economy has diversified, and the brief does not treat it as such.
Affects: Prevailing conditions, Responses and experiments
Gulf participation rates count residents, not citizens
The highest recorded female participation figures in the region belong to states whose resident female workforce is substantially migrant. The rate is real and it is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two are not used interchangeably here.
Affects: Prevailing conditions, People
The water figures exclude the supply these countries actually use
Renewable internal freshwater per capita excludes desalination, treated wastewater and rivers originating elsewhere. It shows the natural endowment, which is the point being made, and not the water available to a household today.
Affects: Planet, Prevailing conditions
No utilisation evidence is attached to any megaproject
The brief insists that delivery is not transformation and then cannot yet show utilisation, productivity or opportunity-cost figures for the projects it discusses. That is a gap in this cycle, and it is the gap most likely to change the cases.
Affects: Responses and experiments, Portfolio
Research and evidence
See the evidence
Every claim on this page links here. Participants' contributions do not statistically represent the whole region.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2018 to 2021 · Geography: Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Population: Oil rents as a share of national income
Limitations: Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Population: People aged 15 to 24 in the labour force
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Population: Women aged 15 and over resident in each country
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
International Labour Organization · 2026-08 · Evidence period: 2025, from ILO modelled estimates (November 2025); 2026 and 2027 are projections · Geography: ILO subregions, not MENA: the Arab States (in ILO's 2024 grouping, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen) and Northern Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara)
Population: Young people aged 15 to 24
Limitations: ILO modelled estimates for two ILO subregions, not a figure for this movement's geography and not a country rate. The youth unemployment rate is a share of young people in the labour force; the NEET rate is a share of all young people; the two use different denominators and are never added together or converted into each other. The 2026 edition does not restate which countries each subregion contains, so the membership above is ILO's 2024 grouping. Ages 15 to 24 only.
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2021 · Geography: Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Population: Internally generated renewable freshwater, per person
Limitations: Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) · 2026-03 · Evidence period: End of 2024 and end of 2025 · Geography: IRENA's Middle East grouping only: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the State of Palestine, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. IRENA counts the North African countries under Africa, so this is not a MENA figure.
Population: Installed renewable electricity generating capacity, in megawatts
Limitations: Installed capacity at the end of the year, not the share of electricity generated from renewables, not planned capacity, not investment and not employment. IRENA's Middle East grouping includes Iran and Israel and excludes all of North Africa, so it does not match this movement's geography, and no MENA total is published or constructed here. IRENA's highlights map, updated later, shows 57 GW for the same grouping; the yearbook table value is used here.
International Labour Organization · 2022-04-07 · Evidence period: November 2020 to August 2022 · Geography: Qatar
Population: Migrant workers in Qatar, and the employers and authorities around them
Limitations: Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group · 2025-12-18 · Evidence period: Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation · Geography: Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Population: Jordan's water supply and the households and industries that depend on it
Limitations: A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
This region's five documented outputs become its part of the LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027. How the five outputs work
