Given that MAF operates in 15 markets across Mena and East Africa and serving 600 million customers a year, Ismail said they have their“fingers on the pulse in terms of consumption and what is really happening on the ground".
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Speaking at the World Economic Forum 2025, the MAF CEO said:“Year 2025 should be progressively better. We are coming off peak interest rate cost in 2024, relatively high inflation, devaluation in many of the markets where we operate and extreme geopolitical events. So 2025 should be relatively better."
Employing over 42,000 people from more than 110 nations, the Dubai-based conglomerate has interests in retail, hospitality, real estate, entertainment, project management, facilities management and others.
Beyond 2025
There is a need for Mena countries to look beyond 2025, Ismail said during the panel discussion on Long View on Mena's Growth.
“We are on the right side of demographics. We are at the centre of the movement of global trade and capital movement, etc. We have strong balance sheets across the GCC and we, as a region, are net beneficiaries of energy transition," he said.
"The cheapest barrel of oil comes from the region. The cheapest feed in tariff for solar comes out of the region. If you put all of these factors together, capital, energy, talent, we should be leading on the AI (artificial intelligence) revolution. That should put us on a path towards prosperity on the long term for the next quarter century."
If Mena region's contribution to global GDP would catch up to its contribution to population, simplistically, "it is an extra trillion dollars of GDP", Ismail said.
“That means all of our businesses would be two to three times larger and at the same time two to three times more taxes for the governments. This is transformational at the macro level and also for the everyday lives of our people across Mena in terms of higher wages and lower unemployment. It is quite a big prize to go after if we can get the region to work together. Better to integrate and direct more investments towards talent development and intellectual capital development,” he said.
The high-level panel discussion saw the participation of Ahmed Kouchouk, Minister of Finance of Egypt; Mohammed Aljadaan, Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia; Nora Suleiman Al Fassam, Minister of Finance and Minister of State for Economic and Investment Affairs of Kuwait; and Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ.
'AI is not cheap'
The MAF chief executive revealed that the conglomerate has been investing in data and analytics AI for a number of years now.
“We have actually been investing hundreds of millions in this business... We see tremendous opportunities for AI to improve productivity. We have to be careful (because) AI isn't cheap," he said.
"The compute load is big. The licensing is quite expensive. So the bigger the promise, we underestimate the long-term impact of technology and estimate the short term. The bigger the overestimation, the bigger the hype. There is a risk of over investment in the short term. But certainly in the long term, this is going to transform businesses and there are going to be big winners and losers,” he added.