The stealth telecommunications team arrived in Misurata after a stomach-churning 30-hour fishing boat ride from Malta.
Amid rocket fire and despite power cuts, they worked 12 hours a day alongside local engineers, setting up satellite dishes and other equipment. As a result, residents whose mobile phone networks were disabled by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's forces may soon be able to call their neighbours.
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Ousama Abushagur, a 31-year-old Libyan-American telecoms executive living in Abu Dhabi, and his global network of donors, vendors and engineers pulled off the same feat three months ago in Benghazi. Phone lines in the de facto rebel capital in eastern Libya also had been cut.
In June, the team brought their rogue network to Misurata, Libya's third-largest city. For months, the city had suffered some of the worst fighting since Col Qaddafi and rebel forces began battling in February.
The local workers are now running tests and verifying the identities of tens of thousands of SIM card holders in the rebel-held city before turning on the network.
Two engineers came to Dubai this month for training on how to maintain the network.
"Everybody is just trying to help the country, whatever it is," from cleaning streets to baking bread, said Mohanned Saad, 28, one of the trainees. "We found we could contribute our expertise. People still have the spirit from the first days of wanting to get rid of Qaddafi. They want him out even more now."
Much of that determination was forged in the hardship of living under siege, said Hossain Eljamal, 29, who also came to Dubai for training. When residents first rallied against Qaddafi in February, and soldiers fired at them, larger crowds gathered the next day, he said.
Later that month, Col Qaddafi's forces broke into Misurata, and residents fled to stay with relatives and friends outside the city centre. Twenty-five people, ranging from ages 1 to 78, crammed into Mr Eljamal's five-bedroom family home. They went for more than a week without power, he said. To buy bread, they queued for hours. Young men skipped meals.
Mr Eljamal's two brothers volunteered with ad hoc committees to distribute aid and medicine.
He helped with the "information committee", collecting photos from the fighting and sending them to international media outlets via satellite.
At the same time, though, he had trouble reaching even his sister's family just 15km away, he said. For a month, they had no contact.
By early June, with Col Qaddafi's forces pushed out but still firing rockets into Misurata, Mr Eljamal and others returned to the city. They formed committees to restore utilities. One team fixed the electricity. Another set up a system of walkie-talkies. A third re-established the landline network.
Mr Eljamal and Mr Saad's team - the mobile unit - began repairing base stations around town. Mr Abushagur and his team of experts arrived on a fishing boat on June 10.
They brought several million dirhams worth of satellite dishes, batteries and a "rapid-deployment network kit" - core telecoms equipment the size of a briefcase - intended for use in a crisis. Setbacks included the discovery that they had forgotten some equipment, which took a week to arrive.
Once the network was ready, they met resistance from the people they were trying to help. Some local leaders feared Col Qaddafi spies would tap the network. Eleven people were assigned to check the identities of every individual - two from each family - to whom SIM cards were being allotted. The engineers declined to say how long that would take.
After that process is complete, Misurata residents will be able to call internationally on their mobile phones. But telecom providers worldwide will have to link their systems with the new one from Misurata so that outsiders can call in, said Christophe Justens, a vice president of the firm that will invite providers to establish the links.
The company so far has linked Misurata landlines with networks in the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Tunisia. For now, the engineers working on the mobile system rely on landlines, costly satellite phones and limited-range walkie-talkies, which can make it hard to find each other.
"Sometimes you'll lose a whole day trying to chase a guy," Mr Abushagur said.
chuang@thenational.ae
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Whole-of-life insurance: as its name suggests, this type of life cover is designed to run for the rest of your life. You pay regular monthly premiums and in return, get a guaranteed cash lump sum whenever you die. As a result, premiums are typically much higher than one term life insurance, although they do not usually increase with age. In some cases, you have to keep up premiums for as long as you live, although there may be a cut-off period, say, at age 80 but it can go as high as 95. There are penalties if you don’t last the course and you may get a lot less than you paid in.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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UAE release: January 31
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Manchester United 1 (Rashford 36')
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