In Iraq’s emerging startup scene, ideas are not the problem. The bottleneck is everything around them: infrastructure that doesn’t hold, capital that is hard to access, and regulation that is still catching up. Even the most ambitious founders are building in a country where the basics are unreliable.
In Mosul — a city still rebuilding after conflict — that reality has shaped initiatives like QAF Lab. Founded in 2019 by Mohammed Al-Samarrai, Mohammed Al-Hashimie and Zain Al-Hashimie, the for-profit startup incubator has created a rare space for entrepreneurs to test businesses in an environment where failure is often structural, not just entrepreneurial. “One of the big challenges startups usually face are the high risks they take and the lack of support when it comes to infrastructure and access to capital,” cofounder Mohammed Al-Hashimie says. “There are repetitive failures and sometimes you may have a seed and there is a risk for it to fail.”
Mohammed Al-Hashimie, cofounder of QAF Lab.
COURTESY OF QAF LAB.
QAF Lab has invested in nine enterprises so far, including several in agribusiness. Despite employing thousands, agriculture remains one of Iraq’s most underdeveloped sectors, Al-Hashimie says, with limited resources slowing the adoption of modern farming practices. “We are trying to improve the efficiency of agriculture, to improve profitability and ensure better practices in soil fertility using less expensive fertilisers and better irrigation techniques.”
