Ammar has 25 years of experience working in ICT and TMT management, strategy, public policy, tech policy development, and government and regulatory affairs across the Middle East and Africa region, and has been involved with many global, regional, and local organisations 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 such as ArabNet, Meet ICT, Telecom World ME, Telecom Leaders Summit, World Blockchain Summit, and is a speaker at major conferences in the MENA region. Always supportive of innovation and digital economy and entrepreneurship, data protection and privacy, digital identity, and IOT, blockchain technology and its commercial use cases, social impact, and regulatability.

His career has spanned a number of global, regional and local organisations. He is 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 Chinguitel, Director of Products and Services at Zain Group where he worked in the group’s offices in Sudan, Bahrain and Kuwait. 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 wide reach to the internet and telecommunications connectivity.

Ammar is highly strategic leader with strong global and effective network of contacts across multiple private and public organisations. He possesses effective decision-making skills coupled with high integrity, work ethic, and dependability to execute.

He completed his Master in Laws (LLM) in Technology, Media and Telecommunications Law studies at Queen Mary University of London, and holds an MBA in Telecommunications Management from Imperial College London, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Management Information Systems from The California State University. He recently completed executive education programmes in Fintech and Blockchain Strategy at Oxford University. Ammar is currently a doctoral candidate at University of Bradford with research focus on frameworks to build digital economies in developing countries, and the impact of the digitization of agriculture, education and health sectors. He has also written about financial inclusion, e-Government, Data Privacy, Data Protection, digital transformation Strategies.