Series 9: Education + Adoption- Blockchain in Africa Episode 180 with Abbas Hirei Gassem on the Potential of Blockchain in Somalia

RareBirds Emerging Markets Podcast

Abbas is a dynamic, flexible and results oriented product development, operations professional & entrepreneur. Collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders and learning about the needs of new sectors from scratch to bring innovative ideas and business success. Having worked on a number of product launches in the US, Europe and Middle East. He spent two years spent in Paris working at Ledger.com helping to scale operations revenues from $10M to $90M. Spent five years in Dubai on Product capacity at Careem, Starz Play, and Yahoo!. All this has given him the ability to put on wider lenses when getting an idea off the ground. Addressing all types of issues from finance, HR, sales and marketing. Have good speaking and understanding of Arabic, French and German (elementary).

On leaving the Horn of Africa country after the war, he gained degrees from the UK in BSc Economics & Social Policy and Post Graduate in Computing. His first technology job was with French online price comparison, Kelkoo.com. In 2004, it was acquired by Yahoo! for $650mn. At Yahoo!, he had the opportunity to work for one of the early Internet giants.

During his 10 years at Yahoo! he has been involved in with a wide array of product developments in London, California, and Dubai. In Dubai, he also worked for Careem which was wholly acquired by Uber for $3.1bn. More recently in Paris for Ledger.com who provides security and management of digital currencies. He has now returned to his roots with a Cars Marketplace project (Gawaarida.com) dedicated to Somalia. He describes it as, “New time, new challenges but the same heart and energy to make a difference.”