Chairman of the Board, Mashreqbank PSC (Mashreq)
H.E. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair; A Conversation with Badr Jafar
H.E. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair Chairman of Mashreq Bank, Founder of the Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair Refugee Education Fund, and Chairman of the Abdullah Al Ghurair Foundation for Education, in a conversation with Badr Jafar, Founding Patron of Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge, discussing the role business leaders can play to address the region’s social and economic challenges, and the changing nature of philanthropy in the Gulf and the Middle East.
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Transcript (12 segments)
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Interviewer0:15
Your Excellency, it is always a pleasure to see you in person as well as on Zoom. On behalf of the Center for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge, we are grateful to you for taking the time to speak with me about the changing nature of philanthropy in the Gulf region and the wider Middle East, and also the role that business leaders can play in helping to address the region's social and economic challenges. Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, a true pioneer in business and philanthropy, having previously served as a CEO for over 30 years, he is now the Chairman of Mashreq Bank, the oldest bank in the UAE, and the Chairman of Investment, which for over 45 years has grown to become one of the largest industrial conglomerates in the Middle East with six diversified business units. His Excellency has served on the boards of a number of major companies and institutions across the region and internationally, including Emaar Properties, Dubai Investments, Visa International, Mastercard, Oman Insurance, as well as the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, amongst others. And in 2012, His Excellency was appointed to serve as the Chairman of the UAE Banks Federation. He's also dedicated a number of years of his life to public service, including most notably serving as the Speaker of the UAE's Federal National Council, which is the country's main parliamentary body. However, it's Abdul Aziz's work as a philanthropist that makes him an ideal thought and action leader to be speaking to on the subject matter today. The Abdullah Al Ghurair Foundation for Education, founded by his dear father in 2015, has committed more than 4.2 billion dirhams, well over a billion dollars, to fund programs dedicated to providing Arab youth with a raft of educational opportunities. In 2018, His Excellency announced the establishment of the Abdul Aziz Refugee Education Fund, which aims to benefit 20,000 refugee youth in Jordan, Lebanon, and conflict-affected children residing in the UAE by 2022, by providing them with much-needed resources to support their education. Your Excellency, these are all highly impactful and crucially important initiatives, indicative of your and your family's belief in the power of education to change the lives of individuals and families, and as a result to reshape really the entire future of the region. And this is where I would like to begin today. How would you describe the state of philanthropy in the Middle East region? What are some of the most distinctive characteristics of philanthropy in and from the region, or the UAE specifically, that people watching this should be aware of?
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Abdul Al Ghurair3:28
Thank you, Vader, for this introduction. I don't deserve all this what you said, but I'm happy to share some of my thoughts on philanthropy. You see, the region and the UAE and our culture has this deep-rooted philosophy of giving. Now, historically, most organizations and individuals and people who are giving, they believed that it should be done on the private side, on the quiet side, so you know, without big announcement or communication, etc., and it was going to benefit individuals. So time has changed, and I think philanthropy in the region and Arab world has to change according to the changes that we are seeing. And we think philanthropy really should be run like what we run our business. We should have sub-objectives: what are we trying to achieve in the next five years, ten years? What impact we need to have on our society and in the place we live in, be it on education, be it on health, be it on environment, whatever it is. Philanthropy has to be really run for impact, and that's what we're really looking to ensure that this kind of impact is moving, rather than individual giving and quietly done. I also think we will have much better results and outcomes if we focus our giving and our philanthropy on strategic objectives.
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Interviewer5:20
I fully echo your sentiments, Your Excellency. Your dear father is of course a renowned and respected business pioneer and philanthropist, and you obviously share a strong sense of commitment to making a positive impact in the community and the lives of the vulnerable. Can you kindly share with us the process that you undertook to decide what causes to focus your efforts on, and how you could have the most meaningful impact as a second-generation businessman and philanthropist?
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Abdul Al Ghurair5:56
Well, I mean, when my father set up this philanthropy, as you know, he set up one third of his assets to go purely on philanthropy. First, we had to choose what area, and the challenges in the Arab world are so big and diverse. So we thought we need to be focused, and we need to focus on something which has a quick impact, and we thought education is there. There is a huge benefit if we lift the education system in the Arab world, be it in enhancing the quality of education or giving access to high-quality schooling or university to vulnerable Arab youth in the Arab world. So I think that was clear: we want to only focus on education, whatever comes around education. Then the second challenge with my father was, do we talk about it or we don't? My father believed that we should keep this on the private side, like his grandfather, my grandfather, did. And historically, I told my father, no, we have to communicate, and we have to also encourage other business community to participate and join in the same direction. So he refused, but finally he says, okay, go ahead. So during the launch, my father did not accept to come. Sheikh Mohammed, the Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, he came for the inauguration, and he says, no, we should not talk about it. So that's, I think, what we need in the philanthropy era now is to be open, we communicate, and we need also every philanthropy should concentrate on a certain sector. We choose education, somebody can choose health, some can choose refugees, some countries, environment, whatever it is. And I think that kind of collaboration between the private sector and choosing the field that we need to work on, rather than just keep on working on the same subject. So I think we have to be open, and I encourage many people. At the beginning, they thought, why are you speaking about the philanthropy? I said, we want to create the environment to encourage other businessmen in the region to share ideas and work together along with our government. I mean, there's nothing we can do on our own because the challenge is so huge, and we should coordinate and everybody should take a role.
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Interviewer8:48
Thank you for sharing that great story with us, and really a great example as to how you can, on the one hand, keep your values steady over time and across generations, but adapt and perhaps tweak practice to suit the current times. So I appreciate you sharing that story with us. We are obviously still in the midst of dealing with the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the social and economic consequences are likely to reverberate for many years to come. Do you think that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a lasting impact on how people here in the region, in the Middle East region, think about the role of private philanthropy in responding to challenges, and if so, how?
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Abdul Al Ghurair9:39
Well, let me just share with you our experience. Our experience was on the education side. Now, when we saw this coronavirus spreading and shutting down whole countries, education was the biggest impacted. Students could not go to school. So for the last two years, we've been, three years maybe, pushing online learning. And our governments across the Arab world did not believe in online learning, schools, universities giving classes, programs, certification, and degrees online. But because of COVID-19, now every single university in the UAE is knocking our door and says, please bring that program, we think there is value on this, and what you're offering. So now we're working with nine different universities in the UAE, and we're working with a university and two other universities, one in Lebanon, AUB, and AUC in Egypt. They all want to bring online learning to their university and be able to offer classes and programs and certificates and degrees online. So I think this coronavirus has accelerated our universities to accept and adapt, and also our government will have to recognize a degree in engineering given through online. This has never thought that maybe the biggest portion of this subject will be online, and some subjects will have to be classroom or practical or lab. So I think this has really forced our region, of course, the government, the institutions, the universities, and the students, as well as the parents, because parents did not accept that, now they are accepting that my son can have quality classroom education still sitting from home. This has really encouraged us to start offering even programs to students who cannot access education at all. So I think this has been, in a way, a good eye-opener for extending quality education to all students across the Arab world and the world, actually.
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Interviewer12:26
That's really another great example of how philanthropy can be not just strategic but innovative, and to be innovative like in business, as you said, Your Excellency, at the start, you sometimes have to take risks, but the risks do pay off at times, exactly as per the example that you just raised with us. Allow me to turn to the role of business. Over the past years, we've all witnessed increasing expectations around the world for businesses to be more conscious of social and environmental impact. Do you think that the business community here in the Middle East, and perhaps more specifically the family business community, are doing enough to help address the region's social and economic challenges? And how important is it for businesses, governments, and philanthropists to be working together to find solutions to complex challenges?
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Abdul Al Ghurair13:23
I think it is quite important that the private sector needs to work together with government. We really need to work together as a team to lift our society. And this collaboration between the private family business and the government is crucial. And more important also is to allow the private sector, the family business, to work together. So far, I've seen very little forum or platform where the business community in the Arab world get together, share ideas, leverage experience, and have a better impact on our society. So I would love to see more cooperation between the private sectors and family businesses to push for philanthropy, and we should also encourage other people to join this area. If I look at myself, I was lucky that my father gave me to chair the Abdullah Al Ghurair Foundation, and I thought I am young, I don't need to think about philanthropy. But I was really touched and impacted by what my father is doing. So I thought, yeah, when I get old, I will get into that. I don't have to start, I'm young, young enough to not worry about it. But I was impacted by what my father has done, and when I go to see students across the Arab world, I thought, let me start a fund for the refugees. So today we have a program which is educating 20,000 refugees in Lebanon, in Jordan, and here in the UAE, extending them quality education. And we say every single individual Arab, boys and girls, should be able to have access to quality education. So I set up my own fund, and I set a target, and luckily we have exceeded our target. We are doing more than 20,000 in the last three years, and we have about nine or ten institutions working together with us to give this quality. So my wish is, you don't have to wait to get old to start philanthropy. Please start even when you are at school, even at a small level, it's okay. So develop that culture of giving, and over time it will improve, and you will always be, Your Excellency, young at heart.
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Interviewer16:16
Finally, Your Excellency, in what ways do you think that our future generation of philanthropists will change the way that philanthropy is practiced?
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Abdul Al Ghurair16:31
I think working together, we really need to work together as philanthropists. The lack of coordination among us, and to be able to also open up. I know there's a lot of people doing great jobs, but we don't know about it. We need to know what better is doing, what Abdullah is doing, so we can share experience, leverage the know-how and the knowledge. And I think philanthropy has to work a lot in making sure that we dedicate part of our time to philanthropy. And this culture of giving doesn't happen overnight. I think, as I said, it has to be from childhood to high school to university, throughout. At the smaller community level, at the bigger city level, at the country level, or then you can go at a regional level where you can have a much bigger impact. So this collaboration, working together, and sharing is crucial for philanthropy to succeed in this region.
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Interviewer17:42
Absolutely. Thank you, Your Excellency, first and foremost for all the phenomenally important work that you continue to spearhead in our region and beyond, and of course for taking the time to share your great insights and experiences with us today. I look forward to the opportunity to meet again with you soon, inshallah, in person, and thank you again.
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Abdul Al Ghurair18:08
Thank you.