Mideast: Jordan’s Uncertain but Promising Future Is Mirrored In Its ICT Sector
Adi Goldstein
Jordan exists in a unique geopolitical and economic position: situated between the Levant and the Gulf States, Jordan acts as a meeting point for tense and widening political tensions from the Mediterranean eastward. As many of its regional counterparts suffer political and military turmoil — particularly following the “War on Terror” and the resurgence of tensions over the past few years — it is Jordan that continues to maintain comparatively higher internal governmental stability and acts as a diplomatic peacemaker, all while having to navigate an economy made vulnerable by surrounding aggressions. As Jordan seeks to navigate the economic pitfalls it experienced in the second quarter of 2026, the nation’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector in particular has been a bright light at the end of a, given energy concerns, literally and figuratively dark tunnel.
Compared to its eastern neighbors, Jordan has few natural resources to boast of: almost no functional oil and natural gas reserves and a dire water scarcity problem like many of the Levant states to the west. As such, its economy cannot follow suit with many of its neighbors to the east, whose energy exportation sectors account for massive portions of their GDPs. And despite its world-famous tourist attractions — from the briny Dead Sea to the ancient, sandstone-carved city of Petra — Jordan cannot rely on tourism either despite the over six6 billion it raked in in 2025.
As of the onset of the ongoing war between Iran and the United States and Israel, the country remains caught in a deadly and tenuous crossfire that is as easily paused as it is restarted. Jordan is also situated only a few hours from the brutal bombing and genocide of Gaza carried out since October 2023 as well as, as of March 2nd, the ongoing fighting between Israel and Lebanon just to the northwest.
As such, the tourism industry in Jordan and the region at large has summarily collapsed, taking billions in projected earnings down with it. If things do not turn around, an estimated 300,000 citizens’ livelihoods could be threatened, along with 60,000 tourism jobs, leading the nation to secure a 200 million dollar fund from the International Monetary Fund to aid further economic adaptation and release a one billion dollar stimulus package to support the banking and tourism sectors.
However, while tourism and other fragile sectors have steadily ground to a halt, Jordan’s ICT sector continues to grow, acting as one of the fastest growing parts of its economy. From health technology to gaming, skilled work in tech has both helped prop Jordan’s economy up in its time of need and reaffirm its place in the Arab technological sphere.
Jordan was a leader in the early 2000s and 201’s so-called “Arabization” push translating, creating, and adapting digital apps, software, and web portals specifically for Arabic speakers and cultural contexts. Today, Jordan is said to be responsible for 75% of all Arabic internet content produced, and despite comprising only 3% of the Middle East and North Africa region’s population, it accounts for 27% of the region’s tech entrepreneurs.
Jordan has taken careful steps to put itself in such a position. The country has built robust state of the art technology infrastructure throughout the entire nation, and as of 2026, high speedinternet penetration has reached 92.5% throughout the nation. 2026 also saw the conclusion of the five year-long Digital Jordan 2025 project, which successfully digitalized over 80% of its government services — 1,920 different services. As a result, Jordan climbed six places in the Global Digital Competitiveness Ranking between 2024 and 2025, a measure of countries’ ability to adopt and leverage digital technologies for economic and social development, reflecting its capacity for adaptation and innovation. Now, Jordan continues to support its tech and internet backbone with its 2026-2028 Digital Transformation Strategy and Implementation Plan, which will further this work.
As such, Jordan’s ICT sector has been well-primed and supported to become one of the fastest growing sectors of the Jordanian economy, regardless of the pervasive regional conflicts. The sector boasts revenue that exceeds three billion USD, and that is expected to more than double over the next five years to a whopping 6.52 billion, giving the sector a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.95% by 2031 and setting the stage for the sector to more than quadruplein size and value over the next decade.
But this ICT sector abundance is not without its detractions. Chief among them is the fact that, as Jordan has invested heavily in education and public infrastructure to support their tech and internet industries, other Arab-speaking nations with less-robust national pools of talent are pulling scores of professional Jordanians out of the country to work in other nearby nations, largely due to a low absorption rate of new professionals into the Jordanian workforce. In a study conducted between 2018 and 2019, it was found that nearly 45% of all Jordanians wished to emigrate from the country, many of them skilled workers without a fairly paid outlet for their labor.
This has posited a significant “brain-drain” concern, which pervades through the progress the ICT industry has made and has pushed Jordan to work to keep the educated and skilled professionals they are producing. With plans such as the Economic Modernization Vision and the Public Sector Modernization roadmap to revive the economy and revamp the job market, the country reflects a complicated reality: Jordan’s ICT sector looks as though it will continue to thrive with an uncertain impact on Jordanians themselves.
