Mr. Ammar Hamadien

Home Mr. Ammar Hamadien

 

Mr. Ammar has 25 years of experience working in ICT and TMT management, strategy, public policy, technology

policy development, and government and regulatory affairs across the Middle East and Africa region,

and has been involved with many global, regional, and local organizations such as ITU, AREGNET, The

World Bank, The Arab League (AICTO), and Arab Banking Corporation (ABC) on different projects and

thought leadership initiatives, government outreach, and stakeholder engagement efforts. He has been involved in multiple regional fora and is a speaker at major conferences in the MENA region.

 

His career has spanned several global, regional and local organizations. He was Head of Strategic

Engagement, Government and Regulatory Affairs, covering 25 countries in the Middle East & North

Africa at the GSMA. Prior to that, he was CEO and Managing Director of a mobile operator in West Africa. He was Director of Products and Services at Zain Group where he worked in the group’s offices in Sudan, Bahrain and Kuwait, and oversaw product development and innovation across six countries in the Middle East. He also worked for Etisalat in UAE, Cisco Systems, and Hewlett Packard in the US. Through the years, he has worked in multiple markets lobbying for the acceleration of ICT 4 Development, digital inclusion, financial inclusion, and shaping the digital economy, as well as broad reach to the internet and telecommunications connectivity.

 

He completed his Master of Laws (LLM) in Technology, Media and Telecommunications Law from the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London. He also holds an MBA in Telecommunications Management from Imperial College London Business School. He holds a certificate in Public Policy Analysis from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He completed executive education programmes in Digital Transformation Strategies at Cambridge University, and is an alumnus of the Fintech and Blockchain Strategy programmes at Saïd Business School, Oxford University. Ammar is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Bradford with a research focus on policy frameworks to build digital economies in developing countries. He has also written about financial inclusion, e-Government, Data Privacy, Data Protection, National Digital Transformation Strategies.