São Paulo – Authorities, executives, experts and delegates hailing from organizations based in Arab countries and elsewhere will be featured in the Economic Forum Brazil & Arab Countries, which the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) will host online from October 19 to 22, themed “The Future is Now.” Registration is available free of charge, and simultaneous translation will be available into English, Brazilian Portuguese, and Arabic.
The event will kick off with Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro; the Arab League’s secretary-general, Ahmed Aboul Gheit; and the dean of the Council of Arab Ambassadors, Ibrahim Alzeben. It will also feature 2015 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ouided Bouchamaoui of Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates Food Security minister Mariam bint Saeed Hareb Almheiri (pictured above).
The ABCC’s biennially-held event has become the place to be when it comes to Arab-Brazilian relations. It has gone virtual this year as a result of the pandemic. In addition to several panels, the event will comprise an exhibition where Arab and Brazilian enterprises will showcase their products, services and business interests.
Panelists during the four-day event will include a long list of prominent Arab personalities, such as the Arab Businesswomen Council chair Hessa Saad; Union of Arab Chambers secretary-general Khaled Hanafy, of Egypt; and the Union of African Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Agriculture and Professions (UACCIAP) chairman Ibrahim El Araby, who’s also an Egyptian.
The list goes on with the Arab League’s assistant secretary-general for Economic Affairs, Kamal Hassan Ali and assistant secretary-general/secretary-general’s office head, Hossam Zaki; Saudi Arabia’s Middle East expert Ghadah Alharthi; and Afreximbank chief economist and director of Research and International Cooperation, Hippolyte Fofack, who will be speaking from Egypt. Numerous authorities, C-level executives and industry-leading professionals from Brazil will be featured as well.
Non-Brazilian speakers will also include the USA-based expert in Millennials and the Labor Market, Adam Smiley Poswolsky; the CEO of El-Sewedy Electrometer, Emad El-Sewedy, of Egypt; the secretary-general of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce, Alaa Ezz; and the secretary-general of the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce, Abdulaziz Al-Mikhlafi.
Panelists will also include Tradelens (Maersk) commercial manager Nicolas Buhmann, of Denmark; one Jordanian government official; the CEO of UAE-based PR agency Orient Planet, Nidal Abou Zaki; the CEO of Singapore’s CrescentRating, Fazal Bahardeen; the Partnerships manager at Egypt’s DisrupTech Ventures, Mohamed Okasha; the CEO of the UAE-based Tradeling, Muhammad Chbib; and the CEO of Lebanon’s Pharmamed, Hanan Saab.
Delia Raquel Flores, of Argentina, will speak as the Latin America representative of the G20’s Women in Business. Also featured will be Arab-British Chamber of Commerce secretary-general Bandar Reda, Austrian-Arab Chamber of Commerce secretary-general Mudar Al-Khoja, and IC Publications founder Omar Benyedder of Tunisia.
Also sitting on panels will be the chief scientist of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Ismahane Elouafi of Morocco; Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (KIZAD) commercial director Khalid Al Marzooqi; and International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) CEO Hani Salem Sonbol, of Saudi Arabia.
And there’s more: the secretary-general of the Arab-Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, Qaisar Hijazi; the vice president of Tunisia’s Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (FIPA), Jihene Ben Romdhane; Egypt’s Commercial Office deputy minister and chief, Mohamed Maghaoury; the vice president of Sustainability at the Al Baraka Bank, Ali Adnan Ibrahim, of Bahrain; and the manager of the UAE’s Halal Trade and Marketing Centre, Tomás Guerrero Blanco, among other panelists.
Quick facts
Economic Forum Brazil & Arab Countries
Dates: October 19-22, 2020
From 9 am to 1:30 pm (starts 8:30 am on the 19th)
Registration is available free of charge: https://www.forumcamaraarabe.com.br/inscricao/index_en.php
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
