Name: Syria’s tech industry: from survival to scale? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T16:51:14.000Z
Duration: 5 min 25 s
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After years of war, isolation and sanctions, the Assad era is over.

Syria is trying to re engage with the world.

Sanctions are easing and the new government is promising change.

Among the biggest ambitions, a digital future.

We want the world, especially the next generation, to see us as a driver of growth, connection and innovation.

Now, a year after the fall of Assad, digital still comes with daily obstacles, power cuts, poor connectivity and a cash based economy.

Xyria has been operating the past 14 years in a bubble.

So we were completely disconnected from everything outside and people are extremely creative and there's a unique problem solving approach here.

Fahila Hijazi is one of the people who returned to Syria from Germany to establish her staff startup, Beti Betak.

It's building what looks like a Syrian Airbnb, offering short stays in homes, apartments, villas and hotels.

But for a project like this, how can payments be handled?

What we did in Beiti Betak is that we had an external entity outside.

So we have like a combination of cache online and we developed our own APIs as well for plannerlyes, an AI tool designed to help entrepreneurs plan projects for the Syrian market.

I don't use ADSL which is locally at home.

Actually I don't think that all entrepreneurs have this access to the Internet.

Unofficial estimates suggest Syria is still largely offline with almost 2/3 of the population not connected.

And even for those who are, the Internet can be painfully slow.

According to the Minister of Communications and Information technology, Syria ranks 227th out of 229 countries in broadband connectivity.

like 40% of the reports of the studies that were provided weren't able to finish analyzing because of the Internet.

It wasn't fast enough to analyze the data and load.

And plus when the electricity cuts off, so the Internet cuts off.

In a recent statement, the minister announced the first phase of Ugarit 2, a project linked to an undersea cable route via Cyprus that will increase Syria's international Internet capacity.

While the government talks, infrastructure startups make do with whatever works.

Syria's tech ecosystem didn't grow like other countries.

B Order is one of the few startups that managed to scale under Assad's regime, delivering groceries and meals in Damascus and beyond.

The co founder told us that the Assad government was always harassing the business trying to get a share.

We were able to somehow to Cover our, let's call it numbers and operations just to protect ourselves from them.

So they used to come and say, okay, we are following the number of the bags, and

We know it from, like, we used to number the bags by series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

So we need to change this to a different coding so they don't get how much orders we have.

With sanctions easing, foreign investment can return and startups can finally scale beyond survival mode.

Countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are already pledging millions of dollars in investments for Syria.

So in my point of view, investors coming and people coming to Syria will nourish plan allies, and

it will help more people use plan allies.

Even them coming will help people understand.

Oh, okay, so this is how they think outside.

But foreign investment doesn't automatically mean scale.

What happens if Syria opens to companies like Uber, Airbnb, or regional delivery giants?

Well, it's challenging for us having an open market.

We never operated in this for the past 70 years, but

So I think if you want to have a market, let's call it us and the international investor competition need to cooperate together.

So Syria's tech industry is entering a new phase.

It's less about whether startups can exist and more about whether they can grow.

Foreign money could speed up rebuilding and bring more Syrians online.

For now, the country's startups will build with what they have, but

this time, they're betting that the system will finally catch up.

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Syria’s tech industry: from survival to scale? | DW News

mindset

engage

scale

capacity