4 - 10 October 2001
Issue No.554
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 - 10 October 2001 Issue No.554 |
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Web watch
Brave new Arab world
A senior researcher at a large international organisation in Egypt once told me of his travails in trying to obtain a critical figure from his own organisation concerning its customer base. Having asked the keeper of that particular piece of information for the figure, the researcher was stunned when the response came back, "What do you want the number to be?"
Anyone who has tried to gather information in the Arab world knows just how difficult it is to obtain timely, accurate and comprehensive data. And in the era of globalisation, when capital traverses the globe faster than either goods or human beings, the business and finance worlds, in particular, place a premium on such information.
Zawya, the first business and finance portal focusing on the Arab world, has stepped into a once yawning information gap. Taking its name from the Arabic word for "angle," the site bills itself as delivering "business and finance coverage from every angle."
As Zawya was set up by two investment professionals who were well aware of the challenges to obtaining information on business in Arab countries, it goes straight to the heart of the needs of stock market players. Share quotes and graphic representations of performance over the past year are available for companies listed on all of the region's bourses. If a listed company has made the headlines, a link to the story appears on the same screen.
An investor interested in fleshing out quantitative data need only go to the list of countries covered by the site or sections dealing with sectors such as energy, industry or information technology to get a sense of the wider context in which a company operates.
Zawya's information is culled from over 100 content providers comprising wire services, rating agencies, periodicals (of which Al-Ahram Weekly is one), and brokerage houses. Although most of these providers have sites of their own, the portal collects and organises information in a way that draws in a casual browser and saves considerable time for a directed search, added to which some publications only archive online their most recent editions. The diversity in sources is replicated in the type of information provided. Users of other finance portals, such as Bloomberg's, will be at ease with the site's setup and diverse genres of articles: breaking news, features, analyses, interviews and profiles are all found on Zawya.
People interested in getting a political, social or legal "angle" on business can easily navigate their way to items containing such information by clicking on similarly named topic headings. Academics, who often lack timely and locally-produced information, will find the site a boon, and policy-makers can no longer be excused for lacking a comparative perspective on developments in their field of specialisation in neighbouring countries. My attempts to obtain comparative perspectives on privatisation, mortgage laws and free trade areas -- topics of current import -- all proved fruitful.
Celebrating a year online this month, Zawya's archives already spill forth a veritable cornucopia of information when you type in just about any term that bears relation to the worlds of business and finance. Information, presumably from wires, is updated 24 hours a day. Contributions from other sources are added at least once a day, every day but Friday. The Boolean search feature allows you to set parameters on your searches, but other features to restrict searches would be helpful -- especially as the site accrues material.
Currently all parts of the site are free, but plans are afoot to make parts available only on a subscription basis.
The base of operations for this unabashedly Arab site is in London -- "the unofficial capital of the Arab world," as Ihsan Jawad, founder and managing director of Zawya, explained. "All the banks, law firms and accounting firms that handle the major work in the region are based in the City [London's financial district]; the Arab business network here is very strong," Jawad said. And given that London is also a media hub for the Arab world, playing host to such heavy hitters as the daily Al-Hayat, the paper of record in the Middle East, the BBC's Arabic news service and the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, perhaps it was only a matter of time before such a marriage of business and media would take place there.
While Zawya's strength lies in its capacity to link worlds, therein lie the dimensions where it could most be improved.
Adding translated content from the Arabic press, particularly the financial press, would enrich the coverage provided. Currently, the periodicals from which items are chosen are all English-language publications.
Although I recognise that translating would be a massive endeavour, the scope of economic coverage in English is limited in part due to the fact that many of the periodicals it draws content appear only on a weekly or monthly basis. Short items, of the sort that appear in financial dailies can be useful to finding out about its performance.
In the Arab world there are also sensitivities about what can be seen by foreign eyes, meaning that what gets into the Arabic press does not always make it into the English press. One issue that comes to mind is that the separation between the political and economic is often very slight in the Arab world. And while "everyone" in a given country "knows" which business people have family members who are politically well- placed and the vicissitudes of their political fortunes, such key information would seem unlikely to make it on to the site or one would already have to know it to find it.
Not only does Zawya serve information seekers, it also has the potential to help Arab business by offering a venue where successful companies can shine and thus attract customers and investors. Its very existence also puts pressure on organisations to be more transparent.
This new view on business and finance from the Arab world's "unofficial capital" is thoughtful and dynamic, and most certainly worth checking out.
Reviewed by Willa Thayer
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