For many young people in Jordan, there is a growing gap between finishing university and finding a job, with nearly 40% of youth unemployed , and even higher rates among young women, despite high levels of higher education.
At the same time, the technology sector, one of the fastest-growing industries contributing to Jordan’s economy, should, in theory, help bridge the gap between graduates with degrees in computer science and information technology and the workforce. Yet, the disconnect remains.
Against that backdrop, an initiative called Techween – a bilingual play on words combining the English prefix for technology with the transliteration of the Arabic word for creation, 'takween' – is trying to understand why that gap exists and what can be done about it. Policy gaps and brain drain For Issa Mahasneh, executive director of the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA), which runs the initiative, the problem is layered, but one of the causes lies at policy level.
“I don't think that even policymakers are looking at our graduates as the fuel for building a digital economy for this country,” he said. “Many graduates are looking at themselves as potential employees in the Gulf region.”
That brain drain, he argued, which takes graduates to Europe, the Gulf, and the United States, reflects a structural issue within the technology economy. Universities are not consistently producing students with the skills the market needs, while the Jordanian economy does not yet create enough domestic demand for tech talent.
As a result, the sector is growing, but without enough depth in parallel industries, such as manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare.
“Technology is mainly based on providing support and services to other sectors,” Issa explained. “If you have a good industry, they definitely need technology. Since the other economic sectors in Jordan are somehow not very advanced, this is also reflected in the IT sector.”
Moath Isied, programme manager for the Levant at the Drosos Foundation , which funds Techween, explained the issue in similar terms.
“Formal education can give young people an important foundation, yet it often does not provide enough practical exposure, professional networks, or opportunities to test one's skills in real working environments,” Moath said. “Technology is rarely learned in isolation.”
For Moath, the challenge is also shaped by access and environment.
In Jordan, he explained, the problem is partly one of proximity to what he called “network bubbles” – the universities, companies, events, and informal spaces where people hear about opportunities and begin to feel they belong in the sector.
“Talent alone is rarely enough,” Moath added. “A young person may have ability and motivation, but still face structural obstacles that determine whether they can practise, be seen, or be referred.” Learning through collaboration In response to those challenges, Techween has chosen a different approach from conventional technical training programmes.
Rather than offering courses and certifications, it organises young people into what it calls Communities of Practice, groups built around shared technical interests in areas such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, DevOps, and open hardware.
The model draws partly on how young people already learn in informal settings, whether through gaming communities, knowledge-sharing, peer-to-peer collaboration, or open-source contributions.
For organisers, the aim is to create spaces where young people can learn from one another while building practical experience.
“Becoming part of the tech sector also requires learning how to ask good questions, read other people’s work, receive feedback, contribute to shared projects, and understand the norms of a professional community,” Moath explained. “Communities of Practice create a space where this kind of learning can take place.”
Alongside these groups, Techween also introduced its OpenLab concept, an apprenticeship pathway that places students in open-source projects – software that is publicly available, widely used, and openly distributed.
“It’s the first time something like this has happened in Jordan and in the region,” Issa said, comparing the programme to Google’s Summer of Code initiative .
For participants, he explained, the appeal lies in seeing the impact of their work in real time.
“You are working on them, and you can quickly see the impact at a very large scale,” he continued. “It’s not just about doing a small task in a company that stays hidden; instead, your work and contributions can be seen by thousands and thousands of people.”
That approach quickly drew strong interest from young people across the country, with 250 competing for 15 places in the first cohort, which included participants from Amman, Irbid, Zarqa and Aqaba – a broad geographical reach that was intentionally chosen by JOSA.
Among those selected was Sara Hyari, who worked on a mental health dashboard analysing the relationship between sleep quality and wellbeing among students and workers. Another student, Ahmad Jahaf, fixed bugs in widely used cybersecurity tools.
Reflecting on the experience, Ahmad said the programme changed how he saw his role in technology.
“I shifted from being a user of technology to becoming an active contributor to improving real-world tools used by professionals around the world,” Ahmad shared. “This learning environment helped me build confidence, strengthen my technical skills, and understand how to work responsibly within a professional development community.” Structural barriers to the tech world That nationwide reach was particularly important because many of the barriers young people face are tied to geography.
One of the structural issues Issa spoke most openly about was the concentration of Jordan’s tech sector in the capital. Most companies, networks, and opportunities, both formal and informal, are based in Amman.
Drawing on his own experience, he said opportunities outside the capital remain limited.
“It's just impossible to find IT-related work outside Amman,” he said. He grew up in Jarash, not far from the capital, but noted that moving was the only viable option if he wanted to pursue a career in the industry.
Even then, he explained, he recognised that he had certain advantages.
He added that he was relatively fortunate. As a man, he had greater family support to move. For many young women living outside the capital, however, the obstacles are greater: social expectations around independence and travel, living alone, limited public transport, and a technology sector that already skews heavily male.
“Many female graduates sometimes don't even try to apply for jobs in the tech sector, which is really sad,” Issa said.
According to the Drosos Foundation, those barriers can vary depending on a young person’s background and circumstances.
The Drosos Foundation noted that the challenges vary depending on a young person’s gender, location, legal status, and proximity to existing networks. For refugees and other foreign young people, work permits and legal restrictions create additional barriers to employment.
Because of this, Techween has made it a priority to hold activities outside the capital.
“Most of our members are based here in Amman,” Issa acknowledged. “But the Techween project was the right initiative to be able to go to the beneficiaries where they are.” One year in Now, after a year of work, the initiative is beginning to take shape.
Techween is now completing its first full year of implementation and entering its second. The Communities of Practice are running, the first OpenLab cohort has graduated, and a monitoring and learning framework has been established.
Even so, Issa is cautious about measuring success purely through employment figures.
Asked what success would look like in five years, Issa was reluctant to reduce it simply to job placements, although he acknowledged that employment remained an important factor.
“It's all about growth opportunities,” he said.
Looking back at JOSA’s wider network, he explained that those opportunities can take many different forms.
Through JOSA’s wider membership, he explained, he had seen many different forms that growth could take, with one student setting up a home media server to reduce dependence on large technology platforms and another going on to co-found a multi-billion-dollar start-up in Silicon Valley.
“Through the Techween project, if we can create these growth opportunities in whatever form they take, I think we will be successful,” he added.
For the Drosos Foundation, that local and community-based approach is a key part of the project’s value.
The Drosos Foundation, which has funded similar projects across the Levant, addressing the transition between education, training, and employment, said working with local partners was important to ensure initiatives remained community-based and relevant to local needs.
For Issa, the wider goal is also about changing how young people in the region see themselves.
“Many people in the region see themselves mainly as consumers of technology. We are trying to change that mindset — we have strong skills and talent, and we should see ourselves as potential builders and creators of technology,” Issa explained. “We should also use technology to help solve the problems our communities are facing.”
In Jordan, where almost half of young people remain unemployed, and the technology sector continues to expand without fully absorbing them, Techween is betting that the answer is not simply learning more lines of code, but learning to collaborate with the person next to you. Farida Dowidar is an Egyptian-British freelance journalist and a student at Sciences Po Paris and the University of California, Berkeley. She writes primarily about geopolitics, culture, and the historical legacies of the contemporary MENA region Follow her on LinkedIn: Farida Dowidar