For championing Algeria’s emerging entrepreneurs and talent

Minister at Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Startups, and Micro-enterprises | Algiers, Algeria

Thirty-one year-old Yacine Oualid's career has been defined by one unexpected success after another, the most recent being named Algeria’s first Minister of Knowledge Economy, Startups, and Micro-enterprises. The position was created by Algeria’s president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in 2020, and Yacine’s appointment was described by media outlets as “one of the biggest surprises of Algeria’s new national government.”

Though Yacine had earned a degree in medicine, he always nurtured a passion for business and technology, and at a young age, he launched the first of several IT-related businesses, SSH, a cloud solutions provider that became the first private web host in Algeria. In mid-2019, he and a partner founded Smart Ways3, a logistics and geolocation startup. Later that same year, he founded Bright Solutions, an IT services company. Yacine’s experiences founding these companies and leading them through their start-up phases convinced him that what he refers to as a “New World Economy” was emerging, and he believed that Algeria had a significant role to play in its development.

In his role as minister, Yacine has a unique opportunity to use project management theories and tools to shape the entire start-up and micro-enterprise ecosystem in Algeria. He believes that the Ministry of Knowledge, Economy, Startups, and Micro-enterprises touches on so many of Algeria’s other government ministries. As such, he said in an interview with the online news outlet Afrikan Heroes, “I… have the role of ensuring that all the other institutions adhere to this new vision, of an economy whose spearhead will be innovation and startups.”

His vision includes developing a legal framework to “facilitate the creation of startups and their financing,” as well as create economic incentives and financial mechanisms for their development. Yacine is looking for innovation, scalability, and impact in all enterprises, which he expects will become “the spearhead of the Algerian economy.”

His big-picture vision is to take the success he expects in his country and extend it to the African continent. Already, he has demonstrated this pan-African commitment by launching the African Startup Conference, through which he aims to cultivate a robust startup ecosystem continent-wide, stemming brain drain and fostering homegrown talent.