Jordan has a plan to retain nation’s youth – can they sell it?

All Anas Atef wants is to open a restaurant and live next door to his parents.

His family has other plans for the 22-year-old college student: leave the country.

“The last thing I want to do is leave my family and community behind, although they are all telling me to leave,” Mr. Atef says. “I’m defying them and staying. But if the economy doesn’t turn around here, I won’t have a choice.”

In a kingdom where family and clan come first, emigrating as a life choice was uncommon, even a taboo.

But amid an economic tailspin, concerned Jordanians are urging their sons and daughters to find opportunities abroad – and not to look back – upending social norms. 

In response, Jordan’s leadership is racing to win over Mr. Atef’s increasingly disenfranchised generation with a new economic plan. Its goal: to revive a moribund economy and reverse a potential brain drain as talent and capital leave the country for regional neighbors and the West.   

The country is short on natural resources, water, and funds. But the biggest deficit the leadership faces? Trust.

Lots of youth, few jobs

Jordan is a young country – 60% of people are under the age of 30. Yet, while unemployment nationwide is 22%, among youth it hovers at 40%.

In an Arab Barometer survey released this summer, Jordan, considered an oasis of peace and stability in a troubled region, nevertheless ranked at the top of 10 Arab countries with citizens considering migration. Of those surveyed, 48% in Jordan said they were weighing emigration – more than in Lebanon, which is mired in an economic and humanitarian disaster (38%), or war-torn Libya (20%).

Roughly two-thirds of those Jordanians considering emigrating were between the ages of 18 and 29.

Jordanian youths cite broken trust among their reasons. They point to past crackdowns on protest movements focused on democracy and the economy, service cuts as proof that “the government doesn’t want change,” increased taxation, and programs and economic schemes from a dozen governments over the past decade that never materialized.

Now the Economic Modernization Vision, a plan formed by experts and launched by King Abdullah this summer, aims to overhaul the country’s economy and win over a skeptical public. 

The plan was developed after officials found that job growth in Jordan from 2010 to 2020 was “practically zero,” says an official involved with the plan.

It was a finding officials involved with the plan called “scary.”

Another alarming data point: While Jordanians have long worked in Gulf countries, sending salaries back home and purchasing apartments, more citizens were leaving for good, taking their talent and income with them.

For four months, a team of 500 experts assembled by the Royal Court hashed out a plan to overhaul the economy, boost income, and enhance quality of life.

The Vision aims to shift job growth from the debt-loaded public sector to the private sector by removing the bureaucratic obstacles and heavy taxation that have strangled growth and investment – and prevented many tech-savvy young Jordanians from starting businesses.

One core goal is to help create jobs for the 100,000 Jordanians entering the job market annually for the next decade, which would prevent unemployment from climbing further, and likely keep it at 20%.

What makes this plan different, advocates say, is a royal guarantee of sorts, a break from a traditionally hands-off palace. Rather than leave implementation of the Vision solely to a revolving door of king-appointed governments, the Royal Court is acting as a facilitator to ensure there is progress.

The government has yet to come up with an action plan for the Vision or even a budget. The Royal Court and private sector are promoting the plan on their own.

Town hall

Jordan has been sending members of the private sector – men and women who are leaders in their fields and who helped craft the plan – to roll out the Vision in town halls across the country.

But it has been a tough sell.

On an October afternoon in Madaba, 30 miles south of Amman, 40 young women and 10 young men – university students and unemployed graduates – and a dozen concerned parents gathered for a town hall meeting at the local headquarters of the We Are All Jordan Youth Commission, a youth initiative launched by King Abdullah in 2006.

Two Vision planners – Fadel El-Zubi, an agriculture expert and former official at the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and Dr. Salma al Jaouni, CEO of Jordan’s health care accreditation council – energetically laid out the new plan and its promise to unlock young Jordanians’ potential.

“Human resources are Jordan’s best resource. This Vision facilitates their potential, solutions, and innovations,” Mr. Zubi says. 

“Jordan has high unemployment and high taxes. How can this Vision be activated when we face such challenges?” shouted a young woman.

“With all our respect to you as guests to our town: Why should we believe you this time?” said another.

“My son is a chemical engineer, and he has been unemployed for six years,” said a sheikh in a gold-trimmed beige abaya cloak. “All we hear is eloquent words from government, and watch unemployment, poverty, and hunger rise. We want to see results.”

Mr. Atef, the college student, who was present that day, listened intensely to the presentation, seeking insight into the country’s economic future.

Unlike his friends who have left for far corners of the globe – to Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United States – he wants to stay.

“I wanted to hear if they had real steps to the future, something to get hopeful about,” Mr. Atef says later. “The proof will be acts on the ground.”

Ruba Abu Hani, like the majority of her classmates, has been unemployed since she graduated with an English degree from an Amman university three years ago.

She wants to open an early education nursery and preschool and employ fresh graduates, but she lacks funds. Vision advocates say the plan would link her to a bank, but the lack of involvement by young people in the Vision – and in wider policymaking in Jordan – leaves her pessimistic.

“People who have no connection to our generation or understand us are making the policies,” Ms. Abu Hani says. “Parliament, the government, no one represents us. They can’t help us; we have to help ourselves. They just need to give us a chance to do so.”

Wanting to stay

Abdullah Awaideh is the type of young Jordanian the Vision says it is targeting.

The recent engineering graduate volunteers at multiple international NGOs, is a member of the Jordan National Women’s Commission youth board, and gives civics lessons to ninth- and 10th-graders on how to move past tribal ties when voting for local representatives. He wants to open a nongovernmental organization to empower youths and organize community service.

Last year, when his father urged him to apply for the U.S. visa lottery to migrate and “find his future,” Mr. Awaideh refused, sparking a monthslong argument he now jokingly calls “a family war.”

“Before, leaving the country for good was discouraged. Now my father is telling me, ‘You have no future prospects here. Go abroad to start your life,’” Mr. Awaideh says.

“But I want to give back to my community and my country. I know that if I stay there is a chance people like me can work toward positive change,” he says. “If we leave, that change will never happen.”

Success can be had, some say.

Some 15 miles south of Madaba, Jaafer Al Kawamleh has turned his passion for hiking and adventure tourism in nearby gorges and waterfalls into a career, and he now manages the Wadi Hidan Adventure Center and a separate campsite several miles outside his hometown Dhiban.

“The opportunities are there, you just have to create them and take them,” he says.

Mr. Atef, the would-be restaurateur, says he is “giving Jordan two years.”

“If I feel like things are improving, I will stay and try to forge my own career. If not, I will have to leave.”

As for the civics-minded Mr. Awaideh, he too has a backup plan in case authorities reject his application for an NGO license: apply for a U.S. visa.  

“I have long been against emigrating, but this is becoming my option of last resort,” he says with a pained smile. “You have to keep all options open in order to find your future. But we hope our future paths will return us home. Eventually.”