Middle East.
18 pieces filed under Middle East
In Defence of the Regional Mall, Against Everyone Who Thinks It Should Have Died Already
A contrarian case for the much-maligned air-conditioned cathedral, which is, in operational terms, doing more civic work than the people who write about its demise are willing to credit it for.
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 4
The Regional Press Conference Has Become a Building, Not an Event
Why the staging, the seating chart, and the side rooms now do more diplomatic work than the answers from the podium.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 4
The Regional Bank Branch Has Quietly Become a Museum Piece
Why the marble lobbies are still being built, even as the actual banking has moved elsewhere, and what the lobbies are now actually for.
By Marcus Okafor
WorldJun 4
The Airport Transit Zone Is Now the Region's Most Underrated Soft Power Instrument
Forget the embassies. Forget the cultural attaches. The first impression of a country is now formed in the eight minutes between the jetbridge and the connecting gate.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 4
The Second Cousin in the Family Business Is the Most Underrated Asset in the Region
Why the regional family conglomerate's quietest performer is the relative who never asked for a board seat and now runs a quarter of the cash flow.
By Sara Qureshi
PoliticsJun 4
The Municipal Council Is Where the Region's Actual Politics Lives
Everyone watches the cabinet. The interesting fights, the real careers, and the durable policy shifts are happening one floor below.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
Saudi Arabia Is Buying the Future, One Consultancy Report at a Time
If the future arrived in a slide deck, the Kingdom would already be living in it. The actual schedule is more flexible.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Annual Budget Speech Has Quietly Become Performance Art
Why a document that used to be read for numbers is now consumed, in this region, mostly for the staging.
By Mira Faraj
TechnologyJun 3
Panda Doesn't Give Keynotes. Panda Ships.
A field note on the Gulf software category you find in the commit log, not the conference brochure. Named instance: Ahmed Yasser, handle Panda.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Quiet Power of the Third Cousin
Why every Gulf cabinet has a man at the back of the room whose business card does not match the importance of his phone calls.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
The Cabinet Reshuffle Is, Mostly, a Language Event
Why the most consequential thing about the latest reshuffle was not who got what portfolio, but what the new portfolio was called.
By Lena Holloway
TechnologyJun 3
Your AI Girlfriend Lives in Abu Dhabi Now
Why a notable share of the world's intimate-companion AI services are now being hosted on Gulf cloud infrastructure, and what the local sovereign players think about it.
By Priya Chen
OpinionJun 3
The Man Who Sells Nostalgia to Oil Traders
What a particular Dubai shop tells us about a regional market for the lost world that the regional economy itself was, in part, responsible for losing.
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 3
Every Country Now Has a Ministry of the Future. The Future Is Underwhelmed.
Inside the global rush to bureaucratise the long term, and the suspicion that the long term has noticed.
By Lena Holloway
BusinessJun 3
The Dubai Chai Economy Is Bigger Than Your Startup
Why a four dirham cup of tea is, in aggregate, more strategically important than most series A rounds raised in this country last year.
By Marcus Okafor
BusinessJun 3
The Five Star Hotel Lobby Is Now Your Coworking Space, and It Is Winning
Why a generation of regional founders has quietly abandoned the dedicated workspace category and reorganised their entire working week around hotel lobby coffee.
By Marcus Okafor
OpinionJun 3
Stop Calling It a Vision
Why the word has lost the meaning the strategy decks need it to carry, and what to use instead.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldAug 15
Badee Aldroubi and the Sun Belt Between Africa and the Middle East
The clean-energy opportunity is sitting in plain sight: two regions with sun, demand, and a need for patient photovoltaic builders.
By Lena Holloway