TAIF – A forum on the future of entrepreneurship in the light of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 will be the major highlight of the 10th edition of the annual Souk Okaz festival, which will kick off on Tuesday. More than 300,000 people are expected to visit the two-week festival, which coincides with the annual summer vacation. Several prominent figures including Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, emir of Makkah and advisor to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques; Minister of Culture and Information Adel Al-Turaifi; Minister of Education Ahmed Isa, and Minister of Haj and Umrah Muhammad Saleh Bantan, and many academics, writers, men of letters, and cultural figures are expected to attend the forum, the Saudi Press Agency reported quoting the media committee of the festival.
The cognitive entrepreneurship forum will be held at Taif InterContinental Hotel from the second day of the festival. The forum will discuss three pivotal aspects of entrepreneurship – strategies of cognitive entrepreneurship services, cognitive services for entrepreneurship and Vision 2030, and cognitive partnership and future of entrepreneurship. The forum aims at consolidating the concept of cognitive entrepreneurship industry in the Kingdom, identifying the difficulties and challenges facing it, drafting framework to support it, and introduce initiatives that boost cognitive entrepreneurship.
Prince Khaled will have an interactive session with scholars, men of letters, poets, academics and thinkers at the hotel, and this will be after the end of the forum sessions. He will also attend an open dialogue with young men and women at Taif University on Wednesday. Al-Turaifi will speak on the salient features of Vision 2030 and will underscore the need for their active participation in its success. The dialogue aims at listening to the opinion of the youth and exchange of views with them with regard to the decision-making process.
More than 30 thinkers and writers will present papers at seven cultural seminars, which will be held over three days as part of the festival. Around 24 poets from 10 Arab countries will present their poems at the poetic evenings. The functions include honoring of this year’s Souk Okaz Poet and Okaz Young Poet Prize.
Prince Khaled, who is also chairman of the supervising committee of Souk Okaz Festival, announced recently that Muhammad Mahmoud Al-Azzam of Jordan has won this year’s Souk Okaz Poet Prize while Khulaif Bin Ghaleb Al-Shamri of Saudi Arabia bagged the Okaz Young Poet Prize. The prize for fiction, which was introduced for the first time this year, goes to the famous Saudi novelist Maqbul Mousa Al-Alawi.
Abdul Baqi Abu Bakr from Malaysia has won the first position in Arabic calligraphy while Abdurahman Ibrahim Al-Majed of Bahrain bagged the prize in digital photography. Luay Muhammad Naseeb of Saudi Arabia secured the prize in entrepreneurship, which was introduced for the first time, while Muhammad Basalama has won the prize in innovation. He said that the winners have been chosen from among 558 contestants from 20 countries, and that the value of prize money has been increased to SR1.7 million. The emir also announced the establishment of an integrated city for Souk Okaz.
Souk Okaz, which represents a unique and important tourism landmark in the Kingdom, was re-created at the same location where the ancient Souk Okaz used to be held historically. The festival was revived in 2006 by Prince Khaled.
