As part of its continuous efforts to strengthen communication and cooperation between policy makers and the startup community in the Kingdom, C5 Accelerate, in partnership with Tamkeen, hosted His Excellency Zayed R.  Alzayani, the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism for a fireside chat with the startup community. The event was entitled C5's Policy Hack. His Excellency discussed the future direction of Bahrain’s economy and the importance of supporting and fostering small and medium enterprises (SME's) to create a diversified private sector of thriving industries.

The minister also touched on the latest regulatory reforms such as, the accelerators and incubator license, and the steps the Kingdom has taken to capitalize on technological innovation, transformation and convergence. The event ended with an open Q&A session with the startup community and networking opportunities.
 Hadyah Fathalla, Executive Director of C5 Accelerate, commented: “We are excited to host His Excellency, Zayed R. Alzayani to discuss the MOIC's successes in liberalizing the market, encouraging entrepreneurship, and reducing government's role to a more regulatory one and what his plans are for the future. The government plays an instrumental role in creating the right incentives and, more importantly, encouraging and nurturing a supportive environment conducive to the emergence of a robust and sustainable startup ecosystem. Greater conversations and cooperation between all stakeholders and government is key and this event is part of our plan to create a space to promote healthy dialogue and discourse on policy."
C5 hopes to host similar events in the future to engage a variety of leaders and policy makers to foster open conversation and information exchange and support economic diversification and development. It plans to convene thought leaders and influencers including, government agencies and regulatory bodies.
This event was planned to coincide with the Bahrain Global Entrepreneurship Week's activities organized by Tamkeen from 13th to 20th November. The initiative, which runs in parallel with international events, aims to enhance the entrepreneurial spirit and inspire innovation across all business sectors in line with the Kingdom’s 2030 vision. Global Entrepreneurship Week is organized by Global Entrepreneurship Network and powered by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
 C5 will launch it’s fourth program in Feb 2018 and will be the first Fintech focused acceleration program in Bahrain. The program is aligned with the governments ambitions to develop Bahrain into a regional Fintech Hub. The Fintech start-ups will have access to specialised mentoring by financial institutions, AWS Solution architects and support in entering the CBB Regulatory FinTech Sandbox to name a few benefits.  Applications for C5’s fourth intake are now open. For more information or to apply, please visit http://www.c5cloud10.com/apply-program.php
 C5 Accelerate is a London, Washington D.C., and Bahrain based technology investment firm. Its mission is to accelerate best-of-breed start-ups to meet the growth opportunity being created by the geographic expansion of AWS, the world’s leading cloud computing platform.